In the winter of 1988 the same old pressures started mounting yet again and I fell for another bucketload of dough being dangled in front of me by Bill. This time we flew over to Cork, in Eire, for a fight that featured the sloppiest cage I’d ever seen. Bolts were sticking out of it and some of the wire mesh hadn’t even been properly smoothed down. But none of that seemed to bother the big, fat, wobbly, ginger-haired gypsy who’d been lined up to teach me a lesson. The fight took under two minutes and I came out £8000 richer.
But that bout will always stay with me for a much more sinister reason. As I was being whisked to the local airfield after the fight, the crowd of mainly farmers and gypsies ripped the cage to pieces because they’d lost so much money betting on their boy. Then they grabbed him – he was still out cold from our fight – from the floor and dragged him outside where they slung him in an old car and set fire to it. He burnt to death. That was even heavier than a fella dying inside the cage.
It shook me to the core when I heard about it from a mate of Bill’s, who I happened to be speaking to some time later. It turned out Bill was desperate for me not to know what had happened to that poor bastard because he didn’t want me quitting on him.
Yet again, I confronted Bill. He denied it had even happened, but I knew from the look on his face that he was lying. I now knew for certain I couldn’t trust Bill to look after me. Maybe I’d end up being burned to death in a car if I lost a fight and, with it, lost Bill a load of money? No doubt one day I’d come up against a tastier operator than myself. It was just a matter of time, wasn’t it?
One day I asked Neville and Wayne what they reckoned. ‘Hope you wouldn’t let that happen to me,’ I said to them. ‘No way, bruv,’ they both replied. And I believed them. But Bill was my paymaster whether I liked it or not and, just so long as I needed the money, he’d be there looming over me like the grim reaper.
Away from the fight game, I remained close to my mum and brothers and sister. That meant I occasionally got called upon to sort out a few domestic problems.
Shortly after I got back from that fight in Ireland, my mum called me up in a right state. My sister Lee – who’d just turned fifteen – had run off with an older boy and she was worried sick like any good mum would be. Turned out this youth – his name was Alex – was also suspected of knocking my sis around. Now that’s simply not on in my book. Any man who hits a woman or child has got it coming to them.
Lee had already been missing for an entire night and Mum was worried she might not see her again. Lee had never been home late before, let alone spent the entire night out. So me and my brothers began our hunt for her by knocking on the door of every friend of Lee and her boyfriend. In the middle of all this, Lee phoned home and announced to Mum she was never going to come home again.
Now I have to tell you here and now that I’m very protective towards my kid sister. Us boys were brought up by our mum to look after the women in the family, no matter what. She was only a kid so we knew it was our duty to get her home.
Many of Alex’s mates denied knowing anything about them, but I soon ‘persuaded’ them to change their minds, and it emerged on the grapevine that Lee was living with this boy in Brixton – not the sort of place anyone wants their fourteen-year-old sister to hang around. As far as I was concerned anything south of the river was foreign.
It also turned out this boy’s dad was a screw at Pentonville Prison, so he wasn’t exactly the most popular bloke in his street in Forest Gate. The old man had the front to tell me to fuck off when I first called round at their house. He even threatened to call the cozzers. So I retreated to reconsider my actions.
Meanwhile my dear old mum goes and gets the law involved herself. I was a bit peeved with her at first because she’d asked me to take care of things. We’d always been brought up to look after our own and not involve the police, but I guess she was worried sick about her little baby.
Then Lee put in a second phone call and says she wants to come home, but she’s scared this boy might do something to her if she leaves him. It seemed like he had some kind of hold over her. I didn’t like the sound of it one bit.
‘But I don’t want you to hurt him,’ Lee told me as she sobbed down the phone.
‘All we want is for you to come home. We don’t want you stuck out there in Brixton,’ I said, trying to be reassuring.
‘Brixton?’ she says.
That’s when it turned out she was living just round the corner from our gaff. Anyway, less than an hour later, she came rolling in, full of tears and remorse. But I could see that boy had scared her out of her wits, which wasn’t on. Lee still begged me not to hurt him. ‘Just tell me where he is,’ I asked. ‘I need to have a chat with him.’
But Lee wouldn’t tell me where I could find him so I put some feelers out in the hope of getting a fix on his location. A couple of days later we were holding a farewell party for my older brother John, who was off to live in California, when a mate knocked on the front door and said this boy Alex had just turned up at a nearby boozer called the Camden Arms. I had a quiet word with my younger brother Ian out of earshot of my mum and Lee. Then I told Mum we were going to run out for some more beers.
We got to the Camden Arms to find this kid standing outside chatting to his mates with a pint mug in his hand. Ian jumped out of the motor before I’d even parked up and laid right into him. I joined in moments later.
At least this little runt took his punishment like a man. We were careful not to go over the top. We just wanted him to get the message – don’t hit Lee or any girl for that matter. After I’d decked him out with a right hook I looked down at him lying on the pavement outside the boozer and said: ‘I don’t want to see your face again in Forest Gate.’ He left the manor shortly afterwards.
Next day, after seeing my big bruv John off at the airport, I told Mum and Lee what had happened. Lee wasn’t too happy but, years later, she thanked me for what I’d done because she could have so easily destroyed her life with that young wally. That night my mum came up to me in the kitchen and whispered, ‘Thanks for sorting it all out. I love you, Son.’ And I knew she meant every word.
Strange thing is that this boy’s family also moved off the manor soon afterwards. Might have had something to do with the fact I’d threatened to tell every ex-con in Forest Gate where that bastard lived. Screws are not popular people round there.
I’ve told you what happened with Lee because it’s important to understand that, in the world I live in, you look after your own. It’s something I’ve been brought up to do and it’s never left me. I’d do the same for anyone in distress.
By the autumn of 1989 I’d taken a break of almost a year from the fight game simply because Bill couldn’t come up with any more mugs for me to KO. No one seemed keen on spending any time in the cage with me. Funny thing is that I’d never even talked to any of my opponents. I had no idea what happened to older fighters, but I did know from Bill that no one was keen on meeting me because I was unbeaten. Suppose it’s tricky trying to get some bets going if you know it’s going to be a one-sided contest. Looking back on it, I don’t know how I could be such a mug and not take more interest in the whole illegal fight game – especially since I was putting my life on the line every time I got in the cage.
So after a long gap without any dough, I was happy as pie when Bill came up with a £5000 pay packet for a job just up the road at Dagenham Docks. It sounded like a piece of cake. Bill told me I’d be the second of two fights on the night and insisted it was a properly organised, full-on sort of gig, so I was happy.
By now Bill was fairly open about who I was going to fight as I wanted to avoid the sort of problems I’d experienced earlier in my career. He said my opponent was a local fella and that I’d cruise it like all my previous fights. I was still working the building sites in the day and training flat out four evenings a week, so I was brimming with fitness – and confidence.
That evening, Bill and I cruised down to Dagenham Docks in his sparkling silver Merc, complete with driver and my two old muckers, Wayne and Neville. It was dark and wet by the time we turned onto the dockside right alongside the Thames, where rusting yellow and orange containers were stacked about 200 feet high. You could smell the river wafting through the car as we drove along the shiny, wet tarmac. I looked at Bill’s car clock – it was 10.30 pm.
Then we turned a corner and drove down a narrow lane between two more huge stacks of containers. At the end of the lane stood at least 250 fellas. I mean real, tasty, hard cases and they were being very noisy. The cold night air was full of rasping steam. And not one woman was in sight. This was going to be a serious evening. Amongst the punters were a lot of godfather types in long Crombie coats, with gold jewellery dangling off their wrists and long, fat cigars sticking out of their big, ugly mouths.
‘Watch yourself. This bloke’s fit,’muttered Neville, just out of Bill’s earshot as we glided to a halt. I nodded. I then spotted the cage set up on the dockside. Alongside it was the fella I presumed was my opponent. He was well built with at least a 54-inch chest. Big arms, big oak-tree legs. And wearing the traditional T-shirt and jeans.
Just then the car doors opened and me, Neville and Wayne were surrounded by six even bigger geezers. They moved with us as we walked towards the cage where my latest opponent was waiting, calmly pacing the other side.
‘Go on, my son,’ one old lag shouted through his clenched teeth.
‘Get in there, boy.’
There was no ringmaster this time. And I knew that once we’d clambered into that cage I was on my own. My opponent came at me with a flurry of punches within what seemed like a split second, not even giving me the customary amount of time to settle. Then he kneed me sharply in the ribs. I was winded and doubled up. He followed that up with two ferocious headbutts. I was staggering all over the shop. I hadn’t got one decent punch in by this stage.
Then I straightened up and went after him, quickly connecting with a handful of punches, but they didn’t seem to have much effect on him. The sheer determination of this character was awesome. Everything I threw at him literally bounced off his upper body. Then he came back at me relentlessly. He was soon playing with me just to entertain the crowd. I tried to duck his firepower to give myself enough time to regain my composure but he wouldn’t give me an inch.
From just outside the cage I heard Neville screaming: ‘Move! Move! For fuck’s sake move!’
But by this time I wasn’t much better than a statue. My vision was badly blurred. My stomach was cramped. And he kept coming back and hitting me precisely on target. I was walking into his punches. My brain had slowed down and I was starting to lose all sense of co-ordination. I needed to pull something out of the bag but my nut was so scrambled my thoughts wouldn’t connect to my fists. Just then he connected with a mighty right to my neck and my world went black.
Next thing I remember was coming round in the back of Wayne’s rusting old purple Capri as we drove to Whipp’s Cross Hospital at high speed. They later told me they thought I was about to peg it. I had no memory of anything after my opponent’s right fist connected with my Adam’s apple. Wayne and Neville also informed me that Bill had hot-footed it seconds after the end of the bout. Nice to know he cared so much about his so-called ‘prized’ fighter.
I was in a bad way that night in the back of the Capri. I couldn’t move either of my arms and I was slumped up against the rear window, unable to sit up straight. My head was so swollen I looked like the elephant man. After I was checked into the hospital, I found out that my nose was busted. My ear drums were bleeding, My throat was so badly swollen by my enlarged Adam’s apple that I could barely breathe. I knew my jaw was fractured. My eyes were cut and so badly puffed I could only make out the shadows of objects. My knuckles were broken, mainly because I kept missing him and smashing my fists into the wall of the cage. I had badly bruised ribs. My collar bone was fractured. Even my shins were bruised and battered.
Neville later said that my opponent had jumped all over me after I’d gone down. This was fair enough as I’d have done the same thing to him. But both Neville and Wayne thought he was out to kill me. Apparently, Bill then threw the towel in the cage, but this psycho just carried on trying to finish me off. He got a final; brutal kick to my head before being pulled off me by Neville and Wayne. They knocked him out in half a minute between them. Then they rushed back into the cage and dragged me to safety.
Back at the Whipp’s Cross Hospital, Neville made out to the medics they’d found me in the street and brought me in. They said they thought I’d been beaten up in a pub brawl and claimed they’d never met me before in their lives. I was just coming round for the second time when the Old Bill turned up. My arm was strapped up. I had stitching around the eyes. As one of the coppers said, ‘You look like you been hit by a train, son.’
Naturally, the law wanted to know what had happened. But they didn’t push me too hard on the matter because they knew I wouldn’t tell ‘em much. When the doctors gave me a head scan they spotted that plastic plate from the iron bar attack which had ruined my boxing career. They knew I was a scrapper. But I was more worried about the bed baths the nurses gave me twice a day!
The docs did a great job bending my three bottom front teeth back into place. They were hanging out of their sockets. Then they stitched up the inside of my mouth. It was bloody painful.
I ended up spending three days in hospital. A really sweet nurse took pity on me and phoned Carole and my mum to tell them where I was. I asked her to tell them I’d been in an accident. I could barely speak a word when Carole showed up at the hospital with Mum, who waited outside while Carole came in first. I told her I’d got into a fight outside the club where I worked the door. But I could see in her eyes that she didn’t fully believe me.
Funny thing is that Carole didn’t push me on what really happened. That’s just not her style. Instead, she gave me a hug and made it clear she was just relieved I was still in one piece. Then she burst into tears on my shoulder. It hurt like hell when she leaned on me but I didn’t care. I was just glad to have her there. I had to stop the fight game before it drove a wedge between us. I didn’t want to risk losing Carole for ever.
Then Mum came in and was soon sobbing her eyes out. How could I do this to the two most important people in my life? Was I sick in the head to think I could get away with it all? ‘My baby. My baby,’Mum kept sobbing over and over. I felt terrible putting them through all this.
The next day Bill turned up at my bedside to bung me my £1800 loser’s fee. I’d have copped £6000 if I’d won. He asked me why I thought I’d lost. ‘I dunno,’ I replied through my broken teeth and torn-up mouth. I just wanted him to fuck off and leave me alone.
Bill tried to act like he cared. Then he went and ruined it by asking me to call him in a couple of weeks’ time. The last thing on my mind was a return to the cage. I just turned over and pretended I’d fallen asleep so that he’d leave me in peace.
As soon as I got home from hospital, Carole and me started rowing really badly. Looking back on it, she had every right to be so pissed off with me. She knew I was up to no good but I wouldn’t tell her the truth.
Carole begged me to give up the door work and I promised I would. But I didn’t really know if I could stick to that promise. ‘Everything’ll be alright. You’ll see. I’ll change. I promise I will,’ I told her. But I wasn’t sure if I meant every word of it.
We had a quiet Christmas that year. Carole went everywhere with me. She was paranoid I’d head off back up west to the ‘club’ where I’d got my last beating. How could I treat her like this?
About a month or so after I got out of hospital, Bill called up and insisted I bring Carole to a dinner dance he was organising at the Room At The Top club, in Ilford. There were tables with set places and more than half the crowd were in dicky bows and black dinner jackets. We were on a table with a number of old-time faces, including a friendly Irish bloke called Kenny. He homed in on me almost immediately after I sat down.
Kenny was at least six feet tall, and very thin with shoulder-length hair cut like Kevin Keegan’s when he was at Liverpool and FC Hamburg. He must have been in his late forties with sharp, chiselled features and brown eyes. He walked with a limp and had on lots of jewellery, bracelets and gold chains. He had absolutely no style and looked like a seventies fashion victim. His soft Irish accent made you think he was a laid-back kind of fella, but a nasty one-inch scar on his chin seemed to tell another story.
Kenny told me he sold used cars.
‘Bill says you’ve done a lot of jobs with him,’ he said, right in front of Carole, who was earwigging every word of our conversation.
‘Yeah,’ I replied, conscious that Carole was close by. ‘But I’ve given all that up now:’
‘Let’s have a chat later at the bar,’ muttered Kenny, more out of Carole’s range.
A couple of hours later – after the speeches and the dinner were over – this fella Kenny appeared alongside me at the bar as promised. And he came straight to the point.
‘I’ve got a proposition,’ he said in his soft Irish brogue. ‘More money than you could imagine.’
‘Not interested,’ I snapped back with a dry smile.
‘You sure?’
‘Abso-fuckin-lootly.’
‘It’s a very special job in Vegas.’
‘I said no way.’
‘Well, if you ever go Stateside, let me know.’
And I meant it at that moment. I had no intention of losing Carole or my life. The fight game was over. The risks were too high. I’d almost died barely a month earlier. I reckoned it was a sign from above, to get out while I still had my life intact. I turned and walked from Kenny straight back to Carole at the table. She’d hated every minute of the dinner dance. It just wasn’t her scene being stuck on a table, talking to a bunch of gangsters’ molls. I also knew she’d sensed my unhappiness. A few minutes later we got up and said our goodbyes. But just as I shook Kenny’s hand he slipped a card into my palm. I said nothing.
On the way out Carole asked me: ‘What was that all about with that bloke Kenny?’
‘Just a work thing, babe.’
What sort of work?’
‘Buildin’ stuff.’
I’m sure she didn’t believe a word I was saying.
Within weeks of meeting Kenny, another familiar problem appeared on the horizon: I was skint yet again. The recession was kicking into gear and work in the building trade was getting harder and harder to come by. But I’d made my decision not to fight and for the moment I had to stick to that.
Then me and Carole decided that perhaps we’d head out to Australia where Carole had some old school friends. We were both worried about our cash-flow problem. Heading for a new life might be the answer, although I’d naturally miss my family. I’d heard it wasn’t that hard to get building work there, and anything was better than rotting away in East London.
I even suggested to Carole that we pop into Los Angeles on the way and see my older bruv, John, who’d moved out there a couple of years earlier. In the back of my mind were Kenny’s words at that dinner dance. ‘If you’re ever in America, Son, give me a call.’
Back in East London my reputation as a hardnut was well known. One woman approached me in my local boozer and asked me to kill her husband – I laughed at her because that’s just not my game – but if he ever turns up dead in the near future I’ll certainly know who paid for it! I’ve also solved a few domestic disputes when blokes have been hitting their girlfriends or wives.
And then there’s the scourge of our society: drugs. One lady neighbour of my mum’s came knocking on her door when I was round for Sunday lunch one time. She was in a right state, tears rolling down her cheeks. She said a bunch of local crack dealers had moved into an empty council house round the corner and her fourteen-year-old boy had been hanging round with them and was now hooked on crack. Fourteen years old – that’s totally out of order. The lady says that her boy’s now so addicted to crack that he’s out thieving to pay for his habit and she’s scared he’ll end up inside if he’s not careful. Only the previous day this kid had nicked his own mum’s telly to get enough money for drugs.
‘I don’t want you to hurt him but can you sort it out, please?’ she asked me.
‘I’ll give it a go,’ I replied. Mum looked on proudly because she knew that I’d get it sorted.
I really felt for this poor lady. She was worried out of her mind and no-one deserves that sort of stress in their lives. She’d been friends with Mum for years and we both knew exactly what she was going through.
That night I got hold of a couple of mates and we headed round to the crack den. Two of us made out we were trying to score drugs when we knocked on the door.
‘Any chance of some gear?’ I asked through the door to a bloke with an African accent.
‘Only one can come in,’ was the reply.
As the door opened, I threw one of my finest left-handers and he went down like a sack of dog shit. I walked over his body and then we walked half way up the stairs to where we could hear more people on the first floor. Then I stopped and went back and grabbed the semi-conscious ‘doorman’, stood him up and put him in front of us as a shield in case the others were armed, which is often the case. ‘Come on you fucker,’ I said to the doorman. ‘We’re goin’ upstairs.’
They must have heard us because two younger blokes – one white and one black – came out of a door on the first floor and appeared at the top of the stairs. I shoved the doorman right in their path and produced the bats me and my mate had been carrying as weapons. It didn’t take them long to get the message. ‘We don’t want to see you lot round these parts no more. Scram!’ None of them said a word.
‘If I see you again I’ll kill you. This is just a taste of what’s to come. Comprendo?’
I could see from the looks on their faces that they were scared shitless. We turned and walked out. Then I went to look for that fourteen-year-old boy back at his mum’s house round the corner.
‘Is he in?’ I asked her when she answered the door.
‘Yeah, come in.’
‘I need to tell him what’s happened to his mates.’
The kid was in the front room watching TV – his mum had bought a new one on the HP. He had no idea who I was. I told him what I’d just done to the dealers and what I’d do to him if he ever thieved off his mum again. ‘Now empty your pockets,’ I ordered.
He pulled out £50 in cash. He’d obviously nicked something earlier that day and was planning another visit to the crack den. By now he was shaking like a leaf. I raised my voice even louder and looked really angrily at him. Then I switched to my most menacing look. It was the only way to deal with him. ‘That shit’ll kill you. You’ll end up like all the other silly fuckers round here – dead in the gutter. Do you hear me?’
The kid nodded his head so hard I thought it’d snap off at the hinges. Then he burst into tears. Next door his mum was crying in the kitchen. It was a very sad sight. But it had to be done.
I just kept saying over and over, ‘Are you listenin’ to what I’m sayin’?’
He nodded.
‘D’you love your mum?’ He nodded again.
‘Well, now you gotta prove it.’
I left them both cuddling in the kitchen. I’d done my bit. I could hear them still crying as I quietly closed their front door behind me. He was saying to her over and over, ‘I do love you, Mum, I do love you, Mum, I do love you, Mum.’
A couple of days later, the same woman came knocking on Mum’s door again. ‘He’s been good. He’s got himself a paper round,’ she told us. She leant up and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Thank you.’ That was it. There was no need to ever talk about it again.