Krayzy Days Page 21

  Johnny and I were charged with attempted murder and grievous bodily harm relating all the way back to 1961, some ten years earlier. The police had dug out The Hammer Club business – the shooting in the bollocks and the rest of that fight with the Bennetts and their mates. I was also charged with beating up Albert Yellop more recently in The Steamship. They said I’d given him such injuries that he had to spend three months under the hospital. Someone was digging deep. I couldn’t say exactly why the old stories had resurfaced now – perhaps the police had split over the two sides of the Tibbs war.

  I knew that Jimmy Fleet and Davey Storey had once been beaten by the Tibbs, making them automatic suspects for wanting revenge. Ennifer was the odd one out. He was just unfortunate enough to be with them when all three – so the charge went – caused grievous bodily harm to someone in another Ilford nightclub. It was an attack unconnected to me and Johnny, or the Tibbs mob, but by grouping a few of us who had a grudge against the Tibbs, the police made it look as if we were a gang.

  We were remanded to Brixton Prison and my first few days were spent on A wing. I’m going to get about 15 years here, I thought – I fucking don’t fancy this much. Johnny Davies was alongside me and, as quick to despair as he was to anger, was saying all the things I was just thinking. He operated totally on instinct, wild one moment and tearful the next. The prison made him fearful and he angrily blamed me for everything.

  ‘You go around causing trouble all the time,’ he said. ‘I’m going to keep away from you if we ever get out of this.’ His moaning and whining were constant and I kept sounding positive, though I was worried myself.

  Johnny had met a girl – he kept calling her ‘sweety pie’, which sounded strange coming from a heavy-set gorilla like Davies – who visited him regularly.

  Eventually I was moved, along with the other suspects, to E wing, a special block where they put high risk prisoners such as terrorists. The Price sisters, Dolours and Marian, were imprisoned on IRA-related charges.

  When we first recognised them, Ennifer started yelling at her and I said, ‘Stop your fucking noise.’ I think that was the only time I spoke to him. Having had time to think about why Nancy Tibbs’ husband should have been thrown in with us, I had come to the conclusion that the police were hoping I’d go for him. As someone in the Tibbs’ camp he would then turn and give evidence against me. I made sure I kept my distance unless it was absolutely necessary and then I was careful to be extremely polite.

  Our court appearance came a month after we arrived. I was still reassuring Johnny Davies that we would get off but even I was surprised when the magistrate inexplicably gave me and him bail. There was some muttering about it being a gang matter from the magistrate’s side of the court and when the other three in our case were pointed out to him, he simply remanded them in custody. I began to understand Ennifer’s involvement when he spat in the face of one of the policeman. As they were taken away I was told he was shouting at Supt Frank Cater and from what I could make out he was convinced that the police had promised him certain things. It seemed to me that he had counted on being able to give evidence against me for assault.

  I didn’t understand why we got bail but it was a piece of luck and even Johnny Davies brightened up a bit. We could both see ourselves getting off and I approached our day in court in good spirits. But in the week leading up to the committal I heard my wife’s health was at serious risk. Her dialysis machinery had been moved from our home into London Hospital while I was on remand. When the hospital was put on hepatitis alert, nobody wanted to risk another infection when she was already ill. Her consultant asked me if I would be willing to do the dialysis for her. I explained that I had to go to court.

  ‘If you agree to this,’ he said, ‘you’ll have the London Hospital behind you. We’ll move heaven and earth to explain why you couldn’t be there – as if you were ill yourself.’

  He was very sincere and very caring. This was the non-crooked world at its best. I readily agreed and felt there was something rather apt about me being the only defendant out of five not to turn up to a committal that had been aimed squarely at me.

  I called a friend that evening to find out how things had gone.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ he said. ‘You’ve all been thrown out! But the magistrate was going off alarming about you not turning up.’

  The Tibbs had been careful to supply all the relevant information to the police, but they had been unable to persuade the Bennetts to give evidence about what happened that night in The Hammer Club.

  Jimmy Fleet went on to live off his brief connection with me for the rest of his life. He became a bit of a gangster by proxy without ever doing anything and continued to have a reputation.

  He would look very serious and mutter, ‘Don’t ask me about any bombings and shootings,’ for the very good reason that, apart from being given a beating by the Tibbs for no reason, he did indeed know absolutely nothing.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Back in the Ring

  Boxing had been my obsession when I was young. Rediscovering it in my 40s gave me a focus and a new purpose in my working life. I would train fighters who would spar with the likes of Frank Bruno and Trevor Berbick. And as an outsider I would have to take on the boxing establishment, who fiercely defended their interests. Most importantly, the sport helped me give a sense of direction to my own son.

  I had sunk back into a familiar state of depression when the fuss around the Tibbs and the trial finally died down. My son Michael was approaching school-leaving age and had no qualifications at all. When we were in Spain I would leave him there when I had to come back to London. I worried that after school he’d end up hanging around outside the bookmaker’s and get into trouble. I had to do something about this.

  I gave up drinking entirely in the end. I was just fed up – it held nothing for me. I wasn’t going to any interesting clubs. I had been getting drunk of a weekend and then starting work again on a Monday. Now I started to take an interest in business for the first time. If you had asked me up to then what I did with my money, I would shrug. No idea. I spent it and I didn’t care, but it changed when I realised my son needed guidance.

  Michael did his bit to help me too, talking me into getting fit. We went to a gym in Forest Gate owned by Wag Bennett, the man who adopted Arnold Schwarzenegger in the UK. Wag got the future governor of California to give us a brief seminar on bodybuilding. The Hollywood superstar Arnie sat in the informal session and took questions from us few local lads on everything from steroids to workout routines. I didn’t realise at the time that Schwarzenegger had previously had an affair with Wag’s wife, but then Arnold wrote about it in his own book much later and Wag got sulky when I said, not knowing what was in it, that I planned to read the memoir. But back then all I knew was I was getting to be the fittest I had ever been.

  I was at a physical peak but if I didn’t have a clear idea of what I was going to do with myself. I knew I needed to make some money. I saw other people buying and selling surplus goods and one of my wife’s relatives had a stall down Queen’s Road which wasn’t doing so well. I suggested to him that if I arranged finance we could try moving it on a bigger scale.

  We trawled the Yellow Pages for companies that might have gear surplus to requirements in return for cash. The result was an interesting conversation with the owner of an Aldgate factory which churned out the latest in shoe fashion. Their problem was they couldn’t shift the shoes once the tastemakers had moved on. And they couldn’t tell when demand would disappear. It was like a tap turning off – without warning they would be left with a warehouse of unsellable gear. From high heels to ballet shoes they were bundled into parcels tied up with string in this massive space. They’d been there so long, said the owner as he showed me a magazine, ‘they’re coming back into style’. This was exactly what I was hoping to hear.

  I soon had 30,000 pairs of shoes and got busy with a stall in Petticoat Lane near Spitalfields and another down Queen’s R
oad. This was the old enemy territory and I wasn’t particularly popular, but I didn’t care. My back was against the wall and I quite liked it that way. The shoes were stored in an old club we found through a friend at 127 The Grove in Stratford. It had been converted into the world’s tiniest car dealership with room to show off just one big car at a time. The space was used for the car finance scam – the zump up which Reggie had been such a fan of. My friend asked for a nominal rent and the place was soon filled with ladies’ shoes.

  The Grove became another handy location to sell from. And those shoes were soon selling. I smartened the place up, installing the sort of racking I’d seen in my early job back at the Minories. It was exciting as that job back in the Aldgate days had been. I bought a load of jeans, which went out on the new shelving. Shopfitters ended up coming to me and I was soon negotiating rates with signwriters and workers installing blinds. The business needed a name and it was provided by my friend Kipper Turner. I called it Kippers.

  Punk rock had broken; God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols was a hit and, with their music playing in my place, the kids in the area started calling it the soul shop. Our shoes were even a big hit with the Chelsea set; my friend Troy, a West Indian guy, had a shop on the King’s Road and was selling them like hot cakes. He had a young assistant called Yasmin, a very nice young girl who went on to become creative director at Miss Selfridge. I spoofed antiquarian book shops by placing an advert for ‘antiquarian shoes’ in The Sunday Times.

  But it was the publicity from an article in the John Blake column in London’s The Evening News which really made the place. I realised how successful it had become when shoppers said they had made a special trip from Bristol.

  It couldn’t last and I wasn’t interested enough to keep it going. In time I ran out of shoes and other goods and I was never good at routine. Everyone was enjoying the place so much it seemed appropriate to stop the party while it was still in full swing.

  My thoughts were, anyway, turning towards wholesale. Now I travelled around the whole of the UK, bartering and doing deals. A friend helped me out with tough negotiations. I was too vain – I wanted to be nice to people and get their respect. He was the sort of bloke who would tell someone their goods were rubbish just to get the price down. I was horrified to hear what he called one company’s stock.

  He said, ‘Mick, how do you think we’re going to buy it for no money if I don’t insult it?’

  Me, I couldn’t do that. I was never cut out to be a dealer.

  It didn’t matter that the business wasn’t for me in the long term. The point was, I was up and running again and I was ready for the chance encounter which led me back to the world of boxing. I had always stayed a fan of the sport and though I hadn’t participated since my days as a schoolboy boxer, I had become friendly with some of its famous faces.

  Flamboyant US boxing promoter Don King was a great character; he was on a scouting trip to the UK when I met him in 1978. I had a meeting with him in The Churchill Hotel and he brought with him Larry Holmes, who had recently defeated Ken Norton to become heavyweight champion of the world. Don told me he was interested in John Conteh and asked me various questions about Micky Duff, who he constantly referred to as ‘the Duffer’, but I couldn’t help him. I’m quite proud to be still friendly with him. He sent me from America some great photos of me, him, Larry and my business adviser, who I had with me that day.

  But it was my friend Jimmy, who I had introduced to Billy Hill, who first made me think that perhaps I might have a go at getting into the boxing game.

  Jimmy used to go to Belhus Park Boxing Club to the east of London and said, ‘I saw a boxer and I’d like you to have a look at him. He’s got something about him – he’s a bit different to everyone else.’ The fighter was a fella called Babafunso Banjo and he was the son of a Nigerian chief.

  At that time Banjo was the ABA – Amateur Boxing Association – heavyweight champion of Essex, but that didn’t mean anything at all. Anyone could join their local club, get a medical card and start fighting. It was only when boxers are ready to turn pro that they get proper management. When Banjo boxed for Eastern Counties against Southern Counties he had a very good fight with a boxer called Joe Awome in Woking but lost on points. I was interested and went out to Belhus Park where Banjo told me how he had been amazed to pass a TV shop and see his Woking opponent boxing in a televised match – the final of the Commonwealth Games. The other fighter went on to win gold and that convinced me that Banjo had something. This could be worth exploring.

  I went to see him box in Ipswich where he was up against a policeman. He headbutted him and was disqualified. Not a good start. But I knew he had problems with bruised ribs and the policeman repeatedly targeted them. Even in such a poor contest I could see that he was fast. He had the perfect physique – he was 6ft 5 with broad shoulders, good muscular build and fast reflexes – he was the biggest of three brothers. Without having been in boxing long, he was showing himself to be a natural talent.

  As I started out with Banjo, I was able to call on some pretty big names for advice about my new direction. I still saw some of the old footballing crowd and was able to ask no less a man than England captain Bobby Moore for some pointers.

  He felt he didn’t have much to offer and said to me, ‘Mick, what do I know about boxing? Mick,’ he said, ‘look, all I can tell you is what I say to the lads when we’re coming out for the second half. I hear them say, “Right, let’s carry on from where we left off!” I say to them, “No, no, no. Let’s go back to the beginning and start again.” And that’s all I can say to you.’

  I took a lot of notice of that and I found it works. Never take things for granted.

  I put my heart and soul into training. At last I had found something I was interested in. But I soon discovered that Banjo was the most difficult person I’d ever worked with. Even the very fact of being a boxer was something that he seemed to struggle with. This was a challenge and I accepted it. And where else did I have to go? I could continue with the buying and selling but this seemed to be an opportunity to make my fortune. My dreams were filled with success and luxurious apartments in Paris and New York.

  The work might have been harder than anything I’d done before but it was exciting. Banjo lived east of Ilford in Seven Kings where we would go running in the park. He was hard to get going in the morning but I stuck with it. I knew that if it had been me I would have been out running at about 6.00 am but I couldn’t get Banjo out of the door before 8.30 am. And that was when I was lucky. This made creating a programme very difficult but I wasn’t put off. Having had to work around personality flaws the size of the Krays’, I had all the psychological preparation I would ever need. At least my life didn’t depend on Banjo’s daily mood swings.

  At that time, some 30 years ago, there wasn’t so much known about the science of sport and our regime was very simple by modern standards. Fighters spent most of their day in the gym and if you started off with a training run you should have ideally rested before you went into the ring in the afternoon. That was why it was better to be running first thing in the morning. Banjo knew the reasoning behind early starts but his eye wasn’t on being the best he could and he would have been the first to admit that he loved clubs like Stringfellows, chasing girls, Chinese restaurants and talking with his friends late into the night. He thought he was God’s gift to women and, unfortunately, so did a lot of women. At heart he was a real night bird and that was disastrous for training. At 22 he was, as Jeff Powell put it, just an ordinary young man. But you needed to be a monk in your dedication to boxing if you wanted to be a success. How much did Banjo want it – need it? He was privately educated from a well-off family and his looks meant he didn’t need to try too hard.

  I found Banjo a gym in North London and would drive him and one of his brothers over there every day. The gym was based on the side of The Wellington pub in Highgate and was run by John Conteh’s manager, George Francis, along with trainers such
as Joe Devitt. It was an old-fashioned establishment that attracted some of the greatest names in the business, including world light-heavyweight champion John Conteh, trained by Francis himself, recent Commonwealth champion Joe Awome, Lottie Mwale, Cornelius Boza Edwards and John ‘The Beast’ Mugabi, then in training for a world title. Top class African fighters for Banjo to measure himself against, there were no entry requirements at The Wellington, as long as you were a professional boxer – we just turned up, paid a nominal fee and started work.

  Banjo was very tense to begin with and it was a struggle to get him to loosen up. It was his vanity again. He was focusing on the punches that might damage his looks when I knew he could endure more pain than most if he put his mind to it. But he was trying too hard to keep his opponents at bay. George Francis was unimpressed by his attitude. Nevertheless, he did tell me that promoter Mickey Duff had a fighter coming over from Germany called Bernd August. They wanted George to work with him while he was over here.

  ‘He’s about your bloke’s size,’ said George. ‘You can spar with him.’

  They broke the ring.

  Bernd and Banjo were both so huge that the ropes couldn’t take the constant punishment from them crashing into them. Now Francis could see what I had seen.

  ‘You’ve got something there, son,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens – don’t let him get away from you. They’ll all be after him.’

  Not only very helpful, Francis became a good friend in time. He had a lovely house in Highgate and, as I would discover over the many years I spent in boxing, he was very easy to get along with. There were no superstars in boxing gyms. Even world champions were polite and the rings were filled with far more down-to-earth characters than you would expect to find in a fighting sport. After all the treachery and feuding I’d known in my previous life it was a pleasure to meet such welcoming people. It’s a bit of a cliché to say that fighters were easier to deal with because they won respect in the ring rather than by chasing it outside, but it was true. Sadly, George Francis’s wife and a son both died from cancer later on and he committed suicide.