A boy at the centre of a TV documentary 38 years ago has written about his life in and out of prison and his unlikely friendship with the film-maker. Steve Pratt reports

THE year is 1975 and the BBC airs a documentary about Aycliffe Assessment Centre “starring” a 11-year-old boy from Durham. The film provokes strong public reaction and widespread outrage.

The year is now 2013 and the same boy – Michael Cooper, still known as Mini after all these years – is sitting in the Groucho Club in London talking about his autobiography.

The years in between have been difficult, spent in and out of jails, secure mental health units and halfway houses. He’s now out on licence after receiving a life sentence for setting fire to a drinks factory.

The one constant in his life – apart from being locked up – is sitting beside him, award-winning film-maker Franc Roddam, the Norton-born director of the first reality series The Family, feature films like Quadrophenia and creator of TV’s Masterchef and Auf Wiedersehen Pet.

Roddam filmed that 1975 Inside Story and has remained friends with Mini ever since. When Mini ran away from homes, he usually turned up at Roddam’s London home. The two have continued to see each and Mini’s autobiography, Mini & Me has brought them together again – Mini as author, Roddam as publisher.

Inevitably conversation returns again and again to that original film, which is being re-run on BBC4 in coming months.

The documentary has shaped his life, both for good and bad. “There have been many discussions and many different people – psychiatrists, psychologists, all kind of clinical professionals – who put forward various hypothesis. They say, did he manipulate you, did he exploit you, put stardust in your eyes?,” says Mini.

“I maintain now that the film gave more than it took. Before that the only voice I had was fire. After the film crew packed up and went, the fires stopped until many years later.”

He wonders how aware he was of the significance of being in the film.

“Perhaps I played to the gallery slightly knowing there was an audience,”

he says. “But also I’d been let out of the cage. Having the camera pointing at me and being told ‘be yourself’ – what an invitation for somebody who’d never been allowed to be himself. I took it gladly.”

He was told by people at the centre that Roddam wanted to make a documentary about him but that was not strictly true. As the director recalls, he wanted to make a film about an assessment centre and opted for Aycliffe because it was in the North- East where he grew up.

The assessment centre was keen for the film to be made and recommended Mini. “They said there’s one guy you’ll really love – he’s articulate, he’s interesting, he’s dangerous.

He’s the perfect subject for the film.

“I was a bit sceptical they were pushing someone on me but I met him and realised they were right,”

says Roddam. “They were proud of Mini’s intelligence and his reasoning, but considered him unreasonable because he lit fires.”

MINI thinks that brightness and his reasoning worked against him in some ways. “I do think the authorities showed a certain amount of resentment towards me after the film was made.

“I have always believed the reason they were falling over themselves to promote me as the subject of the film is partly because they were hoping the film would validate their treatment of me and the methods they were using across the board with other children that were in there.

“Some of the girls in that unit were locked up because they cut themselves and they did that because they came from abusive homes.

“They locked them up so they cut themselves again. It’s just on and on, a vicious cycle.”

He sees that resentment as the reason the authorities eventually they banned him from having contact with Roddam, either in person or through letters and the phone. They convinced him it was Roddam’s idea and that he didn’t want to see Mini.

“There was a certain dishonesty about the film too – not in the making of it and not just me playing to the gallery. The authorities were too.

They certainly dressed for the occasion.

Staff who never wore ties suddenly turned up wearing them. Some had even had a shave.”

That dishonesty continued after the documentary was screened. Far from being sent to a home in Essex as the authorities decided on camera, Mini didn’t get locked up, but was sent to another home on the same campus.

“Having gone public in such a huge way and said there is no way this child can be allowed to roam free and has to be housed in conditions of absolute physical security, they did a U-turn within weeks,” he recalls.

For Roddam, the book has allowed the superbright ten-year-old boy to return. “There was 40 years when the opposite was true – they said he’s dangerous, he’s difficult, he’s troublesome, he has to go here, he has to go there, he has to be on licence,” he says.

“When this book was completed I thought it was brilliant for Mini because he became the intelligent person he was when he was ten. That gap had been closed. Look at this book and he’s the intelligent boy we saw at ten.

“I saw him when he first came out after the long prison stretch and was a bit shocked, to be honest, because he was this older man who’d been beaten up and institutionalised for 30 years. Where was this little boy?

The book is returning him to his strength.”

Mini agrees. Writing the book, even talking about it in interviews, has restored the self-belief lost over years of being in institutions. His intelligence had been locked away just like him.

“Around the time I began writing it, it felt right. I felt ready. I worked for a long time on the book, but never felt it was a job and, it’s a bizarre thing to say given the nature of the material, it was a labour of love.”

He’d like to work on another project as a writer, but it will be totally different. He’s clear this book is the final chapter on his past life.

  • Mini and Me, Ziji Publishing, £11.99