James Benamor

Determined to find individuals and projects working to help young people at risk of either turning to crime or becoming the victims of crime, James wastes no time taking to the streets of Moss Side to meet the local youth and find out what the problems are.

As one passer-by says: 'The kids ain't got nothing to do no more – it's hard for the kids now, they've got parks and that, but it's not really enough.'

His search gets off to a bad start: suspicious of the cameras, some locals are reluctant to either speak out about their community or give James the leads he's looking for – and he's even accused of looking like a 'fed'.

'It's just little knockbacks, you know, that kiddie saying that I was well dodgy, that I was fed, that no-one should talk to me – and I think, yeah I am dodgy, I've got a camera crew, how can't I be dodgy.'

After a difficult start, James finally gets results when he works as a classroom assistant at the Manchester Settlement, a place for kids who don't fit into mainstream education.

James's advice that gaining qualifications will mean money in later life initially falls on deaf ears: 'You went through school yeah and done all your GCSEs, and you ain't earning lots of money cos I've seen your car.'

But James begins to realise that the situation these kids are in IS different to the problems he had when he was a teenager. One boy tells James that if it wasn't for the Settlement: 'I'd either be in prison or dead.'

For James, the realities of life on Manchester's toughest streets begin to hit home and he begins to realise how different his children's lives would be if they were growing up here.

The message is reinforced when he meets members of a local pressure group set up by women to campaign against gun and knife crime. Mothers Against Violence is a group of Manchester mums whose children or loved ones have been the victims of street violence.

James is introduced to Miranda. Her 19-year-old son Justin was shot dead five years ago and while she tells James about her life before and after the death of her son, he ends up in tears: 'I'm just thinking of my own son – I've got two boys I don't know that I could cope.'

James's search eventually leads him to a quiet, respectable, retired couple, Ann Panks and Terry Panler, who have opened up their home as a hostel for homeless teenage boys, many of them with criminal pasts.

One says: 'If these wouldn't have let me live here at the time when I desperately needed somewhere to go, I would have gone to jail straight away.'

By the end of his stay, this tough entrepreneur is surprised to find his decisions about who to give money to are emotional rather than purely business.

'This money is spent differently to how I first imagined. Some of it is going on gut feel, who has moved me, who has touched me. I didn't expect it to be like that, but there are some people that we have met that have blown my expectations out of the water.'

Intro | About James |  About the programme |  Music

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