BELIEVE IT OR not, give or take a pound or two, my weight has always matched my age (or at least it did until I hit twenty-nine stone). So at the time of writing I’m nearly thirty years old and a nice healthy thirty-odd stone. At six foot three inches I’m quite a noticeable presence in a confined space, shall we say.
When they meet me, a lot of people say that they can’t imagine me being anything other than big, so these first few chapters are going to be a bit of a revelation to some. It’s the same when Mum and Dad get the photograph albums out. Whoever’s unlucky enough to be shown them will see one of me as a kid messing about on a beach or something, and then say, ‘Naaaa. That can’t be Eddie!’ It gets on my tits sometimes.
Anyway, you can check this with my mum if you like but at birth, I, Edward Stephen Hall, weighed eight pounds and fourteen ounces exactly, having been born at North Staffs Maternity Hospital to Stephen and Helen Hall at 4.59 p.m. on Friday 15 January 1988. According to the internet I share a birthday with Martin Luther King Jr and the rapper Pitbull, which actually makes perfect sense: a man who inspired millions and a success story who’s named after an angry and potentially dangerous dog. I’ll take that. What is perhaps more relevant is the fact that I seem to be the only sportsperson of note to have been born on 15 January 1988. As somebody who doesn’t like sharing things – especially titles, world records and podiums – that suits me down to the ground.
According to Mum and Dad I was a very happy and easygoing baby who loved being cuddled; particularly by Mum and her own mum, Nan. Nan was an amazing woman and when I started getting into trouble she was one of the only people who could get through to me. More about that later.
I have two older brothers, Alex and James, and while Mum and Nan wanted to hug me, those two wanted to kill me. I don’t think there was any jealousy involved, like there is in some cases. They just saw a fat little shit move into the house and decided they were going to kick his ass.
One of the earliest examples of this reprehensible behaviour happened when I was just a few weeks old. My brother, James, who today plays professional rugby for Bristol yet still weighs a mere eighteen stone, decided to lift me up by my neck and then drop me on the floor, and because he was only about eighteen months old he obviously got away with it. I’d like to see him try that now. In fact, I’d like to see anybody try it. My eldest brother, Alex, who was three when I was born and is now about a foot shorter (ha ha), probably did the same and worse when nobody else was looking and so the fact that I made it to nine months is a miracle.
The reason I mention this particular age is that it heralded my first visit back to a hospital, yet strangely enough it had nothing to do with either of my homicidal siblings. The problem started when I suddenly began sleeping about twenty-three hours a day. Although Mum and Dad must have been relieved by this, it obviously wasn’t normal and so I was taken into hospital to have a few tests. The diagnosis was severe anaemia and once they managed to get a bit more iron into me I was fine. Children and babies are especially susceptible to anaemia during periods of rapid growth and so looking back I’m surprised I didn’t get it every week.
By the time I was about a year old I could punch, bite and elbow and by eighteen months I’d started kicking, stamping and headbutting. This might sound a little bit hardcore to some people but it was simply a matter of survival. A quick argument would take place first – an accusation of some kind probably, or just an insult – and then, once we’d got all that preliminary crap out of the way, it would be straight down to business – BOOM! It was toddler warfare. We’d start off in the living room, punching, kicking and throwing each other off the furniture and then once we’d become tired of using our limbs to inflict injury we’d go looking for weapons. Things like remote controls were always the first to hand but the damage you could do with one of those was limited so in an act of desperation we’d try picking up chairs or even the bloody coffee table. There was a lot of shouting, a shit load of swearing and lots of cries of ‘AAAAAAAAAAARGH!’
Once we’d exhausted the living room a natural break would occur when we’d catch our breath and try to think of the location of some suitable – and preferably lethal – weaponry. One by one we’d go darting off to wherever the arms were concealed and then once we were all tooled up and back in the room it would start again.
‘Right you bastard! Now I’m going to kill you. AAAAAAAARGH!’
I remember our dad used to have a replica samurai sword and whoever managed to get their hands on that first obviously had the upper hand. Or the upper cut, if you like. We used to chase each other around the house with this and the only thing that prevented us from taking a swipe and probably killing each other was the fact that it weighed quite a bit so we couldn’t swing it properly. Eventually Dad realised what was happening and locked the thing away and it’s a damn good job he did as I shudder to think what might have happened otherwise.
Our mum must have had the patience of a stadium full of saints when dealing with us. As we became older and stronger it obviously became more and more difficult to split us up and so in the end she would just put each of us in one of the bedrooms hoping that we’d play quietly. She should have done that from the off, really. Either that or just sedated us.
Unfortunately, this boisterous behaviour wasn’t just confined to home and even a quick trip to the shops would often turn nasty. I know that all brothers fight a bit but that’s all we ever did. There was never any downtime. Or, if there was, it was simply the calm before the next storm. Mum and Dad recently reminded me of a day trip to Blackpool we tried to make in the early 1990s. Notice I say ‘tried’ to make. Apparently, we had an Austin Montego at the time which means sod all to me but one of the reasons Mum and Dad had bought the car was because it had two rear-facing seats in the boot so that me, Alex and James wouldn’t have to sit next to each other. Nice try! It was going to take more than a couple of rear-facing seats to stop the war. Even though we weren’t able to hit each other we could still have a go verbally. And we did. Threats of what we’d do to each other once we reached Blackpool began being issued before we’d even left our road and by the time we reached junction 19 of the M6, which was about twenty-five miles from home, Dad had had enough.
‘THAT’S IT! WE’RE GOING HOME.’
At first I think we thought it was just an idle threat and so we carried on. It wasn’t, though. Dad was serious, and who can blame him? Sure enough, he came off at junction 19, went straight around the roundabout, and started heading back to Stoke.
‘I’m not putting up with that for another eighty miles,’ he said. ‘No way!’
In an act of defiance, Alex, James and I bawled our fucking eyes out all the way home and made far more noise than we had done arguing. Poor Dad was at the end of his tether by the time we got back and he had to lock himself in a room for a few hours. I’m surprised he didn’t stay there longer. So much for a family day out.
Despite the aggro, we have always been a very close family – very pro each other – and, although I didn’t know it at the time, the fighting would pay dividends once I was let loose onto the streets. Since the pottery industry disappeared, Stoke-on-Trent has become quite a deprived area. In order to survive, you have two choices: hide away and keep yourself to yourself or become street-wise and be prepared to put the boot in when necessary. I obviously chose the latter and if I hadn’t had that apprenticeship in extreme violence and savagery I’d have found it very, very hard indeed.
Something that really exemplifies my choice – not to mention my mindset, back then – is the content of my very earliest memory. I must have been about three and a half years old and still at nursery and I remember this kid came up to me and started pissing me off. I can’t remember what he did exactly but I remember telling him to fuck off. Even then I was using some pretty industrial language but that was the norm, not just in our house, but in the entire city. The kid went off to get a teacher and after I’d been duly reprimanded the little bastard slyly said something else to me and so I headbutted him and gave him a black eye. Headbutting has always been a speciality of mine and even at three and a half years old I was up there with the best of them. I may not have been very tall at the time but put me on a box and I could have floored an adult. Fortunately, that’s not my only memory from childhood, but it’s definitely my earliest. A psychologist would probably have a field day with something like that.
I think what also helped in preparing me for life on the streets was the fact that at home there was never any hiding place. So regardless of what age you were you had no choice other than to stand there and defend yourself. It didn’t matter what the other one had in his hands (bar a samurai sword!); you had to put your head down and have a go, and that’s exactly what we did. Once again it was fight or flight and the latter was never, ever an option – nor would you ever want to take it. Even when Mum put us in different rooms we’d still walk around like miniature caged beasts, shouting and banging on the doors. There was no retreat, no surrender, and very little by way of defence. It was as if we’d all been stuck in attack mode.
One of the things that encouraged us to behave like that, I think, was the fact that we never established a dialogue between us. So instead of saying ‘Can I play with that toy?’ or ‘Are you going to eat that fish finger?’, we simply took the toy or ate the fish finger. The victim would obviously respond to this in kind and there you would have it – constant fucking chaos! Mum and Dad used to intervene occasionally, but even then, we’d be back scrapping within a few seconds. Mum, who is one of the world’s greatest human beings, was always the peacemaker – encouraging us to shake hands and be nice to each other – and Dad was the loud authoritarian character who would just explode when he’d had enough. He’s a big lad, my old man – about six foot two inches – and once he’d reached his cut-off point you knew about it. In that respect, I’m exactly the same as him, as when I do lose my rag I go nuclear, but because I’ve also inherited some of Mum’s patience I can generally prevent myself from getting into trouble. Well, sometimes.
The other thing, apart from aggro – and a bit of love, it has to be said – that was prevalent in the Hall household was competition, and that too has served me well over the years, although more so since I took up sport.
It was there from day one really and, again, it was all a result of good old-fashioned sibling rivalry. According to Mum, I’d watch James and Alex walking when I was baby and as soon as I was able to copy them, I was off. What eventually changed was the fact that, instead of simply wanting to emulate my brothers, I wanted to beat the bastards, and so that obviously added to the tension within the household. If they ran to the end of the garden in ten seconds, I’d want to do it in nine, and if they jumped off a wall, I’d have to find a higher one. It became a bit of an obsession with me.
What also made things interesting was our height. I’m taller than James and Alex (Alex is about five foot eleven inches, James is six foot and I’m six foot three inches) and from the age of about five until I got to high school we were all roughly the same height. This meant that nobody was at a disadvantage. It also presented us with another opportunity to piss each other off and for a time that became the big motivator. Fortunately, we started to appreciate how futile that was and so we began to concentrate on our own ambitions. The rivalry was always bubbling somewhere underneath though.
Genetically, I think we have my mother to thank for our competitiveness as – in addition to retraining to become a firefighter a few years ago after spending years teaching kids with special needs – she’s also started competing in Iron Man Triathlons. For those of you who don’t know, this consists of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and then a full marathon. That takes some serious training and dedication and she’s more than a match for it. Part of Mum’s motivation is a simple desire to keep fit but she’s certainly not there just to make up the numbers and that, I think, is really what drives her on.
I’ve never asked her about this but if I were a betting man – and I am – I’d say that one of the reasons Mum sometimes left the three of us to get on with trying to compete with each other (and it did become a bit ridiculous at times) was because she was hoping we’d develop a desire to succeed. If that was her modus operandi, it worked. But what separates me from Alex and James is the fact that I’ve always taken this hunger to achieve to ridiculous extremes. In fact, that’s a pretty accurate description for me. A ridiculous extreme.
Anyway, let’s get onto Dad.
Since becoming a strongman I’ve had to sacrifice all kinds of things – time with my family being the most troublesome and upsetting – but this is really small fry to what my old man has given up. He worked as a health and safety officer in the same factory for over twenty-five years and because of the hours he worked we hardly ever saw him. Even when we did see Dad he was stressed out; a direct consequence of coming home from a job that was repetitive and unchallenging and going straight into a warzone.
He didn’t have time for hobbies or anything and because he’s got a good brain on him that must have been extremely stifling. There was no ‘me time’ for Dad and no shed to disappear to. Because he remained dedicated to his job we were not only able to live in a nice house and never want for anything, but we were also free to get out there and try to realise our potential, knowing that – unless it was something dangerous or stupid – we would always receive his and Mum’s full support. Basically, we got everything Dad should have had but couldn’t, which is why I cringe sometimes when I think about the way we used to behave. Fancy walking into that, day after day. Some lesser men wouldn’t have come home, but not Dad. He was obviously a glutton for punishment – thank God.
The saving grace with regards to our relationship with Dad was our annual family holiday, and because of his endeavours we were able to go to some really special places. It was the one time during the year we’d be able to spend time with him in a relaxed atmosphere. Portugal always seemed to be our family’s destination of choice back then and we’d spend all day every day just chilling by the pool, having barbecues and lazing on the beach. Even the fighting used to lessen a bit during these special times and that was solely because we were all so pleased to see Dad carefree and happy for a while. He was a completely different person on holiday and that change in mood was wonderfully contagious.
Once we were back home, things would return to normal pretty quickly and before you could say ‘seconds out, round one’, the three amigos would be making up for lost time by smashing remote controls over each other’s head, issuing death threats and making our ever-patient mother’s life an absolute misery. I expect Dad was relieved to get back to work.
As well as spending some quality time with my family, those holidays taught me a very important lesson in life and that is to be grateful for what you have and to always look for the positives, however well hidden they are. The human brain will generally err toward the negative and that can often cloud your better judgement. That’s something that’s helped me, not just as a human being but as an athlete. When your brain’s telling you that something’s crap and that your life’s a pile of shit, the chances are the thought is exactly that, a pile of shit.
I think Mum and Dad knew that one day the fighting would come to an end and, bar moving us all to a sodding zoo, there was bugger all they could do about it until then. Sure enough, when we got to our early teens – or when I did – we gave up fighting almost overnight and suddenly started talking to one another. We became mates, I suppose, and it’s been exactly the same ever since. We still had our moments, of course, but because we’d finally learned how to talk to one another and show an interest in each other’s lives, the fighting was usually averted and conversations took place instead. Pretty sweary ones, it has to be said, but conversations just the same. I remember thinking to myself after talking to Alex one day, Wow! My brother’s not a snivelling arsehole after all. He’s actually OK.
But if that was a revelation for the three of us – and it was – what must it have been like for Mum and Dad? To be honest, I think it was just a massive relief. In fact, it probably knocked years off them. Like an early retirement! They’re great though, and all three of us think the sun shines out of their fu … We think the world of them.