Professor Green thanks his Nanny Pat for helping him through ‘trauma’ and giving him the ‘confidence’ to start a music career after his mother was unable to raise him and his father died by suicide

Professor Green speaks candidly about how he was raised by his grandmother after his mother had him at the age of 16 and could no longer care for him.

During Wednesday’s episode of BBC Morning Live, the 40-year-old rapper, whose real name is Stephen Manderson, admitted he would be “eternally grateful” to his Nanny Pat, who raised him and gave him the confidence to pursue a career in the music industry.

He said on the show: ‘I will be eternally grateful to my Nanny Pat. The love, support and stability she gave me has helped me build the rest of my life…’

‘Nanny Pat’s care gave me the confidence to pursue a career in music as Professor Green.’

During an interview with another caregiver, Stephen said his Nanny Pat did not receive much support or advice on how to cope with his trauma after his father committed suicide.

Relatives are people who raise the children of a family member or family friend when the parents of the child(ren) are no longer able to do so themselves.

He said: ‘My grandmother was my caregiver, she had no support whatsoever in caring for me and dealing with the uncertainties, the questions and the trauma, which was inevitably what I went through.’

In support of Kinship, a national charity for carers and families, Stephen collaborated on a film to show why carers need better support.

Unlike foster parents, most network foster parents do not receive financial support to care for the child in their home.

Kinship is currently campaigning through the #ValueOurLove campaign to equalize support between kinship families and foster and adoptive families.

There are currently over 141,000 children in foster care in England and Wales, more than double the number of children in foster care.

About half of caregivers are grandparents, but they can also be older brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins ​​or family friends.

This comes after the rapper revealed in 2022 that losing his father to suicide presented “challenges” for him after having his son Slimane.

Stephen and his fiancée Karima McAdams welcomed a baby boy named Slimane in March last year.

Host Stephen Dixon previously asked the rapper whether his father’s death has affected the way he raises his child so far.

The rapper responded: ‘It definitely gave me challenges, I’ll be honest about that. Something that I thought I had fully processed and worked through came back up and challenged me again.’

When shown an old photo of his father, he exclaimed, “Wow, I haven’t seen my dad’s face in ages. It’s come full circle, hasn’t it?”

‘It hasn’t been without its challenges… I’m just aware of how much of a sponge he is [Slimane] and in my youth I suffered a lot of trauma.’

He continued: ‘That’s something I’ve had to learn to deal with and I don’t want to confront Slimane with that.’

‘That’s difficult, because you don’t want to be so aware of it that it becomes your main focus, because then it becomes too present.’

“It’s a fine line and it’s hard to find the right balance, but thanks to my mom’s support, I’m doing pretty well.”

He shared some tips, explaining, “One piece of advice for parents, and it’s something that someone gave to me recently…”

‘Always have someone else take a picture of the three of you, because you always end up with pictures of mother and child, or father and child, but never mother, father and child.’

In 2018, he released a new single titled Photographs, in which he expressed his sadness over the lack of photographs of his father.

He burst into tears and said, “Photographs evoke so many different emotions. The photos I miss most are the ones I never took.”

“They are, in many ways, the memories I don’t have – especially the ones from my childhood. I wish I had more of them.”

“I had a conversation about photographs and the fact that there are large parts of my life that I don’t have any photographs of at all.”

‘We live in an era now where we take far too many photos. That was actually the moment when I started hatching the idea for the single Photographs.’

For grief counseling, please contact Cruse on 0808 808 1677.