Wild Thing (19 page)

As soon as one hero left the scene at the Middlesex and Herts Country Club, he was inevitably replaced by another. Harry Boyd, as I’ll call him, was about 35 years old, 6 ft 6 in. tall, with big broad shoulders and an equally big mouth. The minute he set foot in the club, I just knew he was going to cause grief. I shouldn’t have let him in, but the other doorman seemed to know him, so I didn’t wish to appear rude by excluding him for no reason. If I had barred everybody I didn’t like the look of, there wouldn’t have been too many females in the club and certainly no men. With a heavy heart I welcomed Boyd in, and once he had disappeared inside I asked the door staff what they knew about him. They told me that Boyd was an unlicensed fighter, a keep-fit fanatic and, despite his supposed fighting ability, he had a reputation for carrying and using a blade. Two hours later the head waitress called me to an incident at the balcony bar. When I arrived, she said that a big man had been touching the other waitresses’ backsides. This was a distasteful but not uncommon occurrence in the club, as the female staff all wore very short skirts as part of their uniform. I asked the waitress to point out the guilty party, and she led me to Harry Boyd. When I told him he would be ejected if he touched another member of staff, he denied laying his hands on anybody. I explained that I wasn’t sitting in judgement of him, I was telling him plain and simple that if he did it again, he would be out. Boyd looked at me, put his hand out to shake mine and said, ‘I will apologise to the waitress and it won’t happen again.’ I ignored the offer to shake his hand and called the waitress over. ‘I’m sorry for offending you,’ Boyd said when she arrived. The waitress acknowledged his apology and went about her business.

‘Drink your drink,’ I said. ‘You’re going out now.’

‘But you said that if I did it again, I’d be out,’ Boyd replied.

‘I know, but now I’m just saying get out, so leave,’ I said, pointing to the door. Boyd got up and walked out of the club without saying another word.

The following week I was standing near the bar and saw Boyd walking towards me. ‘Am I all right to come in?’ he said when he reached me.

‘You’re in, so you must be,’ I replied. ‘But if you misbehave, you’ll soon be put out.’

‘You fancy yourself, don’t you?’ Boyd said.

‘Let’s just say I’m confident,’ I replied. ‘If you want to have a go, son, we can go outside.’

Boyd declined my offer and walked away. I kept my eye on him throughout the evening, but he sat quietly at a table without troubling anybody. A couple of nights later Boyd came to the club with two other guys. Both were muscle-bound bodybuilders and over 6 ft tall. The door staff manning the front door wouldn’t let them in because they refused to be searched. The manager asked me to tell the men to leave the premises as things were getting rather heated. When I got to the front door, I told the men they were wasting their time arguing as they were not going to be allowed in. Boyd started shouting abuse, so I walked towards him. One of his friends grabbed a doorman around the neck from behind, so I punched him in the face. He released the doorman and staggered backwards before crashing into a set of double glass doors. The third man ran at me, but I head-butted him in the face before he had a chance to assault me, and he went down. Turning to Boyd, I said, ‘You have caused all this, you piece of shit.’ Unbeknown to me, Boyd had a knife strapped to his forearm in a sheath that was hidden by his shirt. As he tried to release the knife and let it slip into his hand, I punched him twice in quick succession. Boyd fell awkwardly, tried to get up but collapsed in a heap. By this time the first man that I had struck had got to his feet and was aiming karate kicks at me. I ran at him, but he turned and fled outside into the garden. I gave chase, kicked his legs from under him and he fell over.

As I stood over him, he began shouting, ‘Help, no! Help, no!’ I kicked and stamped on him until he fell silent. I then walked back inside as Boyd was getting to his feet. I punched him as hard as I could. The sound of his cheekbone snapping made others in the vicinity grimace and turn their heads. I knew it wouldn’t be long before an ambulance and the police arrived, so I made myself scarce.

The following day I telephoned the manager and was assured that the police had taken very little interest in the incident. ‘Boyd and his mates were carted away in an ambulance,’ he said. ‘The police scribbled down a few notes and then left. I haven’t seen or heard from them since.’

I returned to work the following night, and no more was said. Then, six weeks later, I was upstairs in the balcony-bar area when the manager approached me. ‘It’s the police, Lew,’ he said. ‘They are downstairs and wish to talk to you.’

As I walked into reception, four detectives in cheap suits approached me, asked me to confirm my identity and then arrested me for assaulting Boyd and his two friends. ‘Can I take my car?’ I asked as we walked onto the car park. ‘It will save you bringing me back when this is cleared up.’ To my surprise, the detectives agreed, but I had to make the journey to Harrow police station sandwiched between their vehicles. When we arrived, I was taken into a room and interviewed. I couldn’t believe that Boyd, a knife-wielding bully, and his equally violent friends had made a complaint and the police were taking it seriously. I was charged later that night with three counts of causing actual bodily harm. Over the next few weeks and months I made several appearances at Harrow Magistrates’ Court until finally the day of my trial arrived. When Boyd was called to give his evidence, the magistrate gasped and remarked, ‘I thought the defendant was an exceptionally large man, but Mr Boyd is, if he will excuse my saying so, enormous.’ Everybody in the court laughed politely, except for me. I was thinking it was a pity they didn’t know how big his mouth was.

Boyd claimed that he had suffered a wound to the back of his head when I had struck him with a metal cosh or iron bar. I had then beaten him around the face with it, which had resulted in him suffering a broken jaw. When his two friends were called in to give their evidence, they supported his story and said they too had been beaten up by me. I could see the magistrate looking at me and then looking at these three giants. I was doing my best to make myself look as small as possible in the witness box. My head was half-buried in my hunched-up shoulders, and I slipped so far down the bench my knees were only inches from the floor. At one point during the proceedings he asked the prosecution if they were sure that I was the only person involved in allegedly assaulting the three men. When the prosecution stated that was indeed the case, the magistrate remarked that he found that very hard to believe. Various witnesses from the club gave evidence and confirmed that no weapon had been used by me at any time during the incident. After deliberating for no more than a few minutes, the magistrate found me not guilty and awarded me the costs that I had incurred as a result of the prosecution.

I continued to work at the Middlesex and Herts Country Club, but I had done my job so well that the troublemakers stayed away and it become boring. I felt like I needed a fresh challenge, so I began looking for another club to run. I started working occasional nights on the door of a hotel in Greenford, west London. This place was rough, really fucking rough. Even the cockroaches that infested the place wore steel-toecapped boots. Neville Sheen, Dave Young and I had been asked to work there because the previous door team had lost control of the place. It attracted so much trouble that the police made a point of coming in to survey the carnage every 30 minutes. For reasons known only to himself, Charlie Wilson, the former Great Train Robber, used to drink in there. I liked Charlie a lot. Nothing fazed the guy. He would sit at the bar drinking his drink while glasses and furniture flew all around him, and he wouldn’t appear even to notice.

A man dressed in a ridiculous-looking white-fur full-length coat came to the door one night and said, ‘I don’t pay, boys. I am down to Charlie Wilson.’

The man had the manners of a pig, and I told him so, adding, ‘I’m no boy, and I don’t give a fuck who you are down to.’

The man was a shit gangster but a fantastic actor. He knew all of the poses to strike and all of his lines. ‘You don’t understand, sonny,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I’m coming in, I’m not paying and you’re not going to stop me.’

I don’t know if the puddle he landed in ruined his white fur coat, but judging by the amount of blood he lost I am fairly certain his nose was badly broken. When I told Charlie about the altercation with his friend, he asked me to describe him, and as soon as I mentioned the polar-bear coat, he howled with laughter. ‘Nice one, Lew,’ he said. ‘Let me buy you a drink.’

I stood at the bar enjoying a drink with Charlie, but after a few minutes I was called to the front door. One of the biggest men I have ever encountered stood outside with a tarty-looking blonde. The guy was 6 ft 8 in. and very well built. I was standing in the reception doorway, he was standing two steps below me and I was still looking up at him. ‘I’m with Charlie,’ he said.

‘Don’t tell me. You don’t pay to get in,’ I replied.

The man looked at me as if asking him to pay to get in was a crime. ‘I don’t pay to get in anywhere,’ he said, ‘especially shitholes like this.’

‘It’s OK,’ I replied. ‘On second thoughts you don’t have to hand over any money.’

The man grinned at his air-headed girlfriend and put his foot on the step. I asked him where he thought he was going. ‘In the hotel,’ he replied. ‘You said I didn’t have to pay.’

‘What I actually said was you don’t have to hand over any money. The reason you don’t have to hand over any money is that you’re not coming in.’

The man put his hand in his pocket, so I hit him with a beautiful left hook under the jaw. I was expecting him to shake his head, roar and start throwing punches at me and the other doormen. Instead this giant of a man went down like a felled oak tree. I wasn’t keen on letting him get up, so I began kicking him in the head. His girlfriend started screaming and the other doormen tried pulling me off him, but I just kept kicking him. The man’s blood was spattered all over the walls, his girlfriend’s dress and over me and the other doormen. He continued struggling and I continued hitting him until he lay motionless.

When I was satisfied that he was not going to get up, I dragged him across the car park and left him lying behind his car. As I walked back towards the hotel, the man got up from the ground and started shouting abuse at me. When I turned around, I saw that he was propping himself up on the back of a white Vauxhall. ‘Wanker!’ he shouted. ‘Fucking wanker! Come and have another go.’ I didn’t need a second invitation. I ran over to the man and unloaded a barrage of punches that left him sprawled on the car. I grabbed him by the hair and kept banging his head until the back window was covered with his blood. When I released him, he slipped to the floor and, despite efforts from his girlfriend, he remained there for 20 minutes. When he eventually did regain consciousness, he was unable to walk. I watched him crawl on all fours to his car while his girlfriend gripped him by the collar of his shirt. It looked as if she was taking a rather large dog for a walk. When they reached his car, his girlfriend opened the passenger door, he crawled in and then she got in the driver’s seat and sped away.

The police were due to make their 30-minute visit at any second. There was blood splashed all around the car park and all over a couple of cars. I asked one of the bar staff to fetch buckets of hot soapy water and flush all evidence of the altercation away. Just as he finished, a police car pulled up. ‘Everything OK, lads?’ one of the officers asked.

‘Certainly,’ I replied. ‘Somebody was sick, that’s all. The bar staff have washed it away.’ The police officers laughed, wished us well and drove away. I was relieved to see them go, but little did I know I would be even more relieved to see them return before the night was out. Just before closing time a fight broke out at the bar. To be honest, I would have been more alarmed if one hadn’t. The grudges, menacing stares and threats that were routinely exchanged between customers would fester throughout the evening and generally come to a head when the bar closed. Neville and Dave said that they would go and break it up, so I remained at the front door.

The shouting, screaming and sounds of furniture and glasses being smashed would generally subside after a minute or two, but this night it just got louder and louder. I ran inside and saw that everybody in the main room appeared to be fighting. Dave was lying on the floor unconscious, the remnants of a wooden table all around his head. Neville’s face was unrecognisable; he had been glassed, and all I could see were his eyes and bloodstained teeth. The main aggressors appeared to be three stocky guys who were throwing punches, glasses and furniture at everything and everybody. As I moved towards them, one picked up a stool and charged at me, but he fell over a body on the floor and landed at my feet. After stamping his head into the beer- and blood-soaked carpet, I went after his two friends. I began fighting with them and a girl joined in, jumping on my back, scratching my face and pulling my hair. We were all pushed forward, and suddenly there seemed to be police everywhere. I could hear the barman shouting, ‘The doormen have been squirting people with ammonia! The doormen have got weapons!’ I later learnt that he was an ex-policeman.

After talking to the barman, the police arrested Neville and put him in an ambulance. I went to the rear of the vehicle and through the open doors asked him if there was anything he wanted me to do. Neville threw his head forward and began rocking back and forth, while moaning loudly.

‘Are you OK?’ the policeman asked him.

‘It’s just stomach cramp. I get it all the time. It will pass.’

Assured that Neville was in no danger, the policeman became less interested in his prisoner and began writing notes in his pocket book. I stood in front of Neville and tried to reassure him about the injuries to his face. The policeman no longer had a clear view, so Neville slipped a handgun, a bottle of ammonia and a knuckleduster from his coat under the ambulance seat, leaned back and breathed a sigh of relief. I had guessed he was up to something because I had never known him to have stomach cramps. When the police officer wasn’t looking, I grabbed the weapons, put them in my coat and walked away. I wiped the weapons clean of fingerprints and hid them near the delivery bay at the rear of the hotel before going back inside. We arranged to have them picked up the following day.