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Would you ever know the influence you’ve had on another? Do you think you have to be a social media influencer with a reach of millions, or a pop star with adoring fans, or a world leader recognised all over? Perhaps that’s true for some, but often those that influence us most happen to be those we interact with personally, however fleetingly.

One of the most influential people in my youth was not a teacher or youth worker, but a complete stranger who momentarily wandered past me one afternoon while I was waiting with my two brothers to be collected from school. By then, all three of us siblings were attending an independent school in the heart of our town, five miles from our home in the suburbs.

Although at its founding the school had been established to provide a high quality education to young men of all social backgrounds, often supported by bursaries and scholarships, by the 1980s it had a reputation for mostly catering to wealthy professionals with more money than sense. Whether that was a true characterisation, I have no idea, for I knew little about the circumstances of my peers.

In any case, my family was on the ascendency. My paternal grandfather had been a working class lad, leaving school at fourteen, who through a combination of determination, hard work and fortuity became a solicitor and company director, travelling the world to negotiate trade deals. He then sent my father and uncle to our school, at the time a direct-grant school funded by the local authority, who in turn trained as solicitors themselves.

By the time I started in the junior school, my parents had moved into a large house in one of the most affluent neighbourhoods of the city. Indeed, our house was located across the road of the wealthiest entrepreneur in Yorkshire, whom we never saw or met because he lived beyond a grand gated entrance, set away behind tall brick walls. He preferred the company of celebrities, who would fly in by helicopter for family birthdays.

Was ours a life of privilege? Yes, it was. Whatever the hardship experienced by our grandparents, we knew none of that. Ours was a life of ease, wanting for nothing. We lived in a five-bedroom property — four siblings, each with a room of our own — surrounded by gardens at the front, side and rear that in many parts of our town would accommodate a dozen houses. Ours was a world of opportunity.

So it is that I vividly remember that evening after school, waiting for my mother to collect us. On days we weren’t taking the bus home, we would wait on the avenue that ran parallel to our school grounds, hanging about just in front of the garden wall of an agreed-upon Victorian terrace. As we stood there, a young father with his son in tow scowled at us. “Look at these rich kids with their fancy Head bags,” he muttered as he passed.

I felt that stinging criticism, just as it was intended. Yes, for there we were in our smart blazers, brand new sports bags by our feet, hanging around outside a grotty terraced house with rotting window frames, its yellow brickwork blackened by pollution. There we were in Britain’s poorest city — blighted by a decade of industrial decline, unemployment at an all time high — standing out like a sore thumb.

In that moment, I concluded that there was something extremely unfair about our standard of living. Within twenty minutes of being collected, we would be back in our leafy suburbs, while huge numbers of children in the city lived in sub-standard housing and abject poverty, struggling to make ends meet. I suppose that’s why I never wore our privilege with pride. In truth, it embarrassed me acutely.

Whereas nowadays every self-respecting young man, as soon as he can drive, yearns to get his hands on a BMW M3 coupé, I groaned the day my father came home in his first Beemer. Momentarily we were excited when he told us it had a built-in computer, but our enthusiasm waned when we realised it wasn’t Kitt from Knight Rider. By the time he had upgraded to a dark blue 7 Series BMW a couple of years later — this one had cream leather seats, a multi-CD interchanger and a built-in car phone — I feared being seen in the thing.

What can I credit for stirring that sentiment within? No doubt my influences were many. Being raised on the gospels and parables which seem not to much favour the rich very much? Experiences at school, struggling with undiagnosed developmental delays, believing myself destined to failure? My innate personality, lacking ambition and drive? Perhaps all of those. But what more than any? Yes, I would credit that stranger, with his cutting denunciation that evening after school, for providing me with a sense of perspective.

I doubt that young man will ever know the influence he had on my life. Yes, that stranger unknown, muttering to his son. In my life, there have been many like this, who will never know or understand the profound impact they have had on me. May the One reward each and every one of them, and grant them the best of this life and the next.