Bouncers and Bodyguards (31 page)

On another occasion, I was on a different rig in Nigeria when a Dutch guy decided to insult the chef. For 11 days afterwards, we were all ill – and I mean very, very ill. We had sickness and diarrhoea, and lost an incredible amount of weight, all because someone had badmouthed the chef.

In April 1998, I began working with Mark Davey. Mark had been a regular at The Wherry Hotel. When I first met him, I thought he was a complete arsehole. He’d come into the club and pinch beer, and I was always throwing him out or barring him. And then, lo and behold, I met him thousands of miles away on a barge in Nigeria! It was a small world. The odd thing was that out there we hit it off straight away.

We were both on the barge for a month at a time – it was one month on, one month off. There was a bar on board. Nigerian beer was obviously not brewed to the same standards as in the UK; for example, one bottle might be 5 per cent alcohol and another bottle 19 per cent. You could have one bottle one night and it would be nice and refreshing, and another bottle another night and it would knock you out!

More and more Scottish lads were coming out to the country to work. Like most Scotsmen, they liked to have a few beers, and the ones I worked with were quite loud. One night, they had a few too many and had a go at the few of us who were English. Things got out of hand, and Mark and I ended up scrapping with them on the helipad. It was sad. We were all away from home, and they just wanted to fight us.

I came back to Britain slightly earlier than Mark, and we arranged to meet for a meal once he got home. Before I’d left, we had been working on a contract with an engineering company. On one of his leave periods, Mark went back to Eket, where the company owned some houses that were supposed to be guarded. In Nigeria, it is common for robbers to take the tiles off the roof of your house and drop down through the hole. Apparently, one morning a group of thieves came down through the roof of the house Mark was staying in at about 2.30 a.m. and started rummaging through his personal belongings. Mark was a pretty big guy, and when he confronted the thieves they shot him. He died in Nigeria, and his body was flown home. Bob Blizzard, the MP for Waveney, went out to the country with Mark’s brother to try and find out what had actually gone on, as there were lots of conflicting reports, one of which said that he had been shot while he slept. In Nigeria, there is always more to things than meets the eye. The company promised to step up security after that incident, but we didn’t notice any change. When you employ Nigerians, you get what you pay for.

There were two types of police in Nigeria. The kind that wore black berets could more or less do whatever they wanted with no questions asked. One such policeman, whom we called Magnum, guarded our barge. He took great delight in being very sadistic – not to Europeans, but to other Nigerians. I bought him a beer one night and was talking to him near the back of the barge when one of the crew members went by and accidentally stood on his foot. I couldn’t believe it, but Magnum took out his pistol and beat the poor crew member with it. I had never seen anything like it. All this poor guy had done was step on Magnum’s foot. It is how things are over there, and they will probably never change.

In Nigeria, you tend to go around on motorcycles, so one night a guy called Steve and I hired a couple of motorcycles and went to a nightclub by the name of Cinderella’s
.We were the only white people with money there that night, and I think we were the focal point of the evening. Everyone stared at us. I said to Steve, ‘I’m going to show you a little trick.’ I went outside, jumped on my bike and rode straight through the entrance, into the nightclub and around the dance floor. The police were called and came with batons drawn, but when they saw that we were white we started to chat. I bought them a few beers and gave them some money, and they left extremely happy.

On the way home later that night, we were stopped by a group of vigilantes at a roadblock. There are a lot of vigilante groups in Nigeria, each responsible for a specific neighbourhood or district. I asked the vigilante his name, and he said it was Patrick – they all adopt Western names. I said to Patrick, ‘We have heard of you on the rig. We have heard about you. You are a great warrior.’ After that, he was like putty in our hands. We sat on our bikes chatting to him for ages, and after a while he said we could go on our way and that they would keep an eye on us as we travelled through their neighbourhood.

Working on the doors with people from all walks of life actually gave me self-confidence in these terrible places. Having been a doorman, I definitely felt that I could handle most situations. It was not about being a thug or hard, but about being wise and working around difficult things – doing things in a sensible manner.

In the clubs I worked in, I had very attractive women try to hit me over the head with a shoe or try to glass me, and in the ten years I worked the doors I was involved in lots of incidents with people who came into the club as complete ladies and gentlemen, but who suddenly changed after a few Cinzanos and wanted to pull my eyes out or give me a good kicking. I had to be on my guard at all times.

I almost always found that people who could really handle themselves were generally very nice people, and I also found that people who had a reputation were generally very modest. It was the people who felt they needed to prove something who were the real arseholes. However, no matter who they were or where they came from or what they said, I always tried to bear in mind that they were someone’s son or daughter, mother or father, and were therefore very precious, and I would take great pride in looking after them and making sure they had a safe time under my roof. That was my main reason for working as a doorman.

In August 2006, I was walking to work in London early one morning. An Asian guy came towards me, and when we got level, he turned and said something to me. I didn’t hear him and said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ With that, I was called a white fucking arsehole and told to mind my own fucking business. I said that there was no need to be like that, bearing in mind that I was 54 years old and he was probably in his early 20s. He just saw an old guy and started insulting me. I backed off, as all I was doing was going to work, and I didn’t really want any trouble at that time in the morning – or at that time in my life, come to think of it. However, it got out of hand, so I gave him a good hiding. I then immediately phoned the police and told them what had happened. I knew they would believe an old man like me before a big Asian guy in his early 20s. I still don’t know what that situation was all about, but he probably had some hang-up, or maybe I caught him in a bad mood. I just don’t know. But working away from home has made me very wary of people, and I have discovered that they are not always what they seem.

If I could live my life again, I wouldn’t change much. I was brought up in a children’s home and used to hear my brother screaming in the room next door. Because of that, I grew up abhorring bullying of any kind. I think what I have lacked in my childhood, I have gained in my adult life. People have always commented on what a bad childhood I had, but I never thought my upbringing was particularly bad, just a learning experience. Handling a lot of difficult situations has made me a stronger and better person. Each life is a book, and it is up to you what you choose to fill it with. Will it be full and interesting, or empty and dull? When I go to my grave, I would rather have had lots of different experiences, met lots of interesting people and done things that really mattered.

Many years ago, I’d walk through Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth and people knew me. I had quite a reputation – not as a bully, but as a good guy and a good doorman. But now I am 55, and no ones knows me any more, which can be annoying! If I go into a pub now, people push me out of the way. And you can tell I am getting old, because when I walk past nightclubs and look at the doormen I think they are not old enough to be doing the job. But I always have a chat with them, and I have found that most of them are pretty good guys. If I speak to them for long enough, they almost always ask if I want to come in, but I am far too old for all of that nonsense – nightclubs are not my scene any more.

I was walking along Lowestoft seafront about three years ago when a doorman called out my name and asked if I wanted a job! I was 52 at the time. It was a lovely thought, and I was very tempted, but I was a bit too old – you have to know when to call it a day.

Sandy still lives in Lowestoft and still drives a crane. He hasn’t worked the doors for many years, as he now considers himself to be far too old, but he readily admits that he misses the excitement and comradeship of his old career.

T
he question I always get asked is, ‘How do you go from licensee and landlord to trainer of doormen and bodyguards?’ But a good licensee or venue manager is not so different to a good doorman or doorwoman. If you’ve had interesting life experiences and good training, the transition is not such a difficult one.

Over the years, I had some tasty experiences in the various venues I managed before I entered the world of security training, doormen and bodyguards. Many incidents occurred without the assistance of door staff, and looking back I certainly wish I had had some back-up on occasion.

After I divorced my first husband, I wanted a fresh start, so I moved to a sleepy (or so I thought) village in Yorkshire. Milnsbridge, a lovely picturesque mill town, is on the outskirts of Huddersfield. I took over a pub called The Post Office, which my good friend Mandy used to call ‘The Slaughtered Lamb’. But I thought it was great . . . at first.

There were two prominent families in the village: one of Irish descent, the other of Fijian, would you believe? A few of the Fijians were rugby players, and they were the biggest, meanest-looking blokes I had ever seen. The two families weren’t supposed to be friends, but it seemed that they were all shagging each other, and it was as though everyone in the village came from one family or the other. I could just imagine the teacher reading out a name from the school register and half the kids answering at once.

I quickly sussed it all out and recruited a very attractive barmaid, who looked and sang like Whitney Houston (no prizes for guessing which family she belonged to). My karaoke nights were fantastic, the pub was rocking and I was making a decent living. One night – or should I say early morning? – four of us were left at the bar: me, my boyfriend, a nice lad from Bury who lived in the village (I never did find out why he was there) and a local lad who was quite hard but belonged to neither family. There was a frantic knock at the door, and my badly beaten star barmaid came in. We cleaned her up and settled down to listen to what had happened. It transpired that it was her boyfriend who had done this to her, and I invited her to stay the night, being the mumsy person that I am. She refused and wanted to go home, saying that he wasn’t going to chase her out of her own home. I then suggested that I could go home with her and stay the night – my thinking was that domestic bullies don’t usually like an audience.

So, off we went in my car, minus my boyfriend, who went to bed. The two lads said that they would come with us to make sure that the boyfriend wasn’t waiting for us. When we arrived, they found him hiding down the alleyway at the side of the house, and he got the beating of his life after they had chased him for miles. The lads eventually returned, reassuring us that he wouldn’t be back, and they asked me to give them a lift home.

Whitney went to bed, and I gave the lads a lift. Little was said in the car but our adrenalin was high. When we got back to the pub, the coal fire was still burning, and one of the lads tossed in a big stick, explaining that my fella had given it to him for my protection. ‘Oh fuck,’ I thought. ‘I am really in the shit here.’ And I was.

The following morning, we found out that the arsehole who had beaten up Whitney was in a coma. She was in love with him again, and he had just managed to say that it was my friends who had beaten him up. I was arrested, my car was impounded and I gave a bit of a woolly statement. Worse, her boyfriend played rugby with her brothers, and they all thought I had had him nearly killed. I had only been in the village about six weeks – what had I got myself into? (This episode taught me to not get involved in domestics, as they inevitably bite you on the arse, and I have since walked away from many situations when I was tempted to intervene.)

The eldest brother came into the pub first. I spoke with him quietly and respectfully and gave him my version of events. He told me that his sister had said that it was me who had got the boyfriend beaten up because of an incident in the pub – she had only got caught in the crossfire. Bitch. I was then told that I would be dealt with if I did not leave the village. I had my sister take my son, who was around two at the time, back to Manchester, and I got on with the day’s business. To say it was an arse-twitching moment is an understatement – and it went on for a day and a half.

As Sunday night fell, I was in the fucking twilight zone. I was without my car, I was short-staffed and without my karaoke singer, and I was nervous. But it was busy all day and night. There is nothing like the gossip of someone being nearly beaten to death to keep a boozer like The Slaughtered Lamb busy.

Whitney’s family arrived in force at around 9 p.m. I’m no coward, so I tried to deal with them, but I soon realised that it was personal and these guys had no manners with ladies. One spunky little blonde barmaid – I am ashamed to say I can’t remember her name, but I probably owe my life to her – told me to go upstairs and out of the way. I didn’t want to, because it was my pub, but, hey, instinct took me upstairs. (She explained that her dad was at the end of the bar and that she had grown up with these nutters – she was safe, but I wasn’t.)