The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) (30 page)

M
IKE
T
YSON CALLED
“Big” Joe Egan “the toughest white man on the planet”. And he wasn’t kidding. Joe was a
phenomenal
and ferocious boxer and by the age of twenty-four had recorded over eighty amateur wins and seven Irish titles, as well as a Golden Gloves championship title. Originally from Dublin, Joe fought a total of eleven times wearing the green vest of Ireland, going the distance with Lennox Lewis and beating future WBA champion Bruce Seldon.

On his route to becoming professional, Joe joined Mike Tyson’s training camp in the Catskill Mountains, USA, and became good friends with the champion. However, Joe’s dreams of becoming a world-class professional boxer were suddenly shattered following a serious car accident on the night of his second professional fight. And then his personal life hit the headlines when his fiancée, Irish model Lisa Murphy, left Joe for
Riverdance
and
Lord of the Dance
star Michael Flatley. The downward spiral continued with a new pub business venture pitting Joe against protection racketeers armed with guns, axes and machetes. Joe was shot and later charged with attempted murder.

In May 2004, after an absence from the ring of twelve years, at thirty-eight years old Joe Egan made his boxing comeback. Joe is now also an actor and author. This chapter, taken from his
autobiography
Big Joe Egan, The Toughest White Man on the Planet
, briefly chronicles a number of episodes in his life as it starts to spiral out of control and he gets involve in the pub business, racketeering and crime.

Well, when I came over to this country [the UK] first with Paddy Finn, Paddy had a man working for him, Noel Delaney; he’s since dead now, God rest him. Now I’d worked in Dublin Airport with Noel’s brother, Eamon Delaney, without realizing they were brothers. I knew Noel when I came over as I was introduced to him. So when I eventually came over to live in Birmingham, me and Noel became close friends and it turned out that I knew his brother.

When I moved from the Dubliner and come over to the Lyndhurst, I still was only two years in the pub trade, and I still wasn’t the most knowledgeable to run a big pub. But I had ambition and enthusiasm and I had confidence that I could do it. I also had the backing of my business partner, Thomas McGeough, so we’d got the money, we’d got the muscle and we’d got the enthusiasm. But Noely was very, very knowledgeable in the running of pubs because he’d been in the pub trade so many years. He knew the ins and outs of the trade. So Paddy, fair play to him, allowed Noely to come over and work with us in the Lyndhurst as well as the Dubliner. And Noely used to come from Acocks Green, work in the Dubliner and then come over to the Lyndhurst. And Noely and myself became great friends. He was the hardest-working man I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen a man could work as hard as that man. Unbelievable. One day his son Sean took his car and Noely cycled from Acocks Green over to Erdington. It’s a good cycle. In his late sixties, and he cycled over not to let me down, to come over and work in the pub. Just an unbelievable man.

And it was through Noely that I met his and Eamon’s brother John. John and Sheila are Ruth’s mum and dad, and Ruth is Noel’s niece.

I hadn’t met Ruth yet!

It was funny when we met John. Me and Noely were after going down to get change in the Post Office and we met John there. Even though they were brothers and he only lived round the corner from the pub, Noel had never spoken to me about John. Noel used to come over to the pub, very efficient, hard working, and just get on with his work. He was my friend, one of my closest friends, but he never spoke about his personal life – so next thing I’m introduced to his brother. I said, “Well, come up to the pub, use the pub.”

So John came up with his wife Sheila and I became great friends with them, and it was through them that Ruth came up to the pub. She came up one afternoon.

Ruth was working in Erdington in the Halifax. The pub had a particularly bad reputation when we took it over, but we were cleaning it up. And Ruth had heard her mum and dad talking about myself and she was looking forward to meeting me. My relationship with Lisa was over at this stage. And to start with there was nothing like that between me and Ruth; we were just friends and our families were friends.

One day I just asked her out. We went for a meal and stuff. And suddenly I’m courting her! But, at that particular time, I had all the battles with the brewery and everything else and I wasn’t too well. And, fair play to her, she helped with everything, because I took very, very sick as a result of everything that happened.

My youngest brother, Connolly, had come over to help us in the pub at different times, to give us his knowledge of the trade as well and to help me. And, my youngest brother is a very good-looking bog and I actually thought that Ruth fancied him. And we joke and I still tease her about that to this day.

The pub, the battle, the court battle, the relationship battle –
everything
was just coming on top. I had very, very low self-esteem, everything was just getting too much. And then I thought I was going to lose my house in Ireland that was in Lisa’s name, so I was trying to hold on to the house; and I was living in England because the brewery were trying to evict me. It was just getting too much. And then it was costing me a fortune in legal fees, with a solicitor in Ireland fighting the battle with Lisa, and a solicitor in England fighting the battle with the brewery. So I was paying out any money I was making and any money that I’d saved in legal fees.

There was a barman in the pub called John O’Sullivan. He was from Cork but he’d been married to a Dublin girl called Kelsh, whose brother Patrick I knew. John had broken up his relationship in Dublin and had come to Birmingham to work for me. One day, his sister came into the pub with her boyfriend who was a car dealer, a guy called Robin Weaver. He offered me an opportunity to do some business with him. Let him conduct his business in the pub and park his cars in the car park of me and my business partner’s pub.

So I thought, “Well, it’d be an extra income if he spends his money in the pub and the people he’s doing business with will be spending their money in the pub.” I tried to encourage as much business into the pub as I possibly could.

Then he said he was doing hooky cars, and would I mind him parking hooky cars on the car park, and he would throw me some extra money. Well, at that particular time, I was at a very low ebb. I was also in a very bad financial state. I was working eighteen hours a day, nineteen to twenty hours a day some days. I was the first up in the morning, I was the last to go to bed at night, and I was the last to get paid. And I was paying all this money out in legal fees, which I deeply begrudged paying.

Now this opportunity had come up to get involved in something I’d never done before in my life. When my back was to the wall a number of times, I’d always made ends meet. But at this moment I was very bitter, I was very sick, I was very twisted and I was very confused. And I decided to do a quick crime so I could use the money to pay legal fees, to pay Lisa to leave the house. Because I thought what she was doing to me was a bigger crime, making me pay for a house that she hadn’t paid for, so my money’s been paying for the house twice.

So I’ve gone and got involved in stolen cars.

At the time I thought, “Well, it’s easy money.” I thought that a legal crime was being done to me, so I’ll use criminal money to pay that off. My intentions were just to pay the £19,700 – the £15,000 to Lisa, £2,700 to her solicitor and the £2,000 to my solicitor. So all I wanted to do was to get that £19,700. Anyway, getting the money was pretty easy – to tell you the truth, the cars were flying in and flying out – I suddenly realized I was breaking my heart working in the pub for sixteen to seventeen hours a day and yet I’ve got this £19,700 in a matter of weeks. And then the greed kicked in.

I’ve never been greedy in my life, but, until it actually happens to you, you can’t explain. It just takes control. I’d got this £19,700 that had come so easy to me. My fortune was somebody else’s misfortune and I regret it to this day and I’ll probably regret to my dying day what I actually did because I’d had a car stolen off me once, and it’s something that you work hard for, for somebody else to take, or for somebody else to damage. It’s not nice, so for me to suddenly be involved with people taking other people’s belongings, it’s something I’ve got to live with.

And it was greed. I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t take drugs, I like to have full control of what I do. So at that moment in time I had full control of what I was doing. But the greed was controlling me.

I couldn’t stop because of greed. It’s easy money.

And I regret ever doing it. I’ve paid my debt to society, I’ve done my time. It’s not nice. It’s one of the seven deadly sins, and for somebody that has got great willpower and great determination, great strength of character like me to give in so easy … That’s it.

It’s deadly. And it just takes over. And it’s horrible.

Seven months before, the guy that had shot me and the old man had gone missing for months. People had scoured everywhere looking for him but he’d gone off the face of the planet. Now he walked up and handed himself in at a police station. Five people went to identify him for doing the shooting because he’d no mask. He walked free after thirty-six hours.

A female police sergeant phoned me from Sutton Coldfield Court. She said, “Joe, I’ve bad news for you. The courts won’t let us hold Jake Welch for more than thirty-six hours. We’re going to have to release him. He’s back. Be careful.”

I said, “Thank you for your advice, sergeant.”

That very week, on the Sunday the pub was busy. My
fourteen-year-old
nephew, my sister’s boy, had come over from America and I’d gone out for a meal with him. When I got back, one of my barmaids was panicking.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, we’ve a fellow on the phone, he’s saying, ‘I’m going to kill everybody, shoot everybody.’”

I said, “Look, it’s all right. If I had a pound for everyone that was going to shoot me, I’d be a rich man. It’s only talk.”

The phone rings again. I pick up the phone. It’s Jake Welch.

Now he’s the one that’s already shot me, so it’s not a man that’s making idle threats. But now I don’t want to show any weakness.

He said, “I’m going to shoot you, I’m going to blow the bollocks out of you. I’m going to blast the brains out of your skull.”

“Yeah, OK, OK, bring it on,” I said. “Don’t talk about it, just do it. If you want to do it, come on, bring it on.”

Ruth has picked up the extension in the bar and she’s listening to this. When we hang up, she’s panicking.

I’m saying, “It’s all right, Ruth, calm down, don’t worry.”

So I’ve now got my fourteen-year-old nephew staying with me, and Ruth and me frightened, and it’s a fear like I’d never gone through before. I’d been afraid before, but now I was afraid for them, whereas before I had just been afraid for myself. It was a fear I couldn’t handle, plus I was weakened, I was sick. I didn’t know what to do.

The police had come to the pub because they’d been called by the barmaid. She made a statement to them. Then they asked me to make a formal statement. I said, “Five people have made statements against this guy before. He walked free after thirty-six hours. Five people went to identify him. He walked free. I’d state the fact that he’s a grass. He’s working hand in cuff with you, so I’m not going to make a statement against him.”

That was on the Sunday evening.

On the Tuesday morning, in the early hours, bosh! Straight through the doors. The full armed police. I was in bed. They’d come up the stairs, all boiler-suited up with their machine guns and
everything
else, they were screaming and they were shouting. It was frightening. My nephew was up. They were searching everywhere upstairs. They had a search warrant for car documents, but they were really looking for something else. My dogs were going mad on the roof. My nephew said, “Can I take the dogs down?”

I repeated what they said: “Nobody leaves until they leave.”

My cleaning staff soon arrived to clean the pub and the police made them sit downstairs, as they were searching downstairs now. They closed the door on the office and came up to call me out. Now don’t forget they’ve got us sitting. Everywhere they went and searched upstairs, we were in their presence, but downstairs they had made me sit with two CID officers in the lounge. By now my barmaids have also arrived.

Next of all, I could hear the police screaming and shouting at the back. They brought me out and they produced a gun.

They said, “What’s that?”

“A handgun.”

“What are these?”

“Bullets.”

‘‘What’s the gun doing under your roof?”

“It’s a set-up.” They hadn’t found it in my presence.

They know they’ve fucked up. “Look,” I said, “that gun’s found at the back. The delivery staff, everybody, now has access to that area.”

So they give me bail. But now I’ve rubbed them up the wrong way. They’re really determined to get me now. They had a fair idea there were hooky cars being done. It didn’t warrant surveillance. But, because they’ve fucked up on the gun, it’s now personal. And I’m warned by a retired senior police officer that they’re out to get me.

They’ve put every sort of surveillance camera on top of the flats. They produced photographs of me in cars. They put me under surveillance for months.

Eventually, they capture a guy who was delivering two cars to Ireland. He was driving one, a BMW, and another fellow was driving the other, a Jeep. Instead of going straight to the boat at Holyhead, the BMW guy’s took a diversion to go and see a barmaid who used to work with me up in Wales that I had to let go because she was a bit too promiscuous, which was causing trouble! She was seeing a couple of customers and causing problems with their marriages and everything else, so I had to let her go.

He was thinking that the guy in the Shogun Jeep was going to take two hours to get to the boat, and he could do it in an hour, so he could divert and see this girl and get to Holyhead in time to catch the ferry to Dublin.

So he’s spotted speeding in this 850 BMW. The registration was B1 WOW because the car was a wow. He takes the chase; they put the stingers down. He goes into the ditch.

Instead of coming out and saying that it was his stolen car, he tells the whole operation. Now not only do they have photographs of me getting in and out of cars that were hooky, but they’ve also got a grass.

But of course I didn’t know about this.

They’ve hit my business partner at his house and arrested him. They’ve got me, and they’ve arrested my brother Connolly, who had nothing to do with anything.

Then they offered us a deal.

You know, when you’re a kid and you’re in a fight and you get somebody in a headlock and the guy goes, “I’ll give you the draw,” you know they’ll give you the draw because you’ve got the win.

So, when the police offered us a deal, I said to Tommy, “No, don’t take any deal. It’s like the draw when we were kids. I’m not going to take the draw when I’ve got the win.” It was a stupid childish mentality.

He said, “Take the deal.”

“I’m not taking any deal.”

So Tommy, my best friend, said, “I’ll go with you Joe, but I think we should take the deal.” If I’d fought it and I hadn’t won, and he’d taken the deal he’d have felt bad. So he went with me.