King was born and brought up in Cowes, Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England. His father, Raymond King, was a dairyman, and the family lived in a tithed dairy house. King recalled in a 2006 newspaper interview,[1] "it was post-war, with one brass tap, an outside toilet and a zinc bath in front of the fire". He later lived on the Camp Hill and Albany prison estates on the outskirts of Newport. He attended Kitbridge Middle School where he met his childhood sweetheart Tracey Wilson, later writing a song about her. He then went to Cowes High School.