Day attended the Liverpool Institute, the same high school attended by Paul McCartney and George Harrison. His family's neighbourhood could be tough. Day has a permanent scar on a finger from a knife fight when he was 10 years old. His father, a pharmacist, was killed in 1981 by hooligans looking for drugs during riots in the neighbourhood. The possible contribution of misdiagnosis by British doctors for the death of Day's mother in 1986 is cited as his dissatisfaction with the British health system.