Brat Camp changed my life

Charlie Mason is the first to admit he's no angel. He's been expelled from five schools in three years - including one of the most prestigious in Britain - and got into fights so regularly he built himself a fearsome local reputation and a rival gang threatened to kill him. "But that's all in the past," says his father, Nick. "I can't believe how much he's changed."

It's perhaps a sign of the times that his self-improvement comes courtesy of a television show rather than an education. Charlie, 17, stars in a Channel 4 documentary, Brat Camp, which started last night, following six troublesome British teenagers who are sent to the remote Utah wilderness as part of a plan to get their lives back on track.

Charlie was last night looking forward to being on television - "I wonder if I'll get any fan mail from girls" - but says the experience of living in the wilderness has changed his life. He certainly looks like a normal teenager, dressed in trainers and ripped jeans, munching on a packet of sweets and staring at the television in the corner of the living room in the council flat where he lives with his father, a postman, and younger brother, Joey, 13.

Charlie knows he has been given a big opportunity and has made the most of it, not wishing to repeat the mistakes of his past. Exceptionally bright, he won scholarships to two independent schools but was expelled by both. He was only at Harrow, the second school, for eight days. "I just couldn't take all the rules," he says. "It wasn't just the teachers who ordered me around, the older boys did, too, saying I had to go and get their laundry. I was the kid from a council estate. They didn't know how to take me because they were all really posh. I kept getting into fights and I was sick of being told what to do."

"He always felt like an outsider," explains his father, Nick. "The other kids all came from rich families. Charlie had a temper and he couldn't handle authority, so he was always in trouble."

He managed to get into several fights during his eight days there as a member of Rendalls house and was finally expelled after fighting with an older boy who had pushed in front of him in the canteen queue for lunch.

"I was, like, you can't do that, show some respect. So I punched him." They ended up scrapping on the floor and Charlie was "encouraged" to leave. "I didn't feel like I was throwing away my chance for a good education," he says. "I didn't really think about it at all. I just wanted to leave." Had he given his education a chance, he would probably have gone on to university. Does he regret that? "No, because I wouldn't be who I am now, I wouldn't have gone to Utah."

In January, Charlie returned from the RedCliff wilderness camp, run by a group of earnest Americans with an astonishing amount of patience. The "program" is brutally simple: take a group of rebellious youths, strip them of fashion accessories, make them camp out in temperatures which can fall to minus eight degrees, feed them rice and lentils, make them get up at dawn and go on daily hikes.

The teenagers are rewarded for good behaviour - they may be given a spoonful of honey - and punished for bad; for each swear word they utter, they have to carry a heavy stone around with them; for very bad behaviour they are isolated from the group. They are pushed physically and every aspect of their behaviour comes under scrutiny in the weekly session with the camp psychologist and in group discussions.

The idea is that the basic living, combined with learning to communicate and take responsibility for themselves, gives the teenagers the skills to make positive changes in their lives. It may be several months before they convince the camp workers they have changed and are allowed to go home.

Charlie was sent by his parents as a lastditch attempt to get his life in order. His aunt had seen a newspaper ad, placed by Channel 4, asking for troubled youngsters. But would it work?

He grew up with his mother, who worked as a cleaner for the rock star Pete Townshend, on a council estate in Roehampton. His father left when he was two and had little contact with him as a child. Clever and good at sport, Charlie took exams for Claremont Fan Court, an independent school in Surrey, and won a scholarship.

Halfway through his second year, after being involved in a series of scrapes and answering back to his teachers, he was "asked" to leave. After that, two years ago, he suddenly developed the unlikely ambition of going to Harrow. "I read an article about the school and I thought it sounded quite good, so I applied," he says. "I spent a whole day doing exams. I passed them all and they gave me a Peter Beckwith scholarship [a scheme for disadvantaged youngsters]." His mother has kept his dark-blue-and-grey Harrow uniform and boater. "She was more upset than me when I left," he says.

But he did not learn any lessons from his experience - his next school, a local comprehensive, expelled him after a month. Around this time, his temper started to spiral out of control. Once, when his mother gave away his PlayStation, he set his older half-brother's room on fire using a can of deodorant and a cigarette lighter. If there was a fight in the street, it was usually a given that Charlie would be in the middle of it, and his relationship with his mother had deteriorated so badly, he was forced to move out and live with his aunt.

"I wanted to live with my dad but he couldn't have me," says Charlie. "He was living in a one-bedroom bedsit in Brixton with my brother [Nick Mason's younger son from his second marriage]." Did he feel abandoned by his family? "No, it just wasn't a good situation. I knew I was difficult to live with but I understood that my Dad couldn't have me."

Charlie lasted two years at his fourth secondary school and was allowed to take his GCSEs (passing six, including maths and physical education at A*) before he was expelled again for bad behaviour (he started A-levels at a sixth-form college but left after three weeks).

By now, his reputation was such that he had been built up as the boy to beat. Local gangs had threatened him and had even come to the house. His aunt, who was worried for her young children, told him to leave. Last summer, his father, by then living in a council flat in Roehampton, took him in and gave Charlie the stability he craved.

"Ever since I moved in with him, I've been better," he says. "He's like a friend as well as my dad. He doesn't keep on at me the way my mum did but he can be strict with me, which is probably what I need."

Nick says he wishes he had been around more when Charlie was growing up. "But I don't feel guilty because that was the situation I was in," he says. "Yes, I wish my family hadn't broken up and I'd always been with Charlie, not just the odd weekend, but life isn't always like that."

When the opportunity to go to Red-Cliff arose, Charlie didn't exactly jump at it - he went missing for three days before he was due to leave. He met the other five teenagers: Tom Phillips, 16, from Worcestershire, who stole from his mother's purse to pay for his drug habit; Dan Leary, 16, from Surrey who smoked cannabis constantly and was so depressed he couldn't see a reason to live; James Fonfe, 16, from Buckinghamshire, the obnoxious and foul-mouthed son of a retired RAF officer; Rachael Greenberg, 17, from Leyton, a drug user with 19 body piercings; and Fran Bradley, 17, who flew into violent rages at the slightest provocation.

On arrival, they were strip-searched and all personal possessions, including piercings, were removed. Then they were blindfolded before being driven three hours into the wilderness where they had to build their camp from tarpaulin and wood.

"I knew there was no way I would make it if I wanted to run away," says Charlie. "We were in the middle of nowhere. I knew the only way to get out of there was to graduate." In order to graduate, the teenagers have to show that their attitude and behaviour has changed.

To his surprise, Charlie relished the hardship of living in the wilderness. The recruits joined a group of American teenagers who had already been there for several weeks. "It was hard to get used to the temperatures and not being able to watch television, but I really started to enjoy it."

It wasn't the same for the others. "Some of them couldn't handle it. There was one American girl who used to eat the contents of the latrine to make herself sick so she could go home. You've got to be desperate to do that. Every day someone would have a fit, crying and shouting and complaining." The two people he liked most from the camp were Dan and Tom, with whom he has remained in touch.

And the worst? "Fran, definitely," he says. "If it was in my power, I'd send her there for the rest of her life. She was a nightmare. She was always in a state, shouting and crying."

Charlie says he didn't mind the food and loved the daily hikes - one day he walked 27 miles. But how did he cope with the rules? "It took a lot of getting used to but I soon worked out that if I wanted to go home as soon as possible, I had to do it. Then, after a couple of weeks, I actually really started to respect them [the RedCliff workers]. They really seemed to care and they always made time for me."

Charlie also had to have weekly sessions with the camp therapist, which was the first time he'd really talked about how he felt about his life. "Nobody had ever got me to open up before," he says. "It helped a lot to talk about everything and saying it out loud made me realise that I couldn't continue my life as it was." Charlie's father agrees: "It got to the point where I was just waiting for a call from the hospital saying Charlie had been stabbed."

Charlie's achievements in the programme - it's touching that he's so thrilled when he lights a fire for the first time using two sticks - and a definite change in his behaviour for the better, meant he was the first of the British recruits to graduate, 64 days after arriving. He recently started his first job, working in a bathroom-and-kitchen warehouse, he has a girlfriend, has bought a scooter and his relationship with his mother is improving.

His father describes the change in Charlie as "phenomenal" but there is still a way to go. He got into one fight shortly after his return but now has a punch bag in his bedroom on which to take out his aggression. "It's not ideal when he's pummelling it at three in the morning, but it's better than nothing," says his father.