I was born in Forest Gate Hospital in east London on 22 September 1965. My mum Val and dad John lived in a tiny two-bed flat at the time. Mum’s always saying I was a bloody huge baby when I popped out. I screamed and fought my way out of her and I’ve been doing the same thing in life ever since. Forest Gate is right on the edge of the old East End and that’s the way I’ve always felt – right on the edge of things. Not many people know this area unless they’ve lived there. It’s the sort of place you don’t bother going to without a real reason. We don’t get a lot of tourists up our way and they say the people east of Finsbury Park and north of Lambeth are different from anywhere else.
My mum told me once that Forest Gate was ‘invented’ when the railway rolled east from Liverpool Street to developments of houses for middle-class commuters more than a hundred years ago. At first the Quakers constructed the houses, so there were hardly any boozers as they were fiercely anti-drink. Back in those days cows still grazed in front gardens overlooking Wanstead Flats. About the most famous bloke to come from Forest Gate was the actor and film director Bryan Forbes and some fella who wrote the music for The Sound of Music. Just about sums this place up really.
After the last war lots of new buildings were constructed in the town centre. These days, Forest Gate is part of the borough of Newham and contains churches, mosques, Sikh and Hindu temples and a cross-section of inhabitants that cover just about every race and nationality in the world.
Traditionally, people move out of places like Forest Gate as soon as they make a few bob but my family never earned a decent enough wedge to make the great escape. If I tried to paint a picture now of what it was like I’d say there weren’t many monuments to the past in Forest Gate. Its history seemed a kind of black void to me when I was a kid.
I recall row upon row of redbrick box houses plus tenement buildings from the Victorian days. There was the pleasant whiff of dough from a big bakery that employed many people. But the other, more constant smell came wafting across Forest Gate from the smelt works in nearby Wapping.
Once upon a time places like Forest Gate, Stepney, Bow, Bethnal Green and Mile End were posh commuter villages with fine houses and rich inhabitants. But those days were long gone by the time my mum and her family set foot in East London.
When I was born, my mum already had John, who was a year older. A couple of years after me, Ian arrived followed by Valerie (we all call her Lee) five years later. She was the baby of the family. We were all healthy, lively little rascals in our own different ways. My dad John was a plumber by trade, but he didn’t always get enough of that kind of work. He’d do just about anything to earn a few bob. When I was a toddler, Mum and Dad seemed like everyone else’s parents. I was too young to realise that all the racket I heard each night wasn’t just coming from our black-and-white telly. Looking back on it, I hardly ever saw Mum and Dad happy together.
Mum was born in Silvertown in the heart of the old East End. Her mum died giving birth to her, so you can imagine how important we were to her. Her father had been a British military copper over in Italy at the end of the war when he married her mother – she was of Romany gypsy descent – and they had moved back to London, where Mum was born. My grandfather then joined the Met as a copper and my two uncles on Mum’s side are still with the cozzers to this day.
My mum – all four feet eight inches of her – always had quite a mouth on her. Might be something to do with the fact that she had to scream to get any attention as a baby. When she beams, her Italian smile lights up the room, but when she’s angry it brings more than thunderclouds on the horizon.
Dad was born in Canning Town, in the heart of the real East End. His mum was from Ireland and his dad was a German prisoner of war who had been locked up in Kent in a POW camp. Grandad was a cabinet-maker and still is one to this day. Dad’s a big lad with huge shoulders, and has always kept very fit. He was much taller than I ever grew although now he’s got a bit of a beer belly. Smokes roll-ups. But he’s hung onto his own hair, unlike the rest of us, and seems to live in jeans, complete with long-sleeved shirts and Chelsea boots, most of the time.
Dad was always either out at work or up the local boozer, supping a few too many pints with his mates. Then he’d crash through the front door of our tiny flat, yelling at the top of his voice. That’s when the fireworks usually started going off.
But then my parents had gone and married at such a young age. Mum was just sixteen when she had my brother John. My dad was in his early twenties. The pressure was enormous and they were just a couple of kids. It was never going to be easy.
Mum’s family were all a bit upset when she went up the aisle with Dad. By then they had conveniently forgotten the shotgun that had been pointed in both Mum and Dad’s direction when Mum told them she was pregnant. I reckon Dad’s dodginess rubbed off a bit on my mum. He was from a huge family that consisted of more than twenty brothers and sisters. Mum seemed to deliberately go the other way from the rest of her law-abiding family. I think she got a few wallops for her troubles when she was a kid, so she ended up with little or no respect for the long arm of the law.
There were plenty of old characters on my manor when I was growing up. They were mainly Jack-the-lad types but they’d always help you out if you were in a spot and I learned a lot from them. They weren’t necessarily villains but they were always there if you had any bother. Back then if you wanted a cup of sugar, or a lot more besides, you could always knock on someone’s door. Everyone liked to stop and have a chat in the street. People’s front doors were nearly always left open.
There was a corner shop near us called Clayton’s that sold just about everything from ice lollies to baked beans. You could always get things on tick at old man Clayton’s place. He had the tastiest sliced ham straight off the bone. It melted in your mouth. I was always in and out of the shop doing errands for my mum.
Old Mr Clayton was a real gent. He knew all the kids’ names as well as the adults’. He’d first opened the shop during the last war and I suppose most of the business back then must have been through ration vouchers and stuff like that. By the time I was growing up on the manor, Mr Clayton was in his seventies but still as sharp as a tack. He was such a decent person he’d never tell a customer they owed money on tick in front of anyone else. Instead, he’d stop kids like me in the street ever so casually and say, ‘Tell your mum I need to see her.’ He was always giving me handfuls of sweets, especially if mum had just paid her bill.
When I went on my first day to St James’s Infant School, aged five, I had to be dragged screaming from our house because I didn’t want to leave home. My two brothers didn’t seem to find it so tough, but I had a real problem getting along with other kids. I was a loner and I’ve stayed that way ever since. It’s stupid when I think back on it now, but I just didn’t want to go to school at all.
About the only thing I did learn in infant school was that it didn’t matter what colour a person’s skin was – if you liked ‘em that was all that counted. I found myself sitting in a class with black, brown, yellow – you name it – and I judged them all the same. Pretty quick I got close to two black kids called Alex and Fraser. Later, I realised that the reason I got on so well with black people was that they knew what it was like to be the outsiders – and that’s how I’ve felt all my life.
Compared to many of my mates back in those days, I was lucky really. At least there was a good atmosphere in the house when my mum was home. We all got on well and she taught me the importance of respecting other people – not to get in their face and cause aggro.
It has to be said we ware something of an accident-prone family. My baby sis, Lee, broke her arm in a playground, brother Ian got run over by a milk float but lived to tall the tale, and there were countless household scraps, but nothing any worse than what other families suffered.
I suppose the TV was my very best friend during much of my childhood. My favourite programme was The Sweeney. I loved losing myself in all that cops-and-robbers action. I’d be glued to the sat for hours on end. Naturally, round where I came from, it was the robbers who were our heroes. I also loved Tom and Jerry. I used to get really close to the telly and watch it on my own. Sometimes I’d talk back to some of the characters on the box. They seemed a lot nicer than many of the people I came across.
Then my mum went and ruined it all by making me and my brothers join the local cub pack. She thought it’d be good for us to get out and about. But being a bit of a loner, I didn’t react well to any form of discipline. Worse still, a lot of the other kids were snotty towards us because we couldn’t afford the full cub kit.
The only good time we ever had was when we want on a weekend camping trip to the Lake District. But then my brother John fell in the water from a canoe and I had to dive in and rescue him. I felt really proud to have saved him. But when we got back to London the cub master didn’t even bother saying goodbye to us, which made me feel that none of them really cared.
The last straw came when an older cub took a nasty dislike to me and fired pot-shots at me with an air-rifle when I walked out of the scout hall one day. I got three pellets in my backside. I naturally made out I was close to death so that Mum would let me quit the cubs: it worked a treat. I was much happier back on my own.
From about the age of seven my best mate was a kid called Jason Neill, the son of a well-known local ducker and diver called Ron Neill. I suppose I was dead jealous of Jason because his dad was around most of the time and was always handing out tenners and fivers to us kids. That was a hell of a lot of money to a poverty-stricken nipper like me. Ron Neill seemed to have money spilling out of every pocket.
The Neills lived in a much bigger house than anyone else I knew. Jason and I got up to so much mischief together that they had to separate us in class. He was essentially a shy kind of kid like me, but with more money. Jason had a really expensive pushbike, which made me green with envy every time I saw it.
Nearby Wanstead Flats provided a perfect retreat – a brilliant haven for boys like me and Jason. We’d take our toy pistols with us and have imaginary fights. We pretended we were soldiers trained to the peak of our ability. We were often out until after dark on the Flats, which is something no parent would allow these days. Jason and I even took specially prepared ‘survival kits’, consisting of a bar of chocolate and a soggy cheese sandwich.
We loved laying small traps hidden under a covering of leaves so that anyone who walked over it would be caught by a piece of string and then mud would flick at them. Jason loved digging holes so deep that anyone walking along the pathway would lose their footing and crash to the ground. We used to hide in nearby trees and laugh our heads off watching them.
Eventually Jason and me made our own secret treehouse, in amongst the woods of the Flats. It was a three-pronged platform built between three massive oak trees. We’d sit in that treehouse for hours watching the traffic flow past a hundred yards away. We were both obsessed by cars back in those days. Jason’s dad had a brand new, flashy Toyota. But Jason said what he really wanted was an Aston Martin, just like James Bond. I kept quiet about the fact my mum couldn’t even afford a Ford Escort. As the cars drove past we had a competition to see who could name the make of car the fastest. We knew all the different models, even down to the engine sizes. ‘I knew a 2000E Cortina from a 1600 just by the sound of the engine.
One day Jason and me spotted the handlebars of a motorbike in the main pond on the Flats. We pulled the bike out of the water to find it was virtually brand new. Obviously someone had nicked it and then dumped it. We spent hours trying to kick-start it and then gave up and pushed it back into the pond for good measure.
At the same time each Saturday, dozens of model airplane and boat operators would swarm onto the Flats. My mates and me used to rub mud on our faces and pretend we were on special patrol through the woods. Then we’d settle ourselves in the treehouse and have a right laugh watching the planes crashing into the woods nearby. We’d run over to where they’d crashed, and start winding up the owners as they knelt over their broken model planes, saying, ‘That’s a rubbish plane that one. You should go for something dearer next time.’ They’d get really cheesed off.
One time me and Jason found an old air gun in a cupboard in his house and lugged it onto the Flats to take pot-shots at the model airplanes. The idea was to pretend they were Nazi bombers coming over to destroy our homes just like the real things had done in the East End thirty years earlier. It was only when Jason pulled the airgun out of a bag that we realised it might be a real shooter. It seemed heavy enough and it smelt of oil and grease. It turned out to have just two bullets in it and we shot them into a tree nearby. I nearly fell over when it came to my turn. We were bloody lucky no-one was hurt. I’ve never forgotten the terror I felt shooting that weapon. Then we sneaked it back into the cupboard at Jason’s house just before the old man came back. Years later I realised he was probably holding on to that shooter for some blagger to use in a robbery.
The following weekend we stuck to more simple games such as laying obstacles on the runway used to land the model airplanes. That caused a right load of chaos and we nearly got our ears clipped when one owner spotted us running from the scene: but if we’d used that real shooter on the model aeroplanes, God knows what would have happened.
Jason and me used to hold pretend trial biking competitions on Wanstead Flats. All it really involved was jumping over ditches on our bikes but we both always ended up coming home covered in cuts and bruises. One day Jason and I were out playing on the Flats when he told me his mum and dad were always fighting. It’s a bit twisted to admit it, but that made me feel better. So I wasn’t the only one with fucked-up parents.
A few days later I called at Jason’s and a stranger answered the front door and said that Jason and his mum had gone away and wouldn’t be coming back. I was very upset. How could he just take off without saying a word? What sort of friend did that?
Not long afterwards, his dad Ron came barging his way into our house asking me if I knew where Jason and his mum had gone. I said I hadn’t got a clue, which was true. ‘You lying to me, son?’ he asked sternly. I shook my head so furiously it almost came off its hinges. Then my mum chipped in, ‘Of course he’s telling the truth.’ It was only then I realised they’d scarpered to get away from Ron. It turned out Ron had whacked his wife and then got so violent she’d decided to do a permanent runner.
Here we were living in a hovel with barely the money to pay the bills but at least we weren’t on the run from a psycho dad. And you know what? Ron Neill never did find Jason or his mum and he ended up drinking himself to death just a few months later. They reckon he also died of a broken heart.
My mum often had music on in our flat. She loved all that sixties stuff like Ray Charles, The Temptations and most of the Motown artists of the day. Not surprisingly, I ended up being a big Stevie Wonder fan. Every weekend Mum had the record player on full blast all day, even during Sunday lunch. That’s when my dad would retreat to the local boozer and stay there for most of the day while we tucked into sausages and roast potatoes.
In those days, Mum and Dad had a boozy party about once a month with their mates. It was the only time they seemed happy together. We were allowed to stay up late and often we’d nick a few peanuts, crisps and those miniature sausages on sticks, and sneak them into our bedroom. Our parents were the life and soul of those parties – thinking of those evenings brings back happy memories.
Then one day Dad announced he’d been offered some building work up north in Yorkshire and we’d all have to move up there pronto. The old man claimed it was much cheaper to live there. But within a couple of months he’d lost his job so we all trooped back down south with nowhere to live and ended up in a homeless hostel. Then my dad went and did a runner.
For about two weeks Mum, my brothers and me lived in that crummy hostel not knowing where our next square meal was coming from. I remember one night I was woken up by a strange scratching noise. Then something brushed my toes. It was a big, fat grey rat. I jumped out of my skin. I’ve never liked rodents since.
Mum and us three kids were huddled in that hostel all alone and very desperate. Then Dad came trooping back one day as if nothing had happened and announced he’d got us an upstairs council flat in Station Road, Forest Gate. It felt like Buckingham Palace after that hostel. But with two bedrooms it was a tight squeeze, to say the least.
But the old man’s happy-go-lucky mood didn’t last long. One night – I was about eight at the time – me and my brothers were tucked up in bed when Mum and Dad started one of their regular shouting matches. I lay there trembling as the yelling got louder and louder. John and Ian were fast asleep on the bottom bunk bed, but I couldn’t get any shuteye because of the noise. Suddenly, I heard something break. It sounded like a vase or a bit of crockery. Anyhow, I leapt down to the floor from the top bunk and headed over to the door.
‘Come here, you fuckin’ bitch!’
My dad sounded completely out of control. I ran down the corridor and got to the top of the stairs. My tiny little mum came dashing out of the lounge. The old man was on her tail, towering over her.
They hadn’t spotted me. That’s when my dad lifted his arm as if he was about to whack my mum. He seemed like a giant to me back then. He was six feet one and fit as a fiddle, and Mum seemed so small up against him. I puffed up my chest and shouted at the top of my voice: ‘Leave her alone!’ The old man was so shocked his arm stopped in mid air. Tears were rolling down my mum’s puffy, reddened cheeks.
I flew down the stairs and stood right between them. But then they started ranting and raving at each other again. My mum reached up over me and slapped my dad right across the face. He didn’t respond but simply turned around and walked towards the bedroom. The flat went deathly quiet. A few moments later he emerged from the bedroom with a sports bag in his hand.
I followed my mum around the house as she shouted and screamed at him. In a way, I suppose I’d decided she needed protection. But, on reflection, she did go a bit over the top at him.
Then my older bruv John appeared and began begging my dad not to go, John and younger bruv Ian were in floods of tears and both hung onto Dad’s trouser legs as he headed down the corridor towards the front door.
‘I’ve gotta go, boys, I’ve had enough,’ he told them while glancing back at my mum standing, hands on hips, watching him from the kitchen doorway. I stood back and observed the scene. Of course I was sad but I was more worried about my mum at the time.
The truth is my mum and dad had never really got on. These days they’re reasonable friends. You’ve gotta remember Dad was still young, with lots of kids. The pressure must have been unbearable in many ways. A few days later he came round to tell us exactly what had happened and why he’d left, but it didn’t make it any easier to handle.
At least Dad never laid another finger on Mum. She told me later that he was so shocked by my appearance that night, it made him stop and think about what had been going on between them. That’s when he’d decided it was time to call it a day. But you know what? I’m not proud of what I did because sometimes I think that if I’d kept out of it, he’d still be my fulltime dad to this day.
Back then the old man was still struggling to get employment as a plumber, so he started working the doors at some right dodgy clubs in the East End. No doubt he was up to mischief, earning a bob or two from ducking and diving. And there’s no denying he had a temper on him, but he was no worse than most dads round where I lived. The nastiest thing he ever did to me was when I got a bit lippy with him and he hauled me up by my ankles and started slapping my backside. It didn’t half hurt. But then I’d deserved it for being a pain in the neck, like most kids.
It’s a shame I don’t have better memories of Dad. They are summed up by the time he came to visit me when I had my tonsils out in hospital. I must have been eight going on nine and the old man gave me an Action Man as a get-well present. Bloody thing was obviously second-hand because a few minutes after he’d left the hospital the head snapped off. I was so upset I cried myself to sleep that night.
But thankfully my dad never went for me or my brothers and sister Lee, who was born just after my dad walked out. It was him and my mum who had the punch-ups. After they split, he’d come round once or twice a month and take us all out for a day trip to places like the Tower of London. He tried his hardest, but he never really said much and I can’t honestly say he ever gave me one real word of advice the whole time I was a kid, which isn’t saying much, is it?
Meanwhile, me and my mates in Forest Gate started getting up to our own brand of mischief. We’d pop over the wall of the local boozer, the Angel, nick a few empty beer and pop bottles and then bring them back into the pub’s off-licence to claim the value of the empties. We used to get sixpence a go, which was very useful dough for an eight-year-old, I can tell you.
Then Mum and us kids got transferred by the council to a virtually new house just around the corner from our flat, even nearer to the vast green pastures of Wanstead Flats. It was really posh compared to what we were used to and my house-proud mum always kept it clean. But none of that stopped me and my brothers from causing havoc in the neighbourhood.
One day we almost got pinched by the local law after nicking some of Mum’s stockings and putting them over our heads, grabbing a couple of toy guns and pretending to stick up the local newsagent. The owner, Mr Patel, blew his top when he realised it was a prank by a bunch of kids. We were only saved because Mum wandered in for a packet of Silk Cut just after we’d got caught. She gave us a right tongue-lashing following that little escapade.
After my dad went walkabout, a few ‘new dads’ appeared on the horizon so my brothers and sister (Lee was only a baby then) spent a lot of our time over on Wanstead Flats. Our experience of Dad had not exactly made us very keen on any grown men entering the household. We saw them as a threat to our happiness.
Wanstead Flats was like an escape hatch for me and my brothers. We called it the countryside, even though it was only a couple of streets from home. It seemed like another world. Lots of green grass, a pond and huge, tall trees where we could shelter from the rain. It was paradise, really. I don’t know how we’d have survived life at that time without the Flats.
Back at home, Mum held down at least two jobs to keep the family together, cleaning offices in the day and working behind the bars of local pubs in the evenings. Sometimes we had a baby-sitter but most of the time we fended for ourselves. Yet despite Mum’s absences, we still lived in a loving home. I never felt abandoned, nor did my brothers or sister. We were gritty survivors. It was us against the world and we were going to win.
At one stage back then, we were so skint that we literally didn’t even have a tin of beans in the kitchen cupboard. They were pretty desperate times. In those days Mum regularly visited the local loan shark who played a vital role in our survival. He even sometimes helped my mum carry her shopping back to our house because he lived nearby.
Everybody knew this fella so I won’t embarrass him by naming him here. Mum had to pay him back loans on a weekly rate but often he didn’t even charge her any interest. I remember one week she couldn’t pay him a penny and he said not to worry and just added it up later.
The loan shark was a popular man on my manor. He was always immaculately dressed in a Crombie coat and I was friendly with his kids. These days that sort of fella would probably be a drug dealer, which would have made him a completely different cup of tea.
Some weeks we were so broke we had candlelit dinners because Mum couldn’t pay the electricity bill. And if we went and asked her for a few pennies for a few sweets and she said no. We knew not to ask her again that week. We certainly appreciated the value of money at an early age.
But even though she was often without a penny to her name, my dear old mum made sure our home was always immaculately tidy. And we always looked neat and pristine when we went out the front door. Us kids even nicknamed her ‘Mrs Sheen’ after the adverts on the telly because she always seemed to have a duster in her hand.
My main priority – even back then when I was only a youngster- was to earn a few bob. The pub where my mum worked sometimes paid me a couple of quid to stack the shelves with bottles before opening time. We were all expected to muck in and keep the family afloat.
Sometimes we nicked milk off the milk float plus a loaf of bread and some eggs if the kitchen cupboard was bare. We knew Mum was up against it and we tried to contribute even if it involved a bit of minor tea-leafing.
When I was about eight I got a police escort home after the cozzers nabbed me and a few mates when we threw stones from the roof of a nearby derelict building. My mum had watched the entire episode from her kitchen window and she was well upset when the PC dropped me home and explained what had happened. Mum didn’t want me getting into the same habits as my dad. Poor old thing, she was trying her hardest to keep us all in order, but it wasn’t easy with four kids and no support.
Me and my mates got up to all sorts. One of our favourite stunts was to tie some cotton thread round a milk bottle, put it on a wall and then spread the thread across the pavement so that whoever walked through it would end up sending the bottle smashing to the ground. We used to set up three or four milk bottles on one stretch of pavement round the corner from my home. It was bloody funny because people used to think that bottles were being thrown at them. But we always made sure we never did it to any old dears because they might not have been able to handle it.
In junior school, the first proper fight I got into happened when one boy called Delroy Walker tried to give me a hammering. He seemed like a giant compared to me. (He’s now a preacher near where I live and he’s always trying to get me to turn up at church on a Sunday. Not on your life, mate!) But as he goaded me, something came over me. I became completely fearless, steamed in and jabbed him hard in the neck and face, and down he went like a sack of spuds. The fight was over virtually before it had begun. I’d never felt such anger before in my life. I suppose it was an outlet for all the problems that had been building up for so long.
I was hauled in front of the headmaster, Mr Atkins, and given two whacks with a ruler, right across the palm of my right hand. It bloody hurt and left two big lines. When I got home, my mum went mad. She didn’t like anyone laying a finger on any of her boys. She grabbed me by the ear and marched me across the road to the school and demanded that the headmaster explain why he’d punished me. He seemed terrified of her and even said he was sorry.
My mum still reckons to this day that I don’t know my own strength. She’s never forgotten how I split my kid brother’s forehead when I chucked a plastic cup at him from twenty feet away. But that school fight helped persuade Mum to let me join the local boxing club, West Ham Boys’ Club, in Plaistow. She wasn’t keen on her kid being given a battering, but it was better than letting me wander the streets causing aggro. She knew I needed some kind of outlet for all my pent-up anger and frustration.