Mobile phone culture is moving in on youth - the chatter of tiny voices means big business

Mobile phone culture is moving in on youth - the chatter of tiny voices means big business.Jo Kernon, 17, has a mobile phone "A good chat can last an hour. Swatch, the maker of fun fashion watches, manufactures technicolour mobiles for funky young things rather than businessmen. With a gesture to the master to cease his scolding, the young boy coolly answers it. Following a brief conversation, he apologises to his teacher, explaining: "It was my stockbroker." History does not relate the boy's fate. But the school imposed a blanket ban on mobile phones, and this embargo is now appearing in school rulebooks elsewhere. For teachers accustomed to catapults, this is a bizarre disciplinary development For their charges, however, it is unremarkable. The mobile phone revolution has reached its logical target: the dial-obsessed, digit- happy, talkaholic teenage market. An NOP survey carried out last month revealed that a third of the entire mobile phone market is now taken up by people aged 24 and under.

A recalcitrant pupil is being upbraided by his housemaster when his mobile phone rings. A story has been doing the rounds of public schools. He was just dead inside."It's been really difficult for all his kids because although he's our father he's a total stranger and there's been a lot of awkwardness and strangeness between us."In the beginning we tried too hard and now we've learnt to take a back seat and give him the space to approach us if he wants to."There are times when my dad's like a dead person He goes into a very dark place and sort of shrinks away. No one can reach him and then he disappears for a while and can't be contacted."Over the years I've grown accustomed to feeling deprived of a father so I've got a mechanism inside me to cope with all these things."But it's only since reading his book that I really understand how and why he doesn't love us. It's an insight into just how much he's really suffered."After he went into prison we had bricks and crowbars thrown through our windows, and I remember street fights against my mum with milk bottles.

There were constant death threats and my mum put the five girls into care for a few weeks to protect us."But after that she kept us all together, no matter how hard life was for her, and I really respect her for that.". I left a part of me there."'Forever Lost, Forever Gone' by Paddy Joe Hill is published by Bloomsbury on 29 June, price pounds 14.99.'When my dad told me he didn't love me, hecompletely broke down' - Tracey Hill on the father whobecame atotal strangerTwenty-nine-year-old Tracey recalls the day in the family kitchen when her father told her he felt completely cold towards her and her five siblings."When my dad told me he didn't love me, he completely broke down, his knees buckled under him and I had to catch him before he fell to the floor."He cried like a baby, which is something I never want to witness again because it tore me to pieces."He said he felt so guilty because he had no love or any feeling for his kids. You have to learn to not think about things like that, or you start thinking about your wife and family and you start getting emotional and messing up your head."I've rediscovered that part of myself with Alison, but it's been a slow process of trust and healing the hurt inside me."Paddy bought his two-bedroom flat with the pounds 200,000 he received in compensation for his imprisonment, but he is currently locked in a battle for more money"I can't work because where would I get a job? Doing what? Within an hour of being in a factory, office or shop I'd crack up and be wrecking the place."I'd run amok because I just couldn't handle being cooped up like that To a certain degree I'm always going to be in jail. I see dads playing with their kids and I know I left six children behind and never shared those moments with them."In jail, sex is the last thing on your mind It's very rare that you even think about it That's just the way prison conditions you. I'm so tense, wired up and angry I could pull the place apart at the seams and I wish I was back in my cell."When I was inside I only had one problem in my life - proving my innocence and getting out.