Krayzy Days Page 23

  So I kept banging on about that licence. I met someone in the BBBC who was more friendly than most and had some influence. He encouraged me to apply again and when I heard nothing he said he hadn’t seen the paperwork. Someone must have intercepted my letter before it even reached the discussion stage. It was clear that we were trying to break into something that people saw as a lucrative business rather than a sport and that its establishment didn’t want outsiders.

  It was Jimmy Quill who made the breakthrough. Another friendly board member suggested he go before them on some other matter and then raise the question of my licence on the day. By that time Jimmy Tibbs was a qualified trainer working for Terry Lawless and the board wouldn’t be able to argue that they didn’t want someone who knew the Krays. Jimmy followed the suggestion and it worked. I was in.

  I had my trainer’s licence, but the BBBC kept being a nuisance. There was the time I had a big Irish guy down from Birmingham called Paddy Finn to spar with Banjo. Finn was managed by Paddy Byrne and while he was with us was selected to be a late substitute to fight Anders Eklund, ex-European heavyweight champion.

  ‘You take him there,’ said Paddy. ‘I’ll see you there and you can work the corner with me.’

  Well, I had my licence now so at last I was allowed to do it. The fight was being televised and Paddy Bryne said he wasn’t keen on my tracksuit top. He swapped it for one he had in his bag and as he was older and more experienced than me I took his advice. It was hardly worth it for the time we were there – Eklund made short work of Finn, knocking him spark out in the first round.

  Paddy Byrne joined us in the dressing room with Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali’s trainer. We got on really well.

  ‘Hey, you got chinned!’ Dundee joked. Our little party was joined by one of the board members, Bill Sheeran, who showed little interest in the jollities.

  I smelt drink on his breath.

  ‘You are a fucking disgrace!’ he said to me. ‘That top you’ve got on. Look at you. You only got your licence because people worked hard for you and look at the state of you.’ A small incident, admittedly, but that said it all. The official had no idea that the top belonged to Paddy Byrne and, of course, if Paddy had been wearing it there would have been no complaint. The board were just determined to get me for whatever they could. It was pathetic.

  On another occasion Dr Ossie Ross, a board medical official had a go at me for having a coloured stripe in the towel I was using. He said that only foreign fighters were allowed to have anything other than plain white towels. It sounds petty, but they took it very seriously.

  I didn’t let them distract me from the really serious work – training Banjo, who was by now finding that the commute from his home in Seven Kings to The Wellington in North London was getting too much. Far closer was The Ruskin pub in Manor Park. It was owned by Lonsdale-belt winning lightweight Joe Lucy and he had a gym above it. This was much more handy. All the local tough guys and unlicensed fighters trained there, which wasn’t quite so handy. Apart from anything else, they weren’t anywhere near the standard of fighters at The Wellington – it was as if a footballer had been training with the Premier League and decided to downsize to his local pub team. But Banjo needed to be nearer home so he could still go out of a night and the Ruskin it was.

  Joe Lucy was intrigued to meet me as he had heard how I gatecrashed the boxing world. He said he couldn’t let us use the gym of an afternoon because we’d need the keys to the pub. We settled on training during the evenings and Banjo was spared the gruelling trip across London.

  My son Michael had been boxing for a while and accompanied us on our first session. Michael had also trained at Wag Bennett’s in Forest Gate and was now a pro fighter. The experience was helping to give him the sense of discipline that I had once worried would be missing back when I had been feeling so directionless. I was relieved and proud that he was on track and willing to help out. I took along a few other fighters to The Ruskin, though, after all the trouble I’d had with the Tibbs, it wouldn’t have been my first choice. My son and everyone knew about my feuds in the area. Michael was, like the others who came with us, a big fighter, though really what counted when we entered a gym in enemy territory was we were serious and knew what we were doing. Another who knew about the feuds was the only non-fighter – my friend Jimmy who knew Billy Hill. He came along to carry my bag – and I thought it best not to tell the other fighters what was in the bag.

  As I thought, a few familiar faces were, if not there to greet us, then there to scowl in our direction. A bit older, a bit more furrow browed but not noticeably more pleased to see me. Among them were Roy Shaw and also Bobby Reading, the one who had been half-blinded with a shotgun years earlier and became known as Cockle Eye. I’d long fallen out with him. Then there was Barry Dalton, who was later found with his head blown off in a van, Mickey May – now the trainer at West Ham Boxing Club, Jeff Smart and Patrick Cahill. It was a packed crowd – all the local gangsters, unlicensed prizefighters and bare knuckle fighters alongside gym manager Bert Spriggs.

  As far as I was concerned, this was their call. I had never clashed personally with anyone there. To me they were just the Tibbs’ supporters’ club. If nothing else, I had the security of knowing that this wasn’t the first time we had met in recent times and they hadn’t done anything before. We met when I was out on a run and I passed a bunch of them. Nothing happened. Maybe it was just because they knew they would have to kill me otherwise I would always come back.

  Ignoring the interesting atmosphere in the ring, our side disappeared into the changing rooms after briefly greeting old man Spriggs. I was glad to have a few 6ft 5 heavyweights with me as we started our work surrounded by the local bruisers. We trained in silence, which was broken only when Banjo sparred with one of the other boxers I’d bought along, Liverpudlian Bernie Kavanagh. Banjo chinned Bernie and decked him. Then the locals began to take notice. This wasn’t just some aimless iron-pumping session. It must have all looked very real. I jumped into the ring to get Bernie up and he was furious with me, embarrassed that I’d had to help. He shouted at me to back off and that was a shock for the onlookers, who weren’t used to the way real boxing worked.

  Until then the local hard men might have been planning to intimidate us. Even my fighters, who didn’t even know who the others were, could feel the tension clogging up the room. The local crew were used to being a feared prospect but it was then that the balance of power shifted without anything actually happening. Against the professional fighters the others just began to look more like actors.

  When Banjo wanted to weigh himself I took him to the scales on the other side of the room, where Bobby Reading was standing. Cockle Eye literally ran away from us. His mates couldn’t really come back after that. At the end of the night the locals trooped out, all in a line, one by one. Nobody said a word and not one of them ever returned to the gym. I hadn’t needed Jimmy to bring my bag after all.

  But I did need to get Banjo sparring. A Costa Rican boxer named Gilbert Acuna was in this country, a giant of a man and I got him into the gym. One of the few locals still to use The Ruskin when we were about was prizefight promoter Joe Carrington. In front of me he approached Acuna.

  ‘Do you want to fight for me?’

  I jumped down his throat.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing? He’s mine, fuck off.’

  Carrington backed down quickly enough, but that night I got to thinking that knocking out a few of the local mugs might suit Gilbert. Michael sparred with Gilbert a lot as the Central American trained to take on Cliff Field, the king of prizefighters and was in his corner when Acuna won, stopping Field inside the distance and that, really, made him the guv’nor. He became a bit of a legend.

  In turn, Acuna introduced me to fellow Costa Rican boxer Jorge Prendas, who was a super bantam, but he was so good he could knock out lightweights, though I only got him one fight over here. It was against Billy Hardy, who was British European and Comm
onwealth champion at both bantam and featherweight and IBF world title contender at featherweight, and who he knocked out in five rounds. Then nobody wanted to go near Prendas and I couldn’t do anything for him. He hadn’t really built up a fan base over here in the way that a home-grown fighter would have done.

  My hopes remained with Banjo and working out of Ruskin’s was just a step along the way to the champions’ gym above The Thomas A Becket pub in the Old Kent Road. This was run by Henry Cooper’s former trainer, Danny Holland and owned by another ex-boxer. All the top fighters trained here. Future world heavyweight champion Trevor Berbick sparred with Banjo while he was in London and Banjo well held his own with him for a couple of rounds.

  The next day the gym was packed. Everyone had heard about the fight the night before, from my friends the Quill brothers to Mickey Duff, and they all squeezed in in the hope of a rematch. This time Banjo more than held his own for five or six rounds against the Jamaican-Canadian contender to the astonishment of all the fight fans present. The People’s sports writer Frankie Taylor – a former fighter himself – wrote a piece which I’ve kept to this day. He said he had never expected to see such a display by an English boxer.

  Bonecrusher Smith got the same treatment when he came over to fight Bruno. One of the toughest, hardest nuts you’ve ever seen, he went ten rounds with Mike Tyson and was a world champion in his own right. Sparring, he and Banjo locked head to head, punching the fuck out of one another. Even I was impressed with what Banjo was capable of. Jimmy Quill, who had become quite despondent with the lack of success, was as amused as me to see so many former critics now being as generous with their praise. Only Banjo’s lack of commitment to training meant that he wasn’t able to last longer. He still wanted to be the playboy by night and that held him back. If we weren’t still being messed around by the boxing establishment we might have been able to give him more incentive to concentrate on the job at hand.

  When the night of Bruno’s fight against Bonecrusher came at Wembley Arena, I was watching with a few friends as the fighters came out for the tenth round and Bruno was winning on points. I was getting a bit bored, thinking Banjo’s sparring partner was on the way out.

  I shouted out, ‘Come on, Bruno. Bring back Trevor Currie!’ He’d boxed earlier that night.

  This really seemed to annoy Bruno. He didn’t know who’d said it but I guess he thought the crowd weren’t pleased. He went up a gear into Bonecrusher, who immediately knocked him out.

  The new promoting force on the block was Frank Warren, then rising fast without the help of the cartel. He wanted Banjo on the bill at Alexandra Palace in North London to fight against Marvis Frazier, the son of legendary heavyweight champion Joe, who was also his trainer. Warren offered ten times the fee we received for The Albert Hall and we would be screened on ITV at 9.00 pm, prime time, on a Wednesday. Banjo tried to pull it together in time but he just wasn’t fit enough. There was no reason he couldn’t have beaten Frazier – he would probably have got a world title fight from it, we had two cruiserweight world champions in Bash Ali and Glen Mcrory as sparing partners for him as Marvis was a small, fast heavyweight and he certainly appeared full of confidence.

  After the fight Joe Frazier was to say of Banjo, ‘What a body! If he don’t make it in boxing he could do well as a model.’

  This was Banjo’s first fight with me in the corner. It was also the last. A close fight ended on points to Frazier and ended my association with Banjo. I gave him his contract back. My plan had never been to look after a journeyman heavyweight. I always knew when to walk away and Banjo, I knew, wasn’t going to fulfil my dreams. His next fight was for the British heavyweight title against Hughroy Currie, a Jamaican-born fighter he had beaten when he was with me. This time around he lost on points. On some level I was glad it hadn’t worked out. It was so hard getting Banjo motivated that if we had kept it going we could have ended up enemies. As it was, we’ve stayed on good terms. He’s doing very well for himself and I still see him around to this day. I was pleased for him when his son Ashley recently won Britain’s Got Talent with his dance group Diversity.

  And that last fight I did with Banjo lives on for a completely different reason. It was just such a thrill to be in the opposite corner to Joe Frazier on TV. I shook hands with him before his son and my man started to fight. When I first got into boxing as a kid I’d never have dreamed of that. It wasn’t the financial success I’d thought boxing might be, but in other ways it was better than money.

  My next fighter would be my last. He came through Gary Davidson, the owner of The Thomas A Becket pub, who had come down with motor neurone disease and had a boxer he wanted me to take care of. Mickey Driscoll was a good professional. He was very different to Banjo, much more enthusiastic but his girlfriend wasn’t keen on him boxing and in some ways he was, if anything, harder to teach. He was, as they say, game as a bagel and he could fight like a demon but he’d learned bad habits as an amateur and the thing about boxing is it’s very difficult to unlearn those formative techniques. His trick was to rush in and overpower his opponent, which was great for ticket sales and made good TV but didn’t make for such a successful candidate for coaching.

  We had an extremely successful promoter behind us in the shape of Barry Hearn and Mickey was not a bad fighter. He came from Portsmouth and the local newspaper would run pictures of the two of us taking up the whole back page. In early 1993 he went up against the British and Commonwealth light welterweight challenger Tony McKenzie in Leicester. He lost in a tense and dramatic fight that finished with a hotly disputed decision. The crowd went mad and it was written up as such by Bob Mee, the well-respected Boxing News correspondent afterwards. We got a return fight at The Grosvenor Hotel in Mayfair some months later and this time Mickey knocked McKenzie out in the fifth round of a ten-round title eliminator that Don King watched. He was there that night. McKenzie retired after that.

  Mickey himself only had one more professional fight. He had been pro for almost six years when he was knocked out in Cardiff the following year and I felt I had to be brutally honest with him.

  ‘I think you should turn it in, Mick,’ I said. And he did. And I did too. My dreams hadn’t come to anything after quite a few years taking fighters through the system. That was me finished with the boxing.

  In the years since then I’ve moved around the country, spending a year or so in Nottingham and then another in Market Harborough. I had a friend who needed some business advice and really just wanted a partner, although more for support than anything else. I was kind of a consultant for him. When I returned to London it was to find that everyone had gone Banksy mad.

  I’d never heard of Banksy but my friend Steve Diamond had. He was a businessman with the nickname Legs, after Legs Diamond, the American gangster. He just didn’t have a good grasp of the finer details of business. He was much better at the ideas side and when his Smudge Art Gallery in Spitalfields Market ran out of money, I invested a few quid. I helped to steady his approach. It was his idea to take photographs of site-specific Banksy works and mount the prints on wooden blocks for the home market.

  I was good at the advertising side and the business was very successful. Banksy’s lawyers were not so impressed.

  ‘We act for the world-famous artist,’ began the letter they sent us. They had printed out all the images from our website, which they included as part of their complaint. The solicitor we consulted was a copyright specialist who suggested we give up, but I wasn’t prepared to drop out just yet. We went to the next level, a barrister, which cost a nice few quid. Between them our legal team wrote us a letter and the opening sentence was a killer: ‘Who is this man?’

  You’d need a degree in law to understand the technicalities of the rest of our response, but it had the desired response. Banksy’s team must have thought they might have to reveal the secretive artist’s true identity and we never heard from them again.

  At Christmas, Banksy would locate and take over one empty
shop in the West End and rename it The Grotto for the season. I visited with my ‘art adviser’ just to check out the man’s work. Banksy’s then manager, Steve Lazarides, arrived and we got to see the enemy at close quarters without them realising it.

  The Spitalfields gallery got its products into mainstream retail in America. We were doing lots of business with the company Urban Outfitters. The American firm were keen on a number of our artists until the legal side of things frightened them off. But we were the most profitable company working out of Spitalfields until Banksy went out of fashion.

  I’ve been enjoying a much quieter life since the gallery closed. I’m still with the woman I met at the end of the 1970s and if I’ve kept quiet about the family side of things in this book, that’s mostly because I wouldn’t like it to influence my younger relatives or cause them problems. I’ve seen how that happens.

  I never did speak to the Krays again, though I did think of Ronnie in prison. When we were in our prime he always liked to claim that he couldn’t wait to get old. He said he was cultivating any white hairs he found and that ‘it will be wonderful when I’m old. Love to be old, have all grey hair.’

  I wonder if the twins ever thought of what a big favour they did me by never talking to me again – and never, ever mentioning my name. They talked about everybody you could think of and my photo is in loads of the books. I often wonder if the reason is that Reggie didn’t want Ronnie to find out about the Frances-Levy incident. That has worked out much better than being in their reflected spotlight. The captions sometimes include my name, but more often they say the twins are ‘with friends’. I never really knew what they thought of me leaving them.

  These days I’m a lot calmer. I think so, anyway. Some of my friends and family think I’m still mad. Maybe I’ve been doing this too long. I’m very aware of potential threats all the time. Walking down the street, getting on the underground, I scan everyone in the same carriage as me, just making a note of who I don’t like the look of. That’s me. Perhaps I am a bit mad but I don’t think so, it keeps me mentally alert and physically fit.