BAZ ALLEN
Baz Allen is big, black and he constantly wears a black bowler hat and he reminds me of someone.
‘Do you like The Avengers?’ I ask.
‘No, it’s more of a James Bond thing,’ he grins. ‘It’s more about me being available anywhere, any time, wherever, whatever. It’s Baz for hire. It signifies that I’m a gentleman and a bowler is a British tradition.’
That’s it! I’ve got it! Not Steed – Odd-Job!
Baz is intelligent, charming, witty. He dressed like a City gent and he spoke like a City gent. From his reputation, I suppose I expected a bit of a thug, but he’s not like that. He had real manners, he was sophiscated – Odd-Job the Gentleman.
I’d noticed Baz at the endless gansters’ dos and book launches I’d been to. He cropped up everywhere. I didn’t know anything about him, but then why should I? Then, while researching this book, I was looking through piles of photographs – gansters, villains, hoodlums, tough guys of all shapes and sizes. There, time and time again, was this big black man in the bowler hat.
Who the hell was he? What does he do? Where does he come from? Who was this strange enigma in the bowler? I started to make a few calls.
‘Who’s the big black man in the smart suit?’
Answer: ‘Don’t know.’
‘The one with a big smile?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘The one with the bowler hat.’
‘Oh … you mean Baz Allen …’
There is no mistaking Baz Allen and it made the job of finding him easy. Brilliant for me and for this book. But maybe not so good if I was a hitman or, even worse, God forbid, the Old Bill.
BACKGROUND
I’ve been around violence all my life. My father was violent. I watched my father beat my mother up. I used to watch my father beat me up! The first time I remember being violent myself was when I was about six and there was this guy at school called Roy Jackson. He used to agitate me for some reason.
I was a bit over-sensitive and I remember the teacher separating me from him all the time. Then one day we were going home and I caught him on the fire escape. He grabbed me and I pushed him really hard down the stairs and he cracked the side of his head and I thought, Got you, you bastard.
That was the first time that I projected the violence I’d seen from my father on to someone else. It was a release for me. I was a frustrated little kid. When you’re that young you can’t really explain how you feel but you know you’re frustrated. You’re stressed out but you can’t communicate – you can barely speak. I was like a little tornado!
I went on to the junior school, then the seniors where I got suspended because I got into a fight with a teacher. He’d been picking on my sister – I’ve got two brothers and two sisters. I was suspended and the next day my parents took me to the school. I was told I had to apologise but I suppose I was being a bit arrogant about it because I refused. So they expelled me. And, of course, my dad gave me a hiding because I’d been expelled.
People say if you get bullied as a child you either supress your anger or it turns you the other way and I think my behaviour did stem from bullying when I was younger. I’m not making excuses – I’m just analysing it.
LIFE OF CRIME
I went to reform schools. The first thing I got nicked for was pinching milk bottles. All of us kids did it and then we’d go to a friend’s house and have a fry-up! I think I got a caution for that.
Then I got pulled over after threatening someone with a knife. I ended up before Highgate magistrates and got a year’s conditional discharge. After that I went on to street robberies with my mates, street robberies with tear gas. I got sentenced to three and three concurrent for that. I kept the clipping out of the local newspaper and it read: TERROR FIRM GOES DOWN. Terror firm – we were only about 17!
Then we used to do wage snatches, shops, steaming – we probably started off the steaming in London. We’d be ten or fifteen guys who’d go steaming into stores and we’d have six or seven tills. Then there was burglary, doing a house – I got a ‘short, sharp, shock’ for that. It started off as GBH then went down to ABH. I came out of that and then did youth custody. Then, after that, no more time. I suppose I got wise. I put myself at the sharp end but when I got involved I was very careful about everything I did.
IS PRISON A DETERRENT?
No.
I heard someone on the TV the other day saying we should give stiffer sentences, the three-strike rule, lock them up, make them work. But if you penalise someone, they rebel. They’re not going to cave in and say, ‘Oh, I’m never going to prison again.’ People come out of prison vicious. They come out and they’re nasty. They’re more inclined not to leave bodies hanging about. If they go to a house or they go to a bank and it looks like a witness is there – he goes.
You’ve got to understand the person as well as the crime. You can’t just throw huge sentences at them. You’ve got to show some kind of interest in them when they’re in prison. Don’t just bang them up or they’ll turn to drugs. Education helps – you’ve got to get people actively involved in something. When you’re banged up it’s bloody boring. Often people think that drugs is the only way they can get through their sentence. Then they still end up bullying or being bullied. They still end up raping or being raped. It just goes on. There’s no change. Prison, as it is, is really no deterrent.
DO YOU BELIEVE IN CAPITAL PUNISHMENT?
Fucking hell. That’s a bit coarse, isn’t it? What happens if you never did it? What happens if you’ve been fitted up? It’s an injustice and you’re gone.
But child molesters … How do you deal with them? You can’t keep locking them up then letting them out, then locking them up. They’re filth, these people. I’ve got two sons, one of six and one of fourteen and, to be honest, if anything happened to them, people would go. You’ve got to electrocute these people. Just spark them up with a proper lorry battery, know what I mean?
WHAT WOULD HAVE DETERRED YOU FROM A LIFE OF CRIME?
I didn’t get much attention shown to me when I was at school because, maybe, I was a bit of a disturbed child. But I was a bright lad, I loved poetry, literature, language.
I just didn’t get the attention or encouragement. The teachers didn’t have that way of dealing with people. I suppose if we’d had money it would have made a difference.
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN STABBED/SHOT?
I’ve been shot at. We were doing a recovery somewhere in Epping. Basically, we’d given the guy 48 hours to do something, to come up with the money and he hadn’t. We got the sob story, took back what we could, there was 15 grand in the house and we took that and we took his motor.
We were the other side of the A11, not going fast, when his friends appeared and suddenly the back window’s gone out. They were obviously drugged up and they started trying to drive us off the road. So, yeah, I’ve been shot at and it’s not as glamorous as you might see it on Lock, Stock and all that.
SCARIEST MOMENT?
It’s difficult for me to explain without giving too much away, but I’ll try … I think that was my scariest moment. And I’ve been in a situation where someone had … we had … to get someone back. They’d gone off with something. I turned up at the house where they were and this person was hell-bent on saying they didn’t have what they had. They kept saying, ‘I haven’t got it, I haven’t got it.’
They got a bit of a hiding and they were still saying they hadn’t got it. It was getting to a point where a decision was going to be made and the people who were doing it weren’t too solid on what they were doing, if you get my drift.
I wasn’t sure whether they were going to end up doing something which would mean everyone getting life. That was a bit of a scary moment then.
SADDEST MOMENT?
My half-brother committed suicide. It was all because of a loving relationship. The girl he had been involved with didn’t want him back – he was only in his teens. I’ve also got a top mate who’s doing 20 and his mother was like a second mother to me. I watched her die slowly of cancer. She had breast cancer and they cut it out but it came back. Those are my saddest moments.
WHAT RATTLES YOUR CAGE?
Disrespect. I’ve been done for road-rage, all kinds of shit and for what? For principles. I’m not rude, I’m polite but disrespect can rev you up.
Racial harassment doesn’t really rattle my cage because, to be honest with you, I haven’t received that much. Not since I was younger. But I remember when I was just 13 being pulled by the Special Patrol Group. Me and my friend saw a car that had been dumped and it still had the speakers in so we took them. We knew a guy who’d buy them off us.
So we were walking along in our Adidas jackets – we’d both walked into C&A, put them on and walked out again which was the best way to do things in those days – and we were each carrying a speaker.
We bumped into the police. I threw my speaker over the fence but my friend Mike wanted to keep his. A police van pulled up and they put us in the van and I watched as one of the coppers put his gloves on. Suddenly, without warning, he grabbed me and he started to strangle me, I swear to God. He was strangling me and saying, ‘Where’s the fucking speaker, you black bastard?’
Then they picked up my mate with a truncheon between his legs. They ruptured him, really ruptured him. It was bad. It’s frightening when you’ve got a big bastard like that with big gloves on sitting over you and strangling you and saying, ‘Where’s the speaker, you black bastard?’ I was only 13.
It’s violence that’s made me violent.
HAVE YOU EVER REALLY LOVED ANYONE?
Yeah. The mother of my second son, I love her to bits. I absolutely love her to bits. She’s so beautiful. When I used to work the doors years ago and I’d come in late, she’d be in bed. She’d sit on the end of the bed and rub my feet for me. She’d actually rub my feet while I was asleep. She’d be knackered but she’d still massage my feet. She was lovely. She and I would have our differences and I was young, a bit insecure. I screwed around with another girl and, well, there you go.
She went. Same old, same old …
WHAT FRIGHTENS YOU?
I suppose what frightens me is what revs me up. Like if a man came on to me in a funny way and I didn’t know him and I was in a bar. It might intimidate me for a moment – then I retaliate with anger. I suppose it all stems from when I was younger with my father. If I’m in a difficult situation, I will make up my mind. I’m not frightened. If I have to do something, I’ll go over there and do it and it’s done – done my way. I don’t ever want to be doing life but I understand how easy it is to turn on someone. That’s frightening.
DESCRIBE A HARD BASTARD
It’s not your doorman standing there staunch with a shaven head saying, ‘I’ll have yer.’ That’s not a problem. I’d say a hard bastard is a man who is hard from inside, he’s hardened through the years. He has chosen his life and he will stand by his convictions, he will go all the way. It’s not there in the exterior of a man. It’s inside. It’s will he go the extra mile?
NAME A HARD BASTARD
Joey Pyle. He’s staunch. He’s a lovely geezer but when Joe says it’s time, it’s time. All the people know that. He’s got that respect from people.
WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FIVE YEARS?
Fuck, I hope it isn’t in prison. I would like to be a millionaire, I would like to be a celebrity, I’d like to be happily married! I like the finer things in life … I don’t get kicks out of doing the wrong thing but, like I said … this is a way of life and you choose it as a way of life. If I don’t work I don’t get paid. I have to be professional and you learn to deal with people in a professional way because that’s the way life is. I’m a people person and I get fulfilled in life by what I’m doing now.
ANY REGRETS?
Yeah, fucking that bird when I should have been with my wife. And I’d done a lot of dough for her – credit cards, champagne, hotels, diamond rings, everything. She went off with one of my mates but I could hardly complain because I nicked her from one of my mates! And, of course, I should have been with my wife. What goes around, comes around.
Apart from that no regrets, not really. I wrote this poem:
A thief is not a man of shame,
Merely one who advocates from blame.
He seeks the sordid life of crime
His worst nightmare is serving time
He seeks a sort of regal fame
To justify his ill-gotten gain
Heed these words I say so plain
A thief is not a man of shame.