I couldn't read until I was 25, now I'm a best-selling author, says trainer to the stars

'New world': Paul Connolly with wife Jo and sons Harvey, seven, and Archie, two
10 April 2012

A best-selling author who learned to read at the age of 25 has backed the Evening Standard's literacy campaign.

Paul Connolly's autobiography, in which he wrote about surviving an appalling childhood and becoming a celebrity fitness trainer, topped the Christmas e-book chart.

Today the father of two told how the embarrassment of being illiterate drove him to learn to read.

He said: "When I left school I couldn't read or write, tell you the alphabet or the months of the year. It was absolutely horrendous, like something out of Dickens's day. I don't know how I used to get by before I learned to read. It has been a revelation and has opened up a whole new world."

Mr Connolly, who was abandoned in a dustbin as a two-week-old baby, suffered years of abuse at the St Leonard's children's home in Hornchurch, Essex. He was expelled from school at 15 and was on the way to becoming a professional boxer when he suffered a hand injury that put an end to his fighting career and persuaded him that he would have to learn to read. "There is a window when you learn and soak things up like a sponge, and I struggled because I missed that window," he said.

He said he enrolled in night classes and took correspondence courses for four years until he could read well enough to take exams to qualify as a gym instructor: "If I had not learned to read I would never have become a gym instructor."

In 1988 Mr Connolly became the first personal trainer in the City of London, and he went on to work with supermodel Elle Macpherson on her workout video The Body. He now trains celebrities including Chantelle Houghton from Celebrity Big Brother and is determined to make sure his sons, aged seven and two, learn to read properly.

He said: "My seven-year-old now reads better than me. My wife sits down with him every night at home to make him read Like with anything in life if you have one-to-one attention you can move forward more quickly."

The Standard's literacy campaign is raising money to send volunteer reading mentors into London schools to read with children.

Mr Connolly wrote his autobiography with a ghost writer. It was first published in March 2010 and about 5,000 copies were sold. But an electronic version of the book, released last year for 99p, went on to top Amazon's non-fiction Kindle chart.

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