Early one morning in 1995, Jackie Burke lay dying on the floor of his elderly mother's modest bungalow, his body pumped full of a lifetimes' worth of drugs and alcohol.
An ex-prisoner, Jackie had defied help given by psychotherapists, social workers and religious. His £1,000-a-week drug-taking lifestyle had dried up in London, and now he was moments away from death, and welcomed it. He had turned his back on God, and on himself.
Lying there in the only refuge still opened to him, he had an epiphany. He realised that, if he died, he would never see the one person who had always remained loyal to him: his mother. So he reached out.
