JAMIE O’KEEFE
‘Personally, I would be a very happy man if I never get into another fight in my life. It really pisses me off when someone forces me along the path of violence but I am also not able to turn the other cheek and find forgiveness.
‘If somebody hurts a member of my family, I would not think twice about unleashing every nasty form of painful application that I know of. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a monster. If you spill my beer in a pub I would not consider that to be something worth fighting for.
‘If you road-rage me, I still do not consider it something worth fighting for. However, change the scenario and road-rage me while I have children in the car … then I would not hesitate to come tearing through your street door at 5.00am and break every bone in your body before you even wipe the sleep from your eyes. I’ve done that a few times when it was deserved …’
So writes Jamie O’Keefe in his book Thugs, Mugs and Violence – ‘Forget the movies, this is the real world’ it says on the cover.
Jamie is a man of words, the author of numerous books on self-protection. Apart from Thugs, he’s written Old School, New School – A Guide to Bouncers. Then there’s Dogs Don’t Know Kung-Fu, a female guide to self-protection and Pre-emptive Strikes for Winning Fights, the alternative to ‘grappling’.
What makes Jamie unusual is that he has published them all himself. And I’ve got to take my hat off to him. If there was an award for trying, then Jamie wins it hands down. He knows what he’s talking about, too. A former doorman through the late Seventies, the Eighties and Nineties, he’s living proof that not all doormen are meat-heads.
Yes, Jamie can lift a ton – and spell it. Power to you Jamie. Go, Jamie, – go!
BACKGROUND
These days, I work with young kids – help them to try and get back on track. When I was about eight years old, a close family member was sexually abused by my dad and I was told about it and you just imagine what it’s like dealing with all that information at that age, knowing your dad’s a nonce.
So I set fire to our house which was on an estate in Bethnal Green. I was confused. The house felt unclean and I didn’t know what to do with it because of my dad. I burned the house down. Then the police got involved and my dad got sent down for what he did. Me and my sister got sent to Scotland to live with our nan for safety’s sake. Then we came back and lived in Dagenham and started life again. Then my mum got involved with someone else and he became my stepfather. I’ve never seen my real father since the day I set fire to the house.
LIFE OF CRIME
None. The nearest I got to it was when the police paid me a visit when Frank Warren, the promoter, got shot, and I was training the guy who allegedly shot him, but who was rightly acquitted. Also, I was a legally licensed firearms holder. But they quickly found out my guns weren’t connected in any way. No, even working the door I’ve never been prosecuted for anything or been sent away.
IS PRISON A DETERRENT?
It depends on what sort of crime you were thinking of committing. I think most people who are committing robberies think they’re going to get away with it. For them, prison is no deterrent. I don’t think prison is a deterrent to people like paedophiles either, because they don’t think they’re doing wrong. I think if you’ve committed just one crime and you go to prison, you probably end up learning more inside than you would outside on the street. So, it doesn’t really seem to work, does it?
DO YOU BELIEVE IN CAPITAL PUNISHMENT?
I do believe in capital punishment, but it does worry me that there are sometimes miscarriages of justice and it all goes wrong. Even so, I think there should be capital punishment for sexually-related crimes, paedophiles and rape. For murder, it depends so much on the circumstances. I have a friend doing life for murder – he stabbed someone – but that really was in self-defence. This guy, he’s lost his life, the young guy lost his life, all in the space of a few seconds.
I think capital punishment should be there, each judged on the facts of the case, and it should be by lethal injection. I don’t believe in hanging. That’s gory. It makes us as bad as them to watch someone suffering.
WHAT HAS DETERRED YOU FROM A LIFE OF CRIME?
My stepfather who brought me up was into crime all the time. We used to have to go to visit him in prison. He did all sorts and if I’d followed him I would have gone down. But because he used to beat me up when I was a kid, I didn’t get that close to him. He also used to beat my mum up; he used to beat the shit out of her and because I was a skinny little kid I couldn’t do anything much about it. So I learned martial arts. I wanted to build myself up so I could kill him. That was the intention – I mean, I used to watch him smash her head against the mantelpiece. This was when I was about ten until I was fifteen.
So I started judo when I was about 12 and went on from there to karate, kick-boxing and kung fu. Then, as I became stronger, he became weaker and more frail and he knew I could have bashed him if I’d wanted to. At the same time, I had in a strange way become attached to him – when he died when I was in my thirties I cried my eyes out.
In his last year, he was in a wheelchair and he wasn’t able to hurt anybody, he was that ill. It was terrible what he did to my mum and they were divorced at the end, but without that upbringing I wouldn’t have learned all I did and I wouldn’t have gone into martial arts so, in a funny way, he helped me … he kept me from following him into crime.
The upbringing he gave me moulded me, it made me streetwise.
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN STABBED/SHOT?
I’ve been stabbed three times and cut. It was at a club in Canning Town – I’ve also been shot at by another doorman in my own garden with my own gun! We had a disagreement. He was into drugs and I’m not into drugs; he let me down one night on the door and I got badly beaten up. He came round my house to sort things out and guns and knives and things were out at the time. He raised one of my guns to my head in the garden and pulled the trigger. It was empty but … after that I got rid of my guns.
SCARIEST MOMENT?
It was when I was at a club. Four or five men got my head down on the pavement and caved my face in, and then threw me over the bridge where the railway lines are. At the time I was petrified. There wasn’t much I could do. Two held me down, one stamped on my face and the others were holding my legs.
SADDEST MOMENT?
When my mum died last September. Also my divorce. Losing the kids. That was sheer hell.
WHAT RATTLES YOUR CAGE?
Anyone harming weak people. I hate to see injustice being done.
HAVE YOU EVER REALLY LOVED ANYONE?
Yes, once. She knows who she is.
DESCRIBE A HARD BASTARD
A hard bastard is someone, male or female, who can go through a real drama and come out the other side, dust themselves down, and carry on. Pure physical strength alone doesn’t make you a hard bastard.
NAME A HARD BASTARD
In every street, in every town, there are hard bastards. People whose name you wouldn’t know – you just pass them in the street. Most of them are unknown.
WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FIVE YEARS?
Writing best-sellers – just like you!
ANY REGRETS?
There are some people I would have liked to have dealt with when my mum was alive rather than now she’s dead. Then she would have known that I dealt with them. That’s the only regret I have.
I don’t want to be seen as a tough guy. I don’t want to hurt anybody. My little girl was at school and the teacher asked the kids to say what their mums and dads did for a living. My little girl said, ‘My dad’s a bumper.’ So the teacher asked her what she meant. My daughter explained, ‘He throws people out of clubs and beats them up.’
‘Oh,’ said the teacher. ‘You mean a bouncer.’
But that’s how my little girl saw me and I regret that. I don’t want people to think of me like that. I want the kids I work with to think I’m a nice person and to respect me as someone who works hard. If I touch people’s lives, I want to touch them in a positive way.