Born to Fight--The True Story of Richy 'Crazy Horse' Horsley

by Richy Horsley

  There were a few pubs close together with glass fronts and everyone was at the windows eyeballing what was going on. We should have charged £5 a head! As I walked towards Big Bri, my legs were still like jelly and my mouth was cut and bleeding. We were in the main street that runs through the centre of town and all the cars had stopped because they couldn’t get past the gathering crowd. At first, we both missed with a few sharp bursts of wild punches. Then, BANG! I catch him with a full left hook and he goes down like a ferret down a hole after a rabbit. When that punch landed, I broke my hand. It simultaneously broke his jaw. As Big Bri went reeling backwards towards the ground, I saw his eyes rolling around; it looked pretty funny to be honest. His head bounced off the tarmac road. I dragged him off the road and got on top of him and let him have it. When I got off him, I spat the blood that was swamping my mouth into his face.

  I then looked down at him. He really looked like he was dying … shit! The ambulance arrived in about a minute and they put an oxygen mask straight on him. I could see the life draining out of him. You see, this is the problem with street fighting – we are only flesh and blood at the end of the day. At hospital, he was very close to dying. I was, in truth, worried. Luckily, the big bastard pulled through. Would you believe that he wanted to press charges afterwards? But I had too many witnesses to say he’d started it and the CPS kicked it out. Years later, I bumped into him at a party. Everyone thought it would kick off again. We both looked at each other, but then we smiled and shook hands. It’s all water under the bridge now and we have a mutual respect for each other.

  Such incidents furthered my reputation on the streets. I came out of a nightclub in Middlesbrough one night and a lad came up to me and said, ‘I’ve seen you fight three times and you are fucking awesome, I’d just like to shake your hand.’ I shook his hand and he looked over the moon, then he went back to his girlfriend and they walked off. That’s always a nice exchange, but unfortunately there are plenty of twats in this world all too ready to take the piss. I was working a bar with Vul one night when a bunch of Middlesbrough lads came in. We tried to be friendly with them but they weren’t having any of it. The manager was beside himself with worry. We made some phone calls and got a posse of lads down. We turned the music off and I went over with the lads behind me. I said, ‘Right, clever cunts, it’s your choice. KICK OFF OR FUCK OFF.’ I repeated myself even louder: ‘KICK OFF OR FUCK OFF.’ Now that the odds were even, they didn’t fancy their chances, so we started taking their drinks away and they all got up and left. The way I see it, why act like a cunt if you aren’t prepared to fight like a man?

  One night on the door, we got a call from upstairs when some trouble had broken out. I was the first one on the scene. One of our doormen, Frankie, was on top of a lad on the dance floor, whilst about five of the lad’s mates were kicking the fuck out of him. I dropped the first one I came on like a sack of potatoes. Then I waded into his pals, giving them all a fucking hammering. Frankie afterwards said that they were booting him for about a minute, but the fucking DJ never put the call out, so we couldn’t get up there until someone ran down and told us. I had some nasty words for the DJ at the end of the night and he filled up with tears and packed in working there. He certainly learned a lesson that night.

  Pubs and clubs were one thing, as you could always control the area, but raves were a different matter. I worked on the door at a rave venue in Stockton for four weeks. There were a lot of dodgy characters in there and I could feel something was going to happen so packed it in. I went back a week later, just as a customer. As we were stood in the queue, two bouncers popped their heads out the door and pointed at me before closing the door. I was only in there for one hour and thought I was in danger so I left with a friend. As we went out, a car full of strange-looking geezers pulled up. I never looked at them, but I knew they were staring at me and I thought I was going to take a bullet. We jumped in the motor and left. The car with the blokes in followed us for a few miles and then turned round and headed back. That was my finish with those paranoid places.

  Not long after, Vul’s cousin Eddie died in a car crash. I was gutted. We attended the funeral, which was packed. Later, I was in a boozer with Vul when Big John, who was 6ft 4in and weighed 18 stone, walked in along with his pals. Vul told me about Big John taking the piss in Eddie’s pub after he died; he wouldn’t pay for drinks and wanted a lock-in, he was properly trying it on. As they finished their drinks, I went and stood in front of the door. As Big John got near me, I struck him with a right hand that nearly took his head off. You’d think he had been shot in the head by a sniper. He was laid flat out and, as usual, an ambulance was called. As they carried him out, one of his mates came back in and said to me, ‘Do it to me, go on, fucking try it with me.’ I obliged and flattened him as well. At least Big John had someone to go to the hospital with in the ambulance.

  I went back to work with Mick Sorby, who I always got on well with and respected. Whenever people came in a pub and we were on the door, they’d think twice about starting anything. I started to do a few light weights just to tone my body up. I was now weighing in at a respectable 18 stone. Mick and I did loads of jobs together. We’d go to drug dealers’ houses and slap them around or punch them up a bit, whatever was needed, and take the drug money off them. They were only scumbags anyway, so it made no difference to us or anyone else for that matter. We once met a dealer in a car park because we pretended we wanted to do business with him. He was driving around in a nice flash BMW and he was supposed to be a bobby’s toot – a spy for the police. We took his car off him and told him to fuck off before he got hurt. The BMW was a ringer so the fella couldn’t go to the police. We drove around in it for a day and then thought we’d better get rid of it and sold it on for two grand. A nice little earner, as was beating people up for money. So and so wants to know if you’ll break so and so’s jaw for £500. Jobs like that were always coming my way. There were limits though. I would never go to anyone’s house when there were children present. No way!

  As our reputations grew, we started to attract all sorts of characters. One geezer turned up in the town out of the blue, wanting to meet Mick and me. We met him in a pub and he started pulling bundles of money out, trying to impress us saying he was this and that. He was full of shit. The dickhead even said he was an expert knife thrower, very impressive. We took his money off him and told him to fuck off and to never try to get in touch with us again. We counted the bundles and it came to six grand. Lovely!

  Another oddball was a lad called Stevie who worked the door for Mick. He was a proper Billy Liar – we used to call him ‘Stevie Tallstory’ or ‘Bang, Bang’. Almost every time you seen him, he’d say, ‘I done these two blokes earlier. You should have been there, I just went bang, bang and they were both out.’ These fights were just his imagination. He liked a drink and when he drank he had a wagging tongue and loose lips and liked to be loud. His ex-wife was living with an old work mate of mine. I bumped into him one day and he told me that Stevie was badmouthing me. I went to Stevie’s flat but he wouldn’t open the door. He was pretending he wasn’t in but I knew he was because I could hear him through the letterbox. I shouted that I was going to remove his head from his body for badmouthing me and I’d have him within a couple of days. I didn’t know it, but he’d just been cashed up for a compensation claim. Soon enough I got a call from a middleman telling me that Stevie was very sorry. I was invited around the middleman’s house, where he handed me a nice wad of money and said, ‘Here’s two grand for your trouble.’ I said, ‘Tell him he’s OK, but to keep his big fat mouth shut in future.’ Another nice little earner, I’m sure you will agree.

  Amid all the money making, I started going out with a mixed-race girl. Every week, I’d see her on the dance floor in the nightclub bopping away. I’d stare over and she’d smile at me. She was gorgeous with hair as black as a raven’s wing. I asked to take her home and we hit it off straight away. We fell in love. Her name was Linda and she
had two kids, Ashleigh and Grant. I was as happy as a pig in shit. I asked her to marry me, and she accepted. But we wanted to do things very quietly, so only had eight people present at the wedding, and Mick Sorby, the Best Man. We went for a drink after and I phoned people up and told them I’d been married. They were all shocked and I think they thought I was pulling their legs. They all said the same thing: ‘Why wasn’t I invited?’

  Meanwhile, the fighting was as rife as ever. When you get a big reputation, it becomes hard to know what is going on: people start spreading lies, and you get associated with things that you had nothing to do with. Bri Cockerill was supposed to be telling people he wanted to fight me. I was getting a bit pissed off with the rumours. Everyone seemed to be talking about it. I phoned my pal from Boro called Ste Shannon and asked him what the word on the street was, and he confirmed the rumours.

  ‘OK then, tell him I’ll fight him. I’m scared of no fucker.’ This never came to anything and when I met Bri not long after, we became good mates and have been ever since. To make things even more complicated, the Big Irish guy who was imprisoned for those stabbings was let out. He acted as a go-between and organised a meeting in a pub. We sat down and got it all sorted out. Maori told me later that he had a Magnum tucked in his waistband, just in case. We then went to a few bars with Irish while he was on his home leave as a goodwill gesture. Now unbeknown to Big Irish, his wife had been seeing this big ginger lad on the sly, who so happened to be standing near us with his pal. I noticed they were getting clever with Irish. I saw Maori’s face and enquired, ‘What’s up?’

  He said, ‘Irish is gonna stab these two. He’s got a blade under his coat.’

  I said, ‘Mind this drink,’ and walked over. I went over to one, and BANG! He went down. Then I turned to the big ginger one. BANG! He went down straight away. He was in a bad way and was rushed into hospital. I didn’t realise how serious he was; he nearly died and had a blood transfusion. It’s ironic that I only intervened so that Irish wouldn’t carve them up, but in the end I nearly ended up killing the lad with my bare hands.

  The confusion got worse on a particular night during a lock-in with Mick. There was banging on the door. It was the armed police draped in their bulletproof vests, wanting our names. We found out why a few days later. There had been a lad over the road waiting in the shadows with a gun, waiting for me to come out so he could kill me. Someone must have known what he was going to do and phoned the police. The cops went down and, sure enough, he was there with a shooter so they nabbed him. When he was in jail, he got his nose bitten off. So there is some justice in the world.

  Not long after this, I drove down to an estate with Maori and another lad to meet some guys who we had some ongoing trouble with. We got out of the Land Rover and walked over to them. Before we could say anything, they pulled out guns and started firing at us. I could hear bullets whooshing past my head as we charged back to the Land Rover. We jumped in and sped away like Michael Schumacher. All the windows got shot out. We got away OK, but the lad with us took a shot to the shoulder. He was sat in the back, white as a ghost, and looked like he was going into shock. We sped off to the hospital and dropped him off in emergency. We must have looked a right sight pulling up with all the windows shot in. Maori and I were lucky to get away unscathed, but we did walk around with Don King-style hair for a few weeks after that.

  I went with a few lads to see a bloke who owed a lot of money to someone. Sorry, I can’t go into details, but you know how it is. We found him alone. The lads gave him an unmerciful beating, thrashing him with big fuck-off sticks. I went out of the room, as I didn’t want to watch. The guy sounded like he was in terrible pain, so I thought I’d better put him out of his misery. As I went back in the room, he was unrecognisable; his arm was snapped in half and the bone was sticking out through the skin. My stomach turned over. I went over and hit him on the side of the jaw with a big right and he went out like a light – at least he was out of pain. I didn’t go on another one of those jobs again. Out of the few lads who were there, one is doing life for murder and another one is dead. It’s a short-term game to be in.

  I was starting to think that if I stayed on the door, sooner or later I was going to end up in prison or dead, so I was thinking about chucking it. But then again, I was still finding trouble in pubs where I wasn’t working. One time I went out to celebrate my birthday with a group of lads. Everyone was buying me double whisky chasers. I was reluctant, at first, to drink the whisky because I knew I’d be drunk in no time. But once it went down, I got the taste for it and washed every pint down with a straight double whisky. We were all getting into the swing of it, and by 9.30 I was mortal drunk. Now that’s as far as my memory of that night goes, so the rest of this story is reliant upon other sources. One of the lads with us was also called Richy; he had caused trouble with some lads who were on the dance floor enjoying themselves. He decided to get stuck into them. These lads were everywhere we went after this, and again and again Richy was always straight over fighting with them. Now I don’t know about you, but if I was out on somebody’s birthday, the last thing that I’d want to do is fight because it spoils the night. If I was sober, I guarantee there’d have been no trouble because I would have nipped it straight in the bud. After all, these lads were from out of town and were having a good time before he started chew with them. As the end of the night approached, I was propped up against the bar because I was just about legless. Everyone had gone home drunk or gone elsewhere because it was too quiet where we were, but I said I was staying put. There was only me and Darren left. In the meantime, all these lads that Richy had started trouble with came back to the club I was in to get revenge. At 1.45am, a crowd of thirty geezers were outside the nightclub asking for ‘Richy’. The doormen wouldn’t let them in because they knew there was going to be trouble and they didn’t want the place smashed up. A bouncer came over and said, ‘Richy, there’s about thirty blokes outside want you and they’re looking for trouble.’ Well, of course, I was not the ‘Richy’ they were looking for. But I told the bouncer I was coming out and he went back downstairs.

  I took no notice of the bouncer’s warning that I would get killed, and started down the stairs to the entrance and the angry mob. As I got out into the street, I was attacked with bottles over the head, punches, kicks and elbows. I was fighting on memory, as I fought tooth and nail and, as my punches were landing, they started hitting the deck like dominoes. The bouncers were stood watching the action open-mouthed from the bay window. I was taking a beating and getting attacked from behind with bottles being smashed over the back of my head. This time it was my turn to go down like a lead balloon; I got kicked unconscious. Later, I was told that my head was jumped on and kicked about like a football. I was told I put seven of them in the hospital, but the lad watching from the bay window said he counted nine, so I gave a good account of myself considering the situation.

  After being examined, I was put into a ward in the hospital. I remember waking up and staring at the ceiling, thinking something wasn’t right. As my eyes started to focus and my mind started to wake up, I realised where I was. What the fuck was I doing here? As I sat up, the pillow came with me because it was stuck to the back of my head with congealed blood. I shouted for the nurse. I asked her what I was doing in there. She said I was admitted with head injuries and that if I hadn’t been so drunk, I would have died. She asked if I wanted any breakfast and I said, ‘Yes.’ As she went to get me some, I quickly put my clothes on and left. I looked like the Elephant Man.

  That was some fucking birthday present. The street had CCTV cameras on it so I knew the coppers would be studying it. I also knew that the nightclub had a camera on the door, so I made a phone call to get my hands on the tape. But the police beat me to it. People came to see me after to ask if I wanted to put bullets in these people, but I said, ‘No.’ I said I would fight any of them or all of them one at a time, but nothing came of it. Time is a great healer and I don’t bear grudges a
gainst any of them. Shit happens. If you live by the sword, you die by the sword and that’s the way it is. You’ve got to accept it. The police eventually turned up and asked about the fight, but I said I couldn’t remember anything. They asked if I wanted to press charges if they found them, but I said, ‘No chance,’ and told them to forget it. I would rather have died outside that club than grass anyone up. I bet the filth enjoyed themselves watching that tape over tea and biscuits. I bet they wore the fucker out.

  CHAPTER 17

  FIRE ARM

  A nice respite from all the fighting came when I trained for a driving test when I was 28. One day I just fancied learning, so I booked some lessons with a family friend called Tony, who ran his own driving school. The driving school had a good pass rate; I had about a dozen lessons with him, less than full price, which was cushty. When the day of my test arrived, I was nervous and had an hour’s lesson to calm my nerves before the real thing. I coped with it very well and stayed relaxed throughout. After we arrived back, the examiner said the magical words, ‘I’m pleased to tell you, you’ve passed.’