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But if I keep my core and back strong, the scoliosis doesn't really bother me.

When I was 12, I had an operation at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, and they corrected the curving in my spine. I've got two 12-inch rods and eight screws going up my back keeping me straight, and they fuse together with my spine, so now I can't really live without them.

Fitness is very important to me because it helps give me a routine when I travel. It gives me one hour of 'me' time and passes the time when I'm lonely. Living with scoliosis serves as a constant reminder to keep my core and back strong. If I get lazy, I feel it in my back first.

Without the care I received at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, I wouldn't look the way I do now; my back would be hunched over.

I also work out because I have scoliosis. I have to maintain certain strength in my core.

I became a clown when these docs came to the house in Berkeley and asked me to come cheer up kids. I'd just had my third spinal fusion and I was looking for something to take my mind off the pain I was in.

My spine healed incorrectly. There were long periods when I'd be perfectly all right, and then there were many other times when I wasn't, when my back would give out and throw me down to the floor amid waves of nauseating pain.

My life changed irrevocably four-and-a-half years ago when my spine failed and collapsed. I spent two years on the floor, in excruciating, debilitating and unrelenting pain. I can only describe the pain as being submerged into a vat of scalding acid that has an electric current running through it. And you can never get out, ever.

My fiancee's brother-in-law was recently paralysed in an accident and it really brought home the fact that thousands of young people live with spinal injuries. It's an issue I wish had more coverage.

I use the term 'spine' for people when I think that they may seem on the surface sort of reticent, shy, self-deprecating, shying away from the spotlight. Quiet.