Bouncers and Bodyguards (12 page)

My face became quite well known around town thanks to my television appearances as a fanzine editor covering local football for
Players Inc
. magazine, and I found it easier to jump the large queues outside the bars in Newcastle due to my new-found fame. I struck up quite a few friendships with the lads on the doors and would often miss a round because I found myself putting the world to rights outside with the ‘men in black’.

By the time I had reached twenty, I was over six feet tall and a handy fifteen stone. As well as football, I had started to attend local boxer Glenn McCrory’s gym, where I started to learn the noble art of boxing. I had also invested in a set of weights and a weights bench. When I was at college, I had bounced at a few roof-top parties in exchange for a few quid and as much beer as I could drink, and, to be honest, even though I had generally sorted out any bother, I still hadn’t imagined that this would be my future career.

It all started one Christmas at a bar called Masters opposite St Nicholas Church in Newcastle city centre. Gary, or ‘Lurch’ as he was known to a lot of the punters, asked if I fancied earning a few quid over the festive period. One of the lads had broken his wrist, and Gary wanted me to fill in. I was game enough and couldn’t think of a better way of earning a bit of cash than standing in a bar listening to all of the up-to-date tunes and looking at all of those beautiful ladies. My first shift was a Thursday night, which, as anyone in Newcastle will tell you, is as busy as a weekend in most other cities. I was dressed in a white shirt, black pants, Doc Martens and a black bomber jacket. I felt and looked the business. I wasn’t at all nervous as Gary introduced me to the lads who would be watching my back – and vice versa. First and foremost there was Gary, then Irish Buzz, Wrighty Dave and John Lillico, who remains one of my closest friends to this day. What a night! There were two key positions – front door and back door – with buzzers and flashing lights to let you know when and where a fight had broken out. There were six fights in just over four hours – and that was a quiet night according to the lads. I’ve got to admit, though, that I loved every minute of it.

The festive season is crazy. Once a year, drinkers swoop on city centres up and down the country and drink too much, eat too much, score with the opposite sex, empty the contents of their bowels and stomachs on any available footpath or shop doorway, and generally do things that they wouldn’t normally do. Up until that Christmas, I had been doing exactly the same thing, and it was only then that I realised that there was more to life than spending my hard-earned cash on booze and puking it up.

Christmas never changes: it seems to take ages to come around, then it’s all over in a flash and you wonder what all the panic was about. January on the door is one of the quietest months of the year, as people are often in debt and have to stop in to sort out their finances. When the door staffs’ hours had to be cut, I was first out because I’d been the last in, and I lost my Thursday to Sunday shifts. I was gutted. I missed the adrenalin rush that I’d got when those lights and buzzers came to life, and I missed the lads with whom I had become part of a team. I left the doors for a while, and it was not until I was asked by an old friend by the name of George Poulter, who ran The Filament and Firkin and Scruffy Murphy’s, if I would be interested in sharing the head doorman’s job with a lad called Paul Tinnion that I decided to give it another go.

By then, Newcastle City Council had decided that all door supervisors should be licensed. This meant four days’ training, covering all aspects of the job, including fire regulations, health and safety, drug awareness, licensing laws and, of course, first aid. The final day saw each potential doorman sit a multiple-choice test on what he had learned. I passed with flying colours and was given a weekend shift as joint head doorman in George’s bars at the Haymarket end of Newcastle.

So, Paul Tinnion and I started to work together. Paul’s the kind of doorman you would want in the trenches with you – always on the ball and not someone to mess with – and over the weeks and months we handled every situation that came our way. The bars weren’t as hectic as Masters had been at Christmas, but nevertheless we had our fair share of bother. The football matches always brought trouble, and more often than not rival fans would clash with Newcastle fans before and after each game. As a fanzine editor, I came in for a lot of stick, but I had broad shoulders and was never unduly bothered by the verbal threats from some of the narrow-minded yobs that called themselves supporters.

Doormen in general have a bad reputation. They are looked at by the public as paid thugs who chat up women and give any man who looks at him the wrong way a good hiding – hence the name bouncer. The council, in association with the police, wanted to change that image and rid the bars and clubs of the criminally minded doormen – hence the licensing. What publicans wanted was a customer-friendly doorman, someone who talked to the customers and only ejected them with
reasonable
force if they misbehaved.

I learned very quickly that doing the door was as much about ‘front’ as it was physical size: never back down when you have made a decision, because it shows weakness; always maintain eye contact with a customer whom you have a problem with; be aware of who that person is with; and, most importantly, make sure someone is watching your back!

I was making frequent trips to London to see the chaps, and when I was down there had been doing regular shifts at Diamonds, Dave Courtney’s club in Hackney, and at the Ministry of Sound
. Working those venues gave me a taste for club life, and for a while I considered moving to London full time, but I was told in no uncertain terms by Courtney that I should ‘stay up north, mate, and make your mark’. I decided to take his advice.

I had been to see the various faces who ran the doors in the North East and made it known that I was looking for club work. I was told that they would be in touch as soon as a vacancy turned up. A couple of months had passed when I was called by Mike, the manager of Legends nightclub in Newcastle. He said that he had been given my number and that he wanted to offer me a job. I jumped at the chance, and four hours later I was signing on the dotted line with Geoff Capes’s security firm. (Yes, Geoff Capes the famous athlete and former copper.) However, what Mike had neglected to tell me was that the previous doormen had just been sacked, that the police were keeping a close eye on the club and that they had compiled a list of criminals and doormen whom they wanted barred from the venue.

It was well known that the sacked doormen had been running the club like the Wild West – customers were getting beaten to a pulp, the CCTV tapes kept going missing and the club had quickly gained a reputation as a bit of a drugs den. So, one night the police decided to raid the club with over 150 officers. To their embarrassment, they caught no dealers and only a handful of people for possession. I had taken on a job and a half!

Doormen in every town or city are a funny breed. There is a lot of competition in the industry and a lot of pride at stake, and the one thing that doormen hate is outsiders, people from another part of the country in charge of the doors in their area. Capes UK was based in London and relied on ‘outsiders’ to work problem bars and nightclubs for them. The first couple of days at my new unit passed by without incident, but this was the calm before the storm. Despite receiving a substantial settlement, the ex-doormen weren’t happy, and they were going to make us work hard for our money. Paul came on board, which give me a lift because up until that point I was the only Geordie. Paul and I were now looked on by the local door fraternity as being ‘scabs’ and were subsequently barred from most bars in the city centre – with the threat of a good kicking if we ever tried to visit any of these places.

I’ll admit that each night was a nerve-racking experience; I changed my route to and from work, and I was careful not to let anyone know my address or telephone number. I even gave a false name to people whom I talked to in the club. Paranoid maybe, but you cannot be too careful in this game. Although some of the threats lacked any real substance, I had to take each one seriously, because one day someone might just call my bluff.

As time went by, the threats died down, and we had more or less weathered the storm. I had had a few run-ins with a few faces during that period, but as the months passed the lads from other bars started to respect the fact that Paul, the other lads and I had stood our ground and not bottled it.

I suggested to our gaffer that he lift the ban on doormen now that the trouble had cooled and that we let them in as long as they surrendered their licences to us for the duration of their evening. He agreed, which made our job that little bit easier, and one by one our own bans started to lift in the town. I was soon able to go for a pint in Newcastle again without looking over my shoulder. Special mention
must
go to those who stood their ground and watched my back at Legends: Paul Tinnion, Johnny Miller, Vaughn Basset, Maria Gillon, Mark Higgins, Simon McGhee, Biff, Adam, Naz, Andy, Gareth and Amanda Scott.

People often ask me what I get out of doing the doors. Well, it’s simple: it is a means to an end. If you do six nights a week in a bar or club – say thirty-five hours a week at £12 an hour – you are pulling in more than some bar managers. It pays my bills, keeps a roof over my head and gives me money to spend on the finer things in life. Also, I have had some laughs and met some characters whom I wouldn’t have otherwise met.

Some doormen use the job as a dating agency, and I would say I have worked with probably two of the worst offenders in living history. One of the lads has over three hundred telephone numbers of women he has bagged on the door filed in two cash bags and even has Polaroid photos of himself and his conquests to prove to the other lads that he is no liar. The other, whom I shall call ‘The Hawk’, specialises in collecting souvenirs at the end of the night from the cubicles in the women’s toilets! It takes all sorts.

From a customer’s point of view, I would say I’m quite tolerant of the pissed general public, and I always have time for the punter who is ejected early on from a club on a freezing cold night in the North East and proceeds to protest with the door staff for the next few hours, inevitably resorting to, ‘My Dad/Mum will have this place closed down!’ What people do not realise is that we hear this sort of thing
every single night
. If anything, it keeps us amused and passes the time, but, like referees in football, we never change our mind! (So, if you find yourself in that situation, do yourself a favour and go home; otherwise, you’ll either end up in a cell or with a lousy cold – or both.)

Humour plays a large part on the door, and nine times out of ten you end up taking the rise out of each other. I love a good joke and am lucky that I can laugh at myself.

Legends – as I have already said – was once renowned for its customers using drugs, and I spent most of my time working on the front door, where I would have to carry out spot searches. I must admit, I hated it, as having experimented with drugs myself when I was younger I felt a bit hypocritical stopping people doing the same. It wouldn’t have been too bad if all we had to do was knock these folk back, but, no, the police wanted us to detain people. So, reluctantly, I had to be seen to be doing the job.

One night, I decided to wear my brand-new suit. As I bent down to check the customer’s legs for anything he might have concealed, I heard a loud rip; my new pants had given way and a cool draft was evident at the rear end. That was the only time in my life that I can honestly say that I had my back well and truly to the wall. Still, it certainly gave everyone a good laugh that night.

Working the door can be a bit messy at times, and it’s not uncommon to see at least one broken bone or some blood spilled at least once a week. And you also witness some very strange human behaviour: exhibitionists who like a good shag in a dark corner of the club or druggies having a bizarre conversation with the wall. However, one of the most distressing sights I have ever witnessed was the lad we suspected of snorting coke in the toilets one night. I kicked the door in and could not believe what I was looking at. A male in his early 20s was kneeling in front of the toilet with his pants around his ankles, masturbating over his own shit, which he had placed around the toilet seat. Sick or what? When he realised he had been rumbled, he stood up, turned to me and put his hand out towards me to apologise. He had shit all over his hand! Needless to say, we all backed off until he’d cleaned himself up and then kicked him out into the street.

The job also has its glamorous side when celebrities visit the club. I’ve looked after hundreds of stars, from footballers to actors and pop groups, but I have to say the most enjoyable night I had was at Legends with snooker’s Dennis Taylor when it was his 50th birthday celebration. All the top stars from the sport were present: Stephen Hendry, Ronnie O’Sullivan, Darren Morgan, Mark Stevens and, of course, Dennis. We had a great night and one that I will remember for a very long time.

When I look back at the years I have spent on the doors of the pubs and clubs of Newcastle, I think of Legends with immense pride and satisfaction. I stood my ground with the lads, and we sailed through a political storm with flying colours. Working a club is different to working a pub. For starters, there is the fact that you start and finish later. The clientele you are dealing with in a boozer are just there to get pissed, whereas those in a club are smashed and looking for a bit of a boogie or a warm bed for the night. Legends was definitely the place to be, but it had come in for a bit of a hammering from the press and the local council after the big drugs raid failed to net the police much more than a couple of people for possession. The sight of 150-odd police officers raiding a club only to arrest a few ‘chavs’ with a wrap each was highly embarrassing for our boys in blue.