GAFFER
‘Fuck off! Fuck off! Fuck off!’
The manager in TGI Friday’s was stunned and a look of fear crossed his face. Then Gaffer said, ‘We’re only going to be here for a short while, so fuck off!’
Needless to say, the manager fucked off. People tend to when Gaffer tells them how it is.
Normally in a man’s company I wouldn’t let people speak like that, but Gaffer is different. Gaffer is Gaffer. And the more I got to know him the more I understood that the manager’s approach was making him feel embarrassed and uncomfortable so he wanted out of that situation as fast as possible.
Gaffer’s been in prison a lot. He did 14 years last time and swears he was set up by some ‘Northern shit’ and that’s made him bitter – especially about Northerners. He says he helped and trusted someone he shouldn’t have. Now he says, ‘I never trust a Northerner.’ He believes that Londoners who go to the North should respect their way of doing things – and very much vice versa.
‘I said to these guys from Manchester, Kate, I said, “If I went to Manchester from London could I be the guv’nor?” They said, “No fucking way.” So I said, “Well, it’s the same here. If you’re in London from the North, you should respect what Londoners are.”’
Gaffer can talk the hind leg off a donkey and has an opinion on just about everything. He’s done the lot. He’s even been in politics. Believe it or not, he was a councillor and he got to meet Margaret Thatcher. God only knows what Maggie made of him. He is a wise-cracking gangster, if there is such an animal. But don’t let his cheap gags fool you – he can be very menacing.
He’s very alert when you meet him. He can sense trouble in the air before any other man. He says that when he’s out, he likes to make sure he sits in a corner, he keeps his head down and he avoids unnecessary eye contact.
I visited his home and he has decorated his kitchen with crushed Coke cans and Kellogg’s cornflake packets. In his garden, there are ‘gravestones’ engraved with the names of people he’d like to see gone … I think there’s a lot of anger in Gaffer and he is ever so slightly off his fucking rocker.
‘PS, Gaffer. Why are you called Gaffer?’
‘My ex-father-in-law bought a business for me to run, a hairdresser’s called Gaffer’s. The name stuck.’
Oh.
BACKGROUND
I was born in Chelsea. My mother was Irish, my father was French. I was put in a home from the age of six months, a place called Tudor Lodge in Putney. And that’s why I hate the Irish and the French because when I was born she fucked off back to Ireland and he fucked off back to France. I haven’t got brothers and sisters as such, but because I lived with families like the Richardsons, and their family became my family.
I was in the home until I was seven, then I was fostered out to a family called Rollinson. I was always fighting as a kid. The reason the Rollinsons fostered me was because they had a son who was being bullied at school and my foster mum, Florence, wanted someone to look after him. My foster father was at the home and he saw me having a fight with five people because they were bullying someone and he said, ‘I’ll have him. If he can fight like that he can look after my son.’
LIFE OF CRIME
I’ve been to prison lots of times, I can’t count how many times. I’ve only been in prison for violence, although my last one was for possession of drugs. I was disgusted with myself and that is the thing that turned my life around because I’m not a drug-dealer.
IS PRISON A DETERRENT?
No – it’s a college. You get a petty crime-type person and he goes inside and he learns better things. So prison to me is a college. I’ve got a fucking degree!
DO YOU BELIEVE IN CAPITAL PUNISHMENT?
Yes – for paedophiles and for murder, by which I mean cases when people go around to other people’s houses with the intent to murder. Not accidental murder. That don’t count. Well, of course it does, but sometimes accidents happen.
The majority of crime doesn’t deserve the death penalty but child abuse is different. For that, yes, capital punishment. Get rid of the vermin – why keep them banged up? It’s just going to cost the taxpayer more money. Kill the scum in the worst, the most painful way possible. Make them suffer the way they made the poor children suffer.
WHAT WOULD HAVE DETERRED YOU FROM A LIFE OF CRIME?
I never thought I was living a life of crime. I was born fighting and being nicked is part and parcel.
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN STABBED/SHOT?
I’ve been stabbed four times and I’ve had a shot taken at me. Another time, someone went to shoot me and the gun jammed. When that fella was going to shoot me, for one second I did shit myself but when the gun didn’t go off I looked at him and I said, ‘Try again and see if it goes off.’ But he didn’t. So I winked at him and said, ‘My turn.’
(Shortly before this book went to print, a professional hit was put out on Gaffer. Two men on motorbikes pulled up alongside him and tried to shoot him – they failed.)
SCARIEST MOMENT?
Being sent back to the children’s home.
SADDEST MOMENT?
I’ve had a lot of sad moments, so I won’t say the saddest. I’ve had too many sad moments. I’ll tell you that when I give someone my loyalty, I give them my loyalty, and there’s only one person who can break that and that’s them. And when they do, that’s a sad moment because they’ve now got an enemy.
WHAT RATTLES YOUR CAGE?
Disrespectful people, people who see you’ve got something and they want it but it’s yours and they should respect that and leave well alone.
HAVE YOU EVER REALLY LOVED ANYONE?
My wife Wendy and my current girlfriend, Donna. I love her deeply, deeply.
WHAT FRIGHTENS YOU?
Losing Donna … Apart from that, nothing. Although I get frightened sometimes when my girlfriend’s out and I’m not with her. If anything happened to her, I know I would kill the man and then I’d go away. I know I’d kill them. That frightens me sometimes.
DESCRIBE A HARD BASTARD
I don’t think I’m a hard bastard. But to me a hard bastard is a man who knows he’s got the strength but he only uses force, violence, as a last resort, when he has to. In my mind, nobody is a hard bastard, they’ve always got a weak point.
People often say, ‘Oh, so-and-so, he’s a hard bastard,’ but my first reaction is to say, ‘How do you know? Do you know this for yourself first-hand?’
I remember when I was at the Ministry of Sound once and I pulled this geezer because of what he’d done to a friend of mine. Everyone said he was a hard bastard but he wasn’t. I’ve got a megaphone in my car and I got the megaphone and shouted through it so everyone could hear, ‘You’re nothing but a worthless piece of shit! Come out, you wanker!’ He was standing there by his car and did nothing.
I don’t think of being a hard bastard, but when a job has got to be finished, it’s got to be finished.
Let me explain. This man was shot three times and I met the man who shot him and he said to me, ‘It was just a warning.’
No, he was wrong. I said to him, ‘In my eyes, one up into the air and a gun to the head is a warning – right? But you shoot a man three times and he’s still alive in a year’s time? That has now become an old score which has to be settled.’
In my eyes, if you shoot someone, you’ve got to shoot to kill because, if you don’t, that person will be looking in the mirror every day, looking at their scar and they’ll be thinking, This isn’t right. They’ll want revenge and, if you’ve done the shooting, there will be a time when you are vulnerable. There will be a time when you’re off guard. But that person will be on guard, he’s still got you in mind, he’ll always have you in mind. You’ll always have to watch your back, all day, all night, every day, every night.
NAME A HARD BASTARD
Dennis Richardson – known as one-hit Dennis.
HOW DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FIVE YEARS?
The one thing I’ve always maintained is that I won’t die of natural causes.
ANY REGRETS?
No, I don’t think so. The way I see it is: what will be will be. I have a lot of regrets but I can’t change what’s happened.