What I like is that I don't have to get pigeonholed into one thing. I don't have to do football pictures, I do landscapes as well, and other stuff.

I have also been doing pictures which are far from it, but I am in football and I do enjoy it, and some of the images are so good and so striking that I like to put that in a painting.

[Then a terrible thing happened. In August 2002 his four-month-old son, Jake, died, a victim of cot death.] I found myself painting every single day, ... It most definitely helped me deal with the situation. It was how I coped. It was good for me.

We'll never forget Jake. We remember the good times. But Joseph makes sure we don't have much time to dwell on the grief that we felt.

It's something that has always been there, within me. My great-grandfather used to decorate his letters home from the First World War with ornate drawings, so maybe I inherited something from him. I stayed on at school and got art A-Level. It was just something I enjoyed doing, though it wasn't high on my list of potential careers. I was sports-orientated and I saw myself possibly being a PE teacher.

I did sketches with pencils because they didn't cost much. I didn't have the money to buy paint. Materials aren't cheap, and I was on extremely low money.