Of all the major national and international sociopolitical issues of my childhood years (the NHS aside), the most significant was not the all-encompassing fear of the mushroom cloud – there was nothing that I, as a citizen, could do about that.
No: the thing that really fucked up my life was the successful passage through Parliament of the 1960 Betting and Gaming Act.
During my convalescence in Rhyl, I’d precociously acquired the habits of the independent young man about town. Back in the old neighbourhood, the need for dosh was more pressing than ever. After all, what cunt doesn’t want money? I had to get a part-time job.
Paper round? Forget about it. I had once deputised for a kid with a paper round for a week while he was away on holiday. Never again! Who knew paper could weigh like that? I tried doing it on a bike, but the tonnage of the newspaper sack rendered balance impossible.
That was the hardest job I’ve ever had in my life, I swear to God: up at six, and even after you’ve got rid of all the morning papers it’s still not over. No, after school it’s back to the newsagent for the evening editions. Sisyphean or what?
I was always on at my dad about making money. I loved the records of the American singer and bandleader Louis Prima, everybody did. They were a regular feature on the radio, songs like ‘Embraceable You’, a duet with his wife, the lovely Keely Smith; ‘Angelina’; ‘Just a Gigolo’; and ‘Luigi’, a fine example of the Americanisation process, the story of a Sicilian-American bookmaker revered in his neighbourhood, dressed like a dude with amplified cufflinks and a bejewelled pinkie ring.
Prima’s song evoked such a vivid picture of a charmed life that the cautionary denouement went unheeded in my case. My father often had a financial interest in the outcome of various equestrian events, and with this in mind I mooted the possibility of a position of trust in the field of turf accountancy. What with his dry sense of humour and his social finesse, my dad knew people all over town, many of whom were unreformed spivs, bookies, club owners, chancers, and the like. He put the feelers out, and Bob’s your uncle, soon after my eleventh birthday I landed my first proper job in the then-illegal world of off-track betting. So long, suckers. Not for me the daily back-breaking toil of the paperboy: I was a bookie’s runner.
My job description was pretty straightforward: to make the rounds of several all-male environments around our block – the billiard hall, a couple of pubs, three barber shops, the guys at Green and Zonis, a nearby Ford dealership – and collect the illegal bets, mainly on the horses but sometimes the dogs, and the odd fight. I simply did the pick up. The punters would have the money ready in envelopes with fake names on them, which I then delivered in a larger brown envelope to the local backdoor bookie’s.
The HQ was up a back alley, running parallel to the main road, which was accessible from our fire escape. A sheet-metal roof had been put over the whole of the backyard so it was now a big shed – that was the bookie’s. Cut into its door at eye level was one of those speakeasy sliding hatches – you know, ‘Knock twice and ask for Jacky.’ Somebody would pull open the hatch and I handed over the envelope. At 5pm-ish I went back and collected any winnings in the same pseudonymously marked brown envelopes.
Twelve-year-old kids had the monopoly on this work due to their immunity to any serious prosecution. Worst-case scenario, if I ever got pulled by the law, I was advised to wax moronic and claim to be ignorant of the contents of this brown envelope, and indeed of the purpose of my errand. It was an unnecessary precaution though, because owing to the betting habits of the local constabulary themselves this area of the law was not rigidly policed.
On each corner stood a number of other hirelings whose sole purpose was to dog out for any police activity, but as I’ve said, this never happened. It was in everybody’s interest to keep the operation going; it generated some disposable income in an otherwise poor area. We’re not talking payday loans and death threats here: if you didn’t have the Cadbury’s* you couldn’t place the bet. There were no markers or anything like that. No IOUs, or any unpleasantness where some no-neck had to be sent round to collect. Not that I knew of, anyway. It may have gone on, but that part of the operation was kept well away from any kids.
It was a good earner. I got a bit for delivering the envelopes in the first place, but law of averages, a few of the punters got lucky, and when somebody got lucky it was considered good form to duke the runner. So I was on perhaps £2 a week, the same wage as an apprentice mechanic or similar. In the words of Huey ‘Kingfish’ Long, the former Governor of Louisiana, ‘Every Bum’s a King’. Well, that was certainly true in my case. I was pissing pure gold, and still at school already! Stash those Paynes Poppets where the sun don’t shine, buster! Every trip to the movies now involved a half-pound box of Black Magic. I was forever festooning my mother with costume jewellery she’d have to pretend to like. I hadn’t started smoking yet, but if I had, it would have been Cohibas all the way.
Some of the people I was dealing with were degenerate gamblers from the insalubrious part of Higher Broughton and this early glimpse of their chaotic lives was educational. I was a wise-guy by the time I was twelve.
Where I come from, a victimless crime is punching a guy in the dark. But here’s another example. There was a household-goods pitch every Saturday afternoon at Cross Lane market run by Barmy Mick, the insinuation being that to sell his stuff at such knock-down rates he must have been certifiably insane. A punter on my round had acquired a gross crate of hundred-watt Osram pearl light bulbs at cost from Barmy Mick, who was a mate of his apparently, and with this initial outlay, he went into business.
He went round knocking on doors and offering to change every light bulb in the house for a pound. It was a really good deal: even if you didn’t need any bulbs changed, sooner or later one was going to blow, so it seemed well worth a quid for a complete household illumination update.
So, he goes round the houses and starts changing people’s light bulbs, but here’s the genius of it: he puts the old bulbs he’s taken out into the cardboard sleeves from his stock of new bulbs, sticks them back in his crate, and off he goes to the next house, where he plays the same trick. Genius! Everybody was happy, even if it was a fool’s paradise.
He wasn’t even really doing anything illegal, because all he was saying was, ‘I’ll change every light bulb in your house for a pound.’ He’s not claiming that these bulbs are new, so, technically, no one could nobble him under the Trade Descriptions Act.
What a scam, or possibly scamola. The neat circularity of it: all the principles of capitalism in place. Easy money and it was an ongoing fucking gig. I felt privileged that he let me in on it; he obviously thought, ‘Here’s a lad who can keep his trap shut.’
He had it made, or so you’d think. Who would kiss that off? But then, because of some urgent financial pressure, he had to sell his lucrative recycled light-bulb business to some other idiot who was never heard of again. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you can’t educate a mug.
My personal Wall Street Crash came in January 1961, when thanks to the implementation of the previous year’s Betting and Gaming Act and the consequent immediate appearance of legitimate bookies on every high street, I was made redundant.
The bookie job was irreplaceable, and I didn’t have any steady income for the next couple of years. The only comparable earner that I knew of was caddying for local golfers, but that was hard graft, involving a lot of walking about in the outdoors, and would have written off the entire weekend. I went with a mate of mine, Razzer, once. His granny lived in Wythenshawe, and on a Saturday afternoon, he would put in a few hours at the nearby Baguley Golf Club on the outskirts of Cheshire.
That was the first time I ever went to Wythenshawe. Although it was a showcase post-war overspill estate, it was considered to be a bit on the rough side. Maybe I was easily impressed, but to me it looked like Beverly fucking Hills. Mature trees, no factories, acres of pastureland, meadows even. Front and back gardens with flowers and shrubbery! And a fucking golf course. And this is the place I’m supposed to believe is a deprived-fucking-juvenile-delinquent-ridden hellhole?
There’s no pleasing some people.