Did you expect it to blow up the way it did?

No, not at all – honestly I just agreed and then thought nothing else of it. Then one day the national press just picked it up – it was in The Times first, with all the other newspapers reporting on it after that. It was at that point that I realised that other people on this list with me were, well ‘a bit of a thing’, (laughing). Wayne Rooney was on there, Keira Knightley as I said.

The day it blew up I had all these people, like distant relatives etc, calling up my mum going, “Oh we saw Lucy on the news this morning – she’s rich!”

All assuming that I actually had this ten million that was being discussed: it was a nightmare. There’s a street in Horsham where I lived at the time, the main shopping street, and as I was walking home from college people were just randomly coming up to me and talking about how they’d seen me in the paper or on the news: just so weird. I was a girl skateboarder in a small town so people knew me anyway, but as soon as I was apparently “worth ten million” it was non-stop.

Did you ever find out where the ten million figure came from?

They said, “We’re basing this on Tony Hawk’s earnings currently but we think that by 2020 female skateboarding will have kicked off, it’ll be in the Olympics and you’ll be worth £10 million”. (Laughs). Funnily enough it looks as if their prediction of the Olympics was right after all…

Maybe it’s not too late then? You’ve got four years left to bag the ten million…

I’m still pretty confident, seems fairly achievable to me, (laughing).

You knew it was bollocks though, surely? Or were you expecting to be getting dropped off at The Level in a helicopter by now?

(Laughs), yeah I knew. That’s why I ignored the whole thing for so long because I knew it was so stupid. It’s a good anecdote though. “You may remember me from the Sunday Times Rich List 2003…”

It’s still out there, on the Internet, forever.

Stu from Lovenskate asked me to ask you about something you and he have discussed before – about how social conditioning seems to work on young women when they get to a certain age and might dissuade some girls from getting into something like skateboarding. What are your thoughts on that? Was your conditioning different?

I guess so; my mum was a sporty woman. We have a game down here, a traditional West Sussex game called ‘Stoolball’ – it’s essentially women’s cricket, but with a round bat and smaller balls. My mum played in a team and it was a big deal locally with leagues and whatnot. Her team, and the one that she went on to captain, were one of the best teams – she’d be out doing that three times a week. Before that she used to play roller hockey, which is why I had the Bauer Turbo’s in the first place, and we’d go to roller discos regularly. So from a young age I was always doing stuff, playing sports, out on my bike etc. So yeah maybe, the social pressure to be ‘a girl’ in that way wasn’t really in my head…

But it is something that you think exists though? That conditioning that maybe puts certain girls off trying things like skateboarding?

Definitely, I was lucky through having my mum as a role model – she made it so it was acceptable to try anything I wanted to. She still thought that skateboarding was dangerous though and when I’d come home covered in blood, she wasn’t always happy. I remember the day I first tried to go over the spine at Crawley and I turned up back at home with my trousers ripped, blood everywhere, after pretty much throwing myself at the spine from 9am until it got dark, (laughing). I walked into the house and she goes, “Oh God! What have you been doing?” So she’d never come and watch me skate, but she didn’t try to stop me doing it.

These days there are a lot more women skating in general so does that mean that the social conditioning we’re discussing isn’t as pervasive? Or is it simply because there are more visible role models so more and more women feel inspired to try skating themselves?

I think there’s definitely that element to it. It’s easier to get into skating these days for sure, so that even though the conditioning is still there, there’s so much evidence out there of it being ‘okay to be female and to be skateboarding’ if that makes sense. Whereas back when I was first getting into it, that didn’t really exist. I wasn’t seeing Facebook posts about ‘Girl’s Nights’ at skateparks, or footage of girls skating. It was unheard of, even ten years ago…

Who were your early skateboarding influences?

As I said already, Trev was basically the local skatepark hero for a lot of people but he was never intimidating in that way. The stuff he did on his board might’ve been intimidating in the sense of it being way beyond what you could do yourself, but as a person he was always really forthcoming and encouraging to everyone. One of the key influential things about Trevor for me as well was that he didn’t smoke and he didn’t do any drugs and everybody else did. For me to see that at such a young age was really inspiring, like, “wow this man’s different” – it must’ve taken somebody really strong to do that because smoking cigs and weed was so rife at the park.

Did he influence you in that respect because you don’t drink or smoke or do drugs, do you?

The thing was that back then my school life and my out of school life were so different. I’d see things at the skatepark that just were not part of anyone’s life at school. I was at an all-girls school in Horsham so we were all pretty sheltered from real life. You know, maybe people drunk a little bit of Hooch at a party but that was about as rock and roll as it got. Then I’d go to the skatepark and everyone would be skinning up around me, (laughing). I learned pretty quickly what it was despite being fairly innocent. People would occasionally offer, out of courtesy more than anything, but nobody ever tried to push it on me. I was nervous being around people smoking weed because all the stories in the media at the time were of people dying from taking ecstasy, and at that age I didn’t know the difference: drugs were drugs to me. Drugs were bad – that’s what all I knew. I’d see people smoking weed and have to fight the urge to say something like, “Do you know you might die?”

Then because Trev didn’t do it either it and he was really cool, it just became easier to decide that I wasn’t into it.

Was there ever a point when you were skating with people like Trev, and then later with your friends like Lex where it was a case of you realising, “I’m a girl and they’re not” – or was it always fairly normal in that respect?

Yeah for most of the early years we were all just skaters and that was it. I’ll tell you a funny story actually, about the first time that me being a woman sort of became apparent to me. I used to hang out with this guy who we called ‘Fruitbat’ and one day he and I both had the same inset day off school so we were going to go to London and skate Playstation together. I think I was probably about 15 at the time. Anyway, it was Valentine’s Day that day, not that I even knew, so I got on the train at Horsham, and then he got on the train at Crawley with a rose in his hand. I remember thinking, “what’s he carrying a rose for? What a nutter…” Then he got on the train and gave the rose to me.

A skate date that you didn’t know about beforehand?

Yep, exactly – it was excruciating. I had to carry this rose and my board all day because I didn’t want to be a dick to him but I just knew straight away that, ‘this isn’t going to be normal now is it? We’re not going to be friends today are we? This is gonna be awkward’. (Laughing), like old couples looking at us sitting together on the Tube with me holding this rose going, “Aww, isn’t that cute”. It was horrendous.

That was the first time within skating where I realised like, “oh no, I’m different aren’t I?” Mostly I was just Lucy to everyone else and it was normal but I guess as puberty started to kick in, things were a bit different. I remember that as some of my skate mates who were all boys hit that age and the talk of girls started to be a thing, I’d be the one sitting in the corner, or off skating on my own, (laughing).

Were there any negative aspects to being a female skater once you started travelling to skate outside your local area where everyone knew you?

I’ve tried to remember this before because people do tend to ask about it but honestly, I can’t really think of anything in particular so I guess not. I mean there would be the odd comment but nothing particularly unpleasant, no.

I’d obviously get the classic “can you do a kickflip?” but then I’d just do a kickflip so it was a non-issue, (laughs). Honestly I can’t really remember getting any grief, beyond the odd dick asking me if I was a boy or a girl because of the way I dressed.

What were your earliest interactions with the wider skate scene? Did you enter contests before there were female events?

Yeah but only at Crawley skatepark really, plus those were usually team comps anyway. I think probably the first female skate event I went to would’ve been Jenna and Rolo’s one at Bay 66.

You’re a competitive person though, right?

Yeah.

So beyond the cultural importance of female-only events, they’re also important to you in a personal sense too?

Totally. Back then I was still influenced by my life at school, doing GCSE and A-Level P.E., playing loads of sports, swam for the county, etc, etc, and the whole culture of that was about winning or losing. Obviously I played sport to have fun but at the level I was participating in most of the sports, winning was the point to an extent. When I first started skating, it clashed with swimming, which I was already into fairly seriously, and with the skatepark in Crawley being next to the pool, that created some fairly amusing incidents at the time. I’d get dropped off at the pool by my mum, skate the whole night, not go anywhere near the pool, then dip my head in the sink just before getting picked up to make it look like I’d been swimming, (laughs).

My friends would be like “you’re so out of order, we’re gonna to tell you mum…” Nobody ever knew though because I was really organised, I’d have wet hair, I’d have run my swimming costume under the tap as well, (laughs) and go home and pretend. I didn’t want to go backwards and forwards in the pool and worry about winning any more, I liked skateboarding and I wanted to get better at it. So I guess I was still competitive at that point where I ditched swimming but it was more that I wanted to learn more tricks because I knew it’d be even more fun if I did.

Do you think female-only events and skatepark sessions like the She-shredders thing you run in Brighton are crucial to maintaining female participation in skating? Are these ‘safe-spaces’ necessary?

They are yes, completely necessary – especially right now, I think so at least, not every female skater agrees though. If you compare skateboarding to other sports, or look at the ‘This Girl Can’ campaign, or look at any of the research that has been done into this, which I personally have because I work in this sector, it all tells us that this is what women and girls are saying. The drop off rate for girls aged 14 in any sport is twice that of boys of the same age. So if having an environment or a space which makes it easier and less intimidating to access whatever sport it is and makes you feel like you can do it – that’s what it’s about. It’s not different with skateboarding – ‘feeling like you can’ is what brings people into it. It obviously works – look how many female skaters there are now, compared to only ten years ago…

That’s definitely true…

I saw it first hand through doing the She-shredders night in Brighton. To start with we had really bad numbers, or we’d get crazy peaks and troughs and for a long while I had to constantly justify why we needed it. It took a while but it built and built where now we get new people coming every single week, all different ages, all different backgrounds and every one of them says, “Without this, there’s no way I’d be skateboarding”.

It’s intimidating going to a skatepark as a beginner full stop – now imagine how intimidating it is as a woman, even today where it’s a lot more accepted. We get people of all ages too – everyone from kids, to women in their late 30’s/early 40’s, so like I said earlier, I do honestly believe that women-only sessions are essential. A 40 year old woman, no matter how much she might not give a toss what people think, isn’t going to roll up to The Level as a complete beginner on a Saturday afternoon – it’s skateboarding, you are going to fall on your arse in front of people, (laughing). It’s embarrassing, we all know that – so what I’m trying to do, and what other people doing similar things are trying to do – is create a supportive environment where women feel comfortable taking those first steps. It creates a scene – it’s rad.

So people can get involved with She-shredders via Facebook then?

Yeah just find us on there – come along, get involved. Everyone is welcome.

You’re also involved with the new governing body ‘Skateboard England’ – can you tell us about that?

It’s the national governing body for skateboarding in England. Initially it came about via Jerome Campbell and a couple of guys he was working with – they got a chap called James Hope-Gill on board who had a lot of experience with governing bodies in sport, mainly in football – someone who had the necessary experience to actually do this properly. I’m aware that it’s not for everybody, and that for some skaters even the idea of a governing body is objectionable but I genuinely think there is a need for one, especially now…

Why now?

For lots of reasons: not least the Olympics potentially being on the horizon. But on a smaller, more nationally relevant level too because despite it being 2016, sub standard skateparks are still being built and public money is still being wasted – it’s stupid. That’s one of the major reasons behind setting Skateboard England up – to try and combat that.

Who is involved and how were you approached?

Jerome (Campbell) had already started the process as I said, and had already got James (Hope-Gill) on board as the CEO. They then started talking to some of the people who had been involved with the UKSA before, put feelers out to see who might be interested in being involved in this, and basically spent a year or so travelling around the country meeting people and consulting. My name came up, they came to meet me, I was keen to be involved and it went from there.

The list of directors are Wingy (Steve Wilkinson) and Nic Powley who were previously involved in the UKSA, Jerome Campbell, Ricardo Magee (who works for Brighton and Hove Council as a Skatepark Development Officer), Paul Regan, Russ Holbert and James Hope-Gill. So there’s a good cross section of skaters and people with different experience within skateboarding. I was nominated for the Chair at the first board meeting, people voted ‘yes’, so that’s currently where we are, (laughing).

Are you working with accreditation routes for skate coaching as well? That is an area that offers real job opportunities for skaters but always seemed a bit ad hoc in England to me…

Absolutely – that is a huge part of what we’re trying to do. That’s been our focus recently as it goes. As the number of indoor parks has grown and more and more local authorities have accepted skateboarding, the need for qualified people to teach skateboarding in a more formal and structured way has arisen. Obviously there are people delivering skate coaching all around the country but there’s no real consistency so we’ve developed a qualification, which has been recognized by an accredited body called First for Sport. That will start being delivered this year.

Thus creating genuine employment opportunities for skateboarders?

Exactly – people will be doing it in all different capacities: self-employed, working for youth services, working directly with skateparks – all kinds of different modes of delivery and all kinds of different styles of teaching. All this qualification is meant to do is to formalise certain aspects of the coaching process, things like the safest way to teach, etc and to create conditions where skate coaching is regarded as a genuine need and a skill that is rewarded appropriately in terms of careers etc.

I guess it’s a case of – if skateboarders don’t do this for themselves, somebody else will…

Essentially that’s it. There’s no avoiding it, skateboarding in this country is on its way to having to deal with organisations and bodies like Sport England and if skateboarders aren’t involved in this process and non-skaters end up becoming the recognised governing body then the nuances and specialness of skateboarding will be forgotten so that it’ll fit into the predetermined ‘sausage machine’ of sport, if you like. So we’re trying to do just that, keep our culture safe whilst doing what needs to be done to push things like coaching accreditation and skatepark standards in a wider ‘official’ context.

If people want to find out more about Skateboard England and get involved in whatever capacity they can go to skateboardengland.org

Vanessa Torres had an interview on Jenkem recently which created a fair bit of conversation online – one of the things she talked about was the idea of an almost separate female-oriented skate industry with woman-focused brands and all the rest. What’s your take on that?

I think that idea and those kinds of brands have a right to exist and they do give people a platform, but I don’t think we need to be segregated by gender really. I know the reason why brands like Meow started, and why Mimi and co started Hoopla in the first place – because there were no opportunities out there so in a sense, why not do that? Thing is, and maybe something that I forget, is just how big skateboarding is in the States – so big that even brands which seem really tiny (in comparison to the major ones at least) probably still have fairly large audiences over there.

I guess girls over here see that and it’s inspiring because it’s a platform isn’t it? Within female skating, people like Lacey Baker are the best undeniably, so surely they want sponsors that are actually pushing them. If that doesn’t exist within the skate industry already then of course they’re going to go and create it for themselves. Then you can have video parts to work on, shoot adverts, all the stuff that top-level skaters do. So from that perspective I can see what Vanessa’s saying about there being more scope for female coverage and I guess female-only brands can help with that but, in my own opinion, I don’t think it needs to be totally separate. Do we have that in other sports or whatever? Like completely separate women’s industries? I don’t think so…

Vanessa also talked a lot about the representation of LGBT people within skateboarding and how there are no ‘out’ male pros, whereas gay female skaters seem to be accepted as part of the culture and nobody really makes a big deal out of it.

It’s implied in her interview that it’s almost a duty for a male pro to come out, isn’t it? What do you think about that?

I wish it would happen for sure. It’s a cliché how we all pretend that as skateboarders we’re all so inclusive and open but it’s not like that at all, especially not in terms of ‘the industry’. You’ve got the cool guys who have to ‘back’ something before everyone else is allowed to say it’s cool or ‘legit’ or whatever. I wish we were more like we pretend we are. The stats are there, if 10% of the population are gay then clearly there are gay pro skaters but nobody has openly said so. It’s the same in a lot of sports though, this isn’t exclusive to skateboarding; it’s still considered a big deal if a football player comes out, or like that rugby player who did recently.

Surely it has to happen eventually though? It’s always discussed in terms of ‘well maybe it’d be career suicide if they came out’ which I suppose is something only the person involved can know…

At this time would it really be that gnarly for somebody’s career though? I can’t see it if I’m honest, just because I know that there are hundreds of thousands of people who would stand up for anyone who did it. It probably only needs one high profile pro to come out and it’ll be a non-issue anyway. There are plenty of gay skater groups on the Internet these days, there’s a community; it’s not hidden. Does anyone even care about what sexuality people are any more?

Saying that, I don’t personally know any gay male skateboarders…

Some of the online chat about this issue does get heated, almost as if people make it someone’s responsibility to come out, whether they want to or not – surely it’s their business, regardless of whether they’re a public figure or not?

Totally, hounding somebody to come out because everyone wants it to happen is definitely not the right way to go about it. It’s a person’s own choice but let’s not pretend it’s not interesting. I want to know about certain people myself, but like you say – it is up to them in the end. It is odd to think that there are fairly high profile people out there, totally ‘out’ in their own life but still kind of ‘in the closet’ in terms of their public persona. What a strange situation to be in.

So this leads me perfectly onto – last night (Saturday 6^th Feb) you were tagged into a Josh Kalis Instagram post – one of your skate heroes – about his new LTE DC shoe. What’s the background to this?

Well although I did leave DC, one of the chaps there whom I was always good friends with had always said that if there were ever any shoes that I liked that I should let him know. I’d seen this Kalis LTE thing coming up, and I’d had the original ones in red the first time around. They were my chillers, my best shoe; I loved them. The thing was they were half a size too small and they used to hurt my feet so I ended up giving them to a skater who was my friend at the time. I said, “don’t skate in them, just in case I want them back – they’re yours but they’re still mine”, (laughs). I lost touch with him over the years then when I did see him again he was skating in them. I was gutted. So anyway, they were gone forever and I regretted giving them away. When I saw that this LTE in red was coming out I hit my friend up at DC and said that I basically needed to get a pair as soon as they came out. Dave Snaddon works there now so he was on it, he replied and said he’d keep an eye on stock and let me know. So I wrote an Insta post saying, “I’m ready for the all red colourway when you are” and tagged Kalis in and he must’ve seen it and then posted a pair in red with me tagged in. That was wicked.

Knowing you, I can only imagine how stoked you will have been on it…

It was so rad. We were getting ready to go out to a birthday party when Kalis posted it, I think I might’ve checked Instagram in the toilet or something, and I was just too excited. (Laughing), like, “oh my God I don’t know how to cope with this!”

I knew that I was going to have to deal with real life people but that I’d need to be on my phone constantly as well after he’d posted, (laughs). As if Kalis did that though? What a cool guy. That is the thing about him; he is one of my favourite skateboarders but I think that the way he conducts himself on the Internet, the way he posts on Instagram, posting on Slap under his own name – he’s kept it 100% real.

Did you have to explain to your wife why you were glued to your phone all night, or does Em know how dope Josh Kalis is?

(Laughing), she’d already had a couple of glasses of red so she was flying anyway, but yeah; I was trying to explain to her how significant it was. That why I had to tag a few people in as I was surrounded by people who didn’t skate and I needed to talk to someone who knew how cool it was.