Against All Odds: The Most Amazing True Life Story You'll Ever Read (12 page)

There was a good rapport among the various doormen at Charlie’s and I worked there for quite a long time and grew friendly with the other men. We bonded in a variety of ways. One year, for example, we had a competition to see which of us could shag the most women in twelve months. Because I had a history of success with women, I felt that I was in with more than a sporting chance. We all took the challenge very seriously, and at the end of the year we organised a bona fide ceremony with an Olympic-style podium and bronze, silver and gold medals. It was hilarious. Steve, who was a dead ringer for Tom Selleck as Magnum P.I., came first with forty; I came second and took silver with thirty-eight; and the bronze medal was shared by Billy Big Arms and Nicky No Neck who – for obvious reasons – couldn’t both fit on the third-place podium at the same time!

Although there was much less aggro at Charlie’s than at some of the other places I had worked, because I was small for a doorman, if anyone ever did want to pick on someone, they chose me. They lived to regret that. Because I didn’t weigh twenty stone they tended to seriously underestimate me. I looked smaller than I actually was, too, because I was usually standing next to behemoths. One of the doormen at Charlie’s, John (not his real name), was a big guy who was a bit of a bully and most of the doormen tried to avoid John because he was a massive dickhead, basically, with the emphasis on ‘massive’.

One night, John was off work and in the club. Of course, he got drunk and as inevitably as night follows day he started to cause trouble. This oversized moron was threatening the barman and harassing women by putting his hands up their skirts and abusing their boyfriends.

The bar was equipped with a red light that went off when a panic button was pushed and, when that happened, we had to get into the bar quickly and deal with the situation. The guy I was working with pretended not to see the red light, because we all knew what sort of reputation the drunken bully had and most of the doormen were scared of John. But I went down, because I wasn’t scared. I had been stabbed and beaten so many times by now – what difference did one more time make? Now, John was built like a tank, so fearless or not I had a moment of relief when he left the club by himself. But then he walked straight back in again, because the doormen were too afraid to stop him.

Now I knew that it was my time to shine.

I went and stood in front of John and looked up at his red face. I was standing two steps up from him, but he was still towering over me. ‘Where are you going, mate?’

‘I’m going inside.’ He belched beer fumes down on to me.

‘No, you fucking ain’t.’

‘Says who?’

‘Me. Get out, mate. Time to go home.’

‘Fuck off, you little prick.’

I knew I didn’t have the luxury of time to decide what to do so I hit John with a straight right hand and knocked the gigantic fucker out with one punch. He keeled over like a felled mountain gorilla and lay there sweating and twitching on the tiled floor. It took four of us to lift him up and drag him outside. It was like a scene from
Gulliver’s Travels.

Because Charlie’s was a respectable establishment, the police were called, and I was sure that I was going to get nicked, because someone was going to have a very sore head in the morning.

Fortunately for me, John was so embarrassed about having been laid flat by a bloke of about half his weight that he didn’t tell the coppers. But my colleagues told everyone they knew, and my reputation and prestige grew exponentially until guys I didn’t even know were coming up to me on the street and shaking my hand, saying, ‘Well done, mate!’

I could tell you that I did not care what other people thought about me in this particular case but I would be lying; I was delighted and, the way I felt right then, the bigger, tougher and harder they were, the more ready I was to take them on. What did I have to lose? I lived in a shitty council flat. I had no wife, no kids, no loved ones, few real friends and nobody to care about or to care for me.

This was when I came to the attention of men who had a need for private security, including a lot of ex-military types. Often it was a case of people who had to carry a lot of bank bonds or cash from one place to another, and they needed protection. I was more than qualified to provide it.

Now that I was a known and celebrated quantity on the street, I also did a lot of private security work taking care of Arab businessmen visiting London. These gents are Muslims so they are not supposed to drink and they are not supposed to run around with loose women, so of course they do both things as often as possible whenever they visit decadent England where anything goes. They love parties, sex, drugs, booze and general rock ’n’ roll and they need people to protect them as they trip about from one nightclub to the next. These wealthy Arabs only go to the finest places in London, and the upmarket establishments are willing to pay handsomely to make sure that their VIP guests are well looked after.

I did not care what my rich Arab friends did with their personal lives and I was happy to provide protection for the generous sums that I was offered. Girls and drugs were on offer too, but I had never had any trouble getting girls on my own and drugs still did not interest me. The job was a doddle compared to working the doors. The clients would go and party in exclusive bars, or in the VIP areas of fancy clubs about town. My job was, firstly, not to let anyone know that I was there and, secondly, to take care of the money that they were carrying with them, arrange for a driver to take them to the airport or do whatever it was that they needed. Because I wasn’t an enormous man, I was often picked because I didn’t attract attention, which was appealing to people who wanted to keep a low profile.

Because my Arab wards were rich and fancily dressed and perfumed and not generally shy about flashing their money about, they often aggravated the rest of the drinkers and party-goers because the girls were all over them like flies on honey, ignoring Joe Bloggs in his best shirt and cheap cologne for the richies in their Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. Sometimes Joe Bloggs would take a pop at one of them and would have to be bodily removed before trouble broke out. Then, angry, he would turn on whoever happened to be in his vicinity and take his rage out on them instead. Fights were frequent and bloody, the way they tend to be when jealousy and male egos are involved. You could understand it a little; there they were, the ordinary men, standing in a queue for hours to get into the hottest new nightclub, when these rich visitors would pull up in their massively expensive cars and walk past the queues and into the clubs with their own private security and any pretty girl they wanted ready to drop her knickers whenever they clicked their fingers. They had their own areas inside with their own champagne and the best cocaine money could buy. Money talks.

So who the fuck did they think they were?

That was the way people felt about them. I could sympathise, to an extent, but it wasn’t my job to be understanding. I had to look after my foreign friends and, if that meant breaking a few noses along the way, so be it. I was glad to oblige.

London is a city that has everything. There are rich people, poor people, good people and bad people. There are honest people, white-collar crooks and petty criminals. There are also a lot of people who fall pretty much across the whole spectrum. Increasingly, my job was to provide security to the sort of individuals who really needed it, because they had plenty of enemies.

Soon my confidence grew so high that not only was I not frightened, but I also became a serious bully. I enjoyed seeing the fear in the eyes of an adversary just before I punched him out or knocked him against the wall. I liked the sight and smell of the blood running out of his broken nose and down his face. I laughed when he pissed his pants out of fear. I liked it all. I was always the smallest doorman but I was also the fiercest. What I was saying each and every time was: ‘Right: I have been frightened all my life. I’ve been bullied all my life. I’ve had enough. You’re the toughest guy in here; let’s do it.’

Oh, the fun I had. There are too many examples to relate, but I can give you some.

On one occasion, I was working at the Channel Club in London when I irritated some drug dealers. I had taken some drugs from the wrong dealer and I refused to give them back. This fella had some serious friends, and they arranged for a drive-by an hour or so later to show that they were not happy. There were six of us on the door, and when they pulled the gun on us we all tried to get through the door and got stuck on our way, like in a comedy scene in an old slapstick film. They fired at us but it was just buckshot, which stung more than hurt – and anyway the bulletproof vests took care of most of it.

A few nights later, I had to evict a troublemaker from the club. I had him in a headlock in my arm when he twisted around and bit a chunk out of my side. You’ve got to keep your tetanus shots up to date in jobs like that.

A few months later again, I was working the door at a rough place in East London. I had to throw out a troublemaker and take his gun away from him. This was the sort of lowlife who might really hurt someone, so disarming him was a priority. It might have been a rough joint, but that didn’t mean that the owners wanted any of their customers to be hurt. This savage waited all night for me with his screwdriver at the ready, and when I came out he ran at me with it and stabbed me. I was hurt, obviously, but he came off very much second best, because I just grabbed him in a headlock and ran him into some nearby railings so hard that I fractured his skull. I heard it crunch; I was happy to. It was music to my ears. I did not feel even remotely sorry for him when he started to cry like a little girl or when his jeans suddenly darkened with piss. I even liked the metallic scent of his fresh blood in the cold night air.

When the police came, I was bleeding from my stomach and more or less holding my guts in with my hands to stop them from spilling all over the pavement. I had not been all that badly wounded, but you can’t be too careful. I told the coppers what had happened and they nodded knowingly. ‘Look, mate, go and get sorted out and we’ll say we found him like this.’

The London police know the way the world works and they don’t mind playing the game.

Yes, I was on a roll. And despite or perhaps even because of my achievements in those areas where violence is king, I was having a great deal of success with women, especially women in uniform. I had a succession of policewomen girlfriends who seemed to be very turned on by the notion of dating a guy from the wrong side of the tracks, a guy who knew plenty of people on the wrong side of the law. Traditionally, coppers don’t particularly like doormen, which meant that I was forbidden fruit. I think that I was attracted to the fact that they were strong women with authority who were not afraid to wield it. One after another, my girlfriends during this period of my life were women who came home and had to hang up their blue uniforms before getting dolled up to face the night.

As a result of my various injuries – most of which were much less exotic than getting a zip stuck on my knob – I often had to have tetanus injections, stitches and general patching up. I have lots of scars to this day, reminding me of some events that I am proud of, and others that I would rather forget. And while I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed getting injured, exactly, I did learn that the fear of getting hurt is by far more debilitating than actually being hurt itself. As Roosevelt said, ‘The only thing to fear is fear itself.’ Once that fear is gone, what is left is sheer, raw animal aggression. With the will to win, the heart to win and an utter lack of fear, you are going to win. It is as simple as that.

T
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A
s I was a trusted bodyguard by now and a person who had shown his mettle on numerous occasions, my friends in East London started to offer me new and challenging work that came with a great deal of responsibility – looking after their women. They had three types of women in their care – their wives and girlfriends, and then the prostitutes who worked in the brothels that they ran, often in return for vast profits, because it is true what they say: it is the oldest profession in the world and the market is always there. Both my associates’ girlfriends and prostitutes needed protection, the former from jealous rivals of their men and the latter from aggressive punters, rival pimps and general scumbags who don’t understand that working girls are ordinary women with the same rights to protection and physical integrity as anyone else.

One of the people I knew hired me to watch over his girlfriend because she had a stalker and was, understandably, very disturbed to know that an unhinged man was watching her all the time and waiting for his opportunity to do whatever it was he wanted to do to her. One night I was sleeping on the lady’s couch in her fancy house when her stalker turned up with a knife and managed to let himself in by popping the double-glazed unit out of the kitchen window and crawling through. He was clearly mad, rolling his eyes and making wild proclamations. I woke up and approached him, telling him to fuck off or take the consequences. He tried to get me with the weapon, but I managed to get the knife from him and chased him out of the flat. I felt that I had earned my money on that contract – although I probably wasn’t supposed to have fallen asleep.

Because prostitution is illegal, the women are often reluctant to call on the police whenever anything goes wrong and, even if they do, by then it is usually too late for the police to do anything about it. Furthermore, because of the nature of the business that prostitutes are engaged in, they are often treated without a great deal of sympathy by the police and the general public, many of whom seem to feel that they have got whatever is coming to them. All of that means that private security is hugely important for working girls who know very well how vulnerable they are. Because I worked in a lot of different clubs all over London, I saw every aspect of the sex industry, which is one of Britain’s biggest businesses, with customers and sellers from literally every walk of life. Brothels offer a relatively cut-and-dried service where everyone knows what is being bought and sold and, of course, everyone knows where brothels are and how they operate, although they look likely to remain illegal for the foreseeable future.