Plot

At the age of 15, Nick Charles was set to be Britain's answer to Frank Sinatra. Backed by an American music mogul, he was poised to win the Eurovision Song Contest that would launch his career but a drinking binge caused him to wake up on a beach, still in his tuxedo and his chances blown. Instead of becoming an iconic performer, Nick embarked on a path of alcohol abuse that would see him slide into living on the streets, as an alcoholic vagrant in 60s & 70s London. At a low ebb, Nick lay down on railway tracks, waiting and wanting to die - on the only day of the year that trains had been canceled. Between busking for booze and huddling 'round the Spitalfields fire with his alcoholic friends, Nick's life was punctuated by heart wrenching, but often humorous and uplifting stories. At his worst point, paralyzed by self-made mentholated spirits, savagely beaten with his wounds gnawed by rats, Nick was presumed dead and zipped into a body bag. So began his recovery. Within four years of his last alcoholic drink, Nick was a millionaire. Aided, barn-raising style, by London's vagrant community, he founded the world-famous Chaucer clinic in the dilapidated asylum wing of Ealing hospital. Several years of sobriety and unselfish devotion later, an alcoholic dosser was the first person to be honored by Her Majesty the Queen for "services to people with alcohol problems." Nick the drunken vagrant became Nick Charles MBE, and having poured his self-made millions into his treatment clinics, Nick's alcohol recovery program has been hailed by one senior NHS professional as "the alcohol field's equivalent to the invention of penicillin." Now the national standard, in 2015 it will be rolled out to every GP surgery in the UK. From performer to healer, Nick and his team have personally rehabilitated over 30,000 alcoholics and won five major NHS awards, as the first fully comprehensive recovery program created since Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935. Underpinned by a vibrant soundtrack spanning three decades, 'Propensity' is a poignant emotional roller coaster.—James Allen