by Bill Carson
SHOW NO FEAR
Redux
Bill Carson
2014
Copyright Bill Carson 2014
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They say, best men are moulded out of faults,
and, for the most, become much more the better
for being a little bad.
William Shakespeare
Contents
Prologue: Ancient Guardians
Introduction
Chapter 1
Young Warrior
Chapter 2
Fighting Fit
Chapter 3
First Night Nerves
Chapter 4
The Sloane Rangers
Chapter 5
The Professionals
Chapter 6
Street Fighting Man
Chapter 7
Chav Town
Chapter 8
My Manor
Chapter 9
The Knife Man Cometh
Chapter 10
The Fairer Sex
Chapter 11
Reality
Chapter 12
Stand Your Ground
Chapter 13
A Descent into Violence
Chapter 14
Strange Days
Chapter 15
End Game
Glossary of Slang
Prologue: Ancient Guardians
The history and origins of bouncers – or gatekeepers as they were known in ancient times – goes way back. It’s not the oldest profession but it is certainly one of them. Through my research I have found that we can trace this occupation back to before the Ancient Greeks, and guardians of doorways are even mentioned in the Old Testament. The duties of the ‘ancient guardians’ were to protect the treasures of the many temples from theft and to eject any undesirables; these gate/doorkeepers were used as a visible threat to any would-be troublemakers.
The importance of the doorman as a person allowing or not allowing entry is found in a number of plays and stories throughout the centuries. There is even a mention that doormen were said to be used as guardians to the gates of the underworld in one Greek myth, and in Roman times noble and less noble households employed an ostiarius, which translates as ‘doorkeeper’. These ostiarii were employed to guard the entrances of the wealthy houses, temples and dens of iniquity and had the power to eject troublemakers.
In the Old Testament, the Levitical temple had a number of doorkeepers on duty to keep individuals out of the sacred areas and to deter thieves. Another allusion to a man guarding a doorway is in a play called Bacchides which was written in about 200 BC by the Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus. He writes of a large and powerful individual being used as a threat to get an unwanted visitor to leave.
So if we quickly push forward the lever on our time machine and zoom to the nineteenth century, we find that the function of the bouncer is still pretty much the same and the modus operandi hasn’t changed for a couple of thousand years. Like their ancient counterparts, they were still being recruited from the lower elements of society. Ex-cons, gunfighters, pugilists, prize fighters, gamblers and bar room brawlers, which of course all makes perfect sense: who else would be best equipped to deal with the murderers, thieves and violent drunken men but their own kind? And the tougher they were, the better.
In the Wild West of the 1880s, for example, bouncers were primarily employed to look after the saloons and brothels and the girls who worked in them. The prostitutes in turn saw themselves as a higher class of sex worker and were therefore able to charge a slightly higher rate due to their salubrious surroundings and their ‘minders’, who guaranteed that the patrons paid up.
***
If we now move on to the 1920s and 30s, many bouncers were associated with and were recruited from organised crime gangs. Some notorious gangsters started their careers as bouncers. Al ‘scar face’ Capone, possibly the most famous/infamous of them all, was a bouncer in his early days. It was while working as a bouncer that he acquired two scars on his face after an altercation with a punter. During the prohibition years in America, bouncers were employed to protect the assets at the illegal speakeasies and underground gin joints.
We will now shoot forward to England during the 1960s and 70s and take a look at London specifically. Most of the bouncers back then were still mainly ensconced within the shady realm of the underworld and hired by real gangsters, and so a certain type of person was sourced. When they were not robbing trains or banks and killing each other, they were employed as bouncers at the clubs which were owned and run by the underworld.
The Kray twins and the Richardson brothers, for example, ran the whole of London at that time. London was basically like a big cake sliced in two and it stayed that way for many years. Back then there was much rivalry and the guys working on the doors always felt that it was necessary to carry or have an ‘equalizer’. This would usually take the form of a clumping tool of some description, and there was always a prerequisite to have a firearm readily to hand, which would be hidden in some discreet cupboard or behind a curtain somewhere close to the door.
***
I took up this somewhat ignoble profession back in the early 1990s. At first it was purely out of necessity in order to gain a little extra cash, but I kind of got sucked into it and stayed for longer than I should have done. Many of my colleagues at that time seemed to be recruited from the ranks of ex-boxers, ex-cons, martial artists or just your good old fashioned bog standard street fighters.
When I worked on the doors, I always stood up to be counted. My brethren and I adopted a zero tolerance attitude which would often get us into difficulties with the fraternity of the local hard men. We would inevitably fall foul of them and be forced into fist fights to implement our policies and get our message across.
Sometimes I was on my own out there and with nothing or no one else to count on. I would often feel incredibly vulnerable, and to know that you had a serious backup plan was reassuring and, to me, entirely necessary. It is total fantasy to believe otherwise and many bouncers at one time or another carried something with them in case of attack to even up the odds. However, many bouncers that I have encountered carried weapons with them out of the fear of retribution, which is totally logical. Without a shadow of a doubt, you will acquire a few enemies in this game. It was all just part and parcel of the shady world of the unlicensed tough guy bouncer of yesteryear.
In the way that I approached this occupation I would, by today’s standards, be branded as old school. My way of acting or thinking would not be permitted in any way shape or form and would be totally alien in the modern era.
Today things have changed and it’s different out there. The bouncer/door-host/door supervisor/security operative in the modern era is now licensed. The industry has been sanitised and cleansed of the mind-set and image of the big, burly, shaven-headed, scar-faced, broken-nosed, cauliflower-eared, knuckle-dragging, troglodytic Cro-Magnon type. And in doing so, the deterrent factor has now been greatly diminished.
Today we have a new breed of young, fresh-faced men and women who are all indoctrinated with the meek and mild mannered approach. They are taught how to counter aggression by using passive conflict management t
echniques, and by law they are required to display their real names on ID cards on arm bands for all to see. When I worked the doors, our identities were always a closely-guarded secret. My compatriots and I permanently worked under pseudonyms for reasons of ‘self-protection’, which ultimately was the name of the game back then.
However, from what I see on TV and read in the newspapers the job is just as dangerous as it ever was. Compared to the past, it is probably more challenging due to the restrictions that are now in place. In my day you had a good chance of getting away with clumping your way out of trouble, which I quite often had to do. For those of you who choose to work the doors today, I, for one, salute you. I say that simply because if you have not done this job, you have absolutely no idea of how problematic and tense it can get sometimes. And so if you are considering embarking on a career as a door supervisor, then know this: don’t believe the hype about this type of work. It is not a glamorous or a praiseworthy profession, and nobody really gives a damn about you. You’re on your own, except for the people that you are working with, but that’s only because of its symbiotic relationship. They rely on you and vice versa. But sadly, as I have learned from personal experience, even they can let you down sometimes. When that happens it can all end with terrible consequences, as it did one night for a good friend of mine.
The way I did it was to treat people the way I would like to be treated myself: clichéd, you may say, but none the less true. I really did try and keep the scumbags away from the ordinary punter. If you think along those lines, you will not go far wrong. You can never allow yourself to switch off for a minute and let your guard down, assuming that the punters are as nice and as pleasant as you may think they are. The old saying, ‘familiarity breeds contempt’, is very fitting for this line of work. The truth is there are a lot of extremely nasty, psychotic, cowardly bastards out there. Some of them would think nothing of stabbing you or putting a bullet into you on the crazy premise of the often misused term ‘disrespect’.
It was that great character and the king of the bouncers, the late Lenny Mclean, who once said: “Many doorman of today are just posers and they don’t know how to rough up a punter.”
Who am I to argue, and I know what he meant by it. The point is, bouncers are not able to do this nowadays as they would be arrested on the spot, and moreover the approach/tactics and indoctrination of the modern doorman are now completely different. The role has distanced itself from the ancient and the old school ways. And that is what makes the narrative you are about to read unique, as you will probably never read the like again.
SHOW NO FEAR
REDUX
Introduction
It’s been ten years now since Show No Fear, a bouncer’s diary, was published and almost twenty years since I donned my righteous armour. So to mark this ten year anniversary, I have decided to revisit the old diary, dig out the original manuscript, add some much needed updates and re-release the book. I am now very happy with the end result and have created a very different book from the original.
Show No Fear is an account of how I became involved in the shady world of nightclubs and bouncers. The book grew out of a diary which I kept when working on the doors. I would jot down the incidents as they occurred. Nothing is exaggerated in this book – this is exactly how it was and how I felt at the time. This job was not glamorous in any way shape or form. This is not a glamorous industry, and so, having said that, this book may not be what some people expect.
Since I published Show No Fear, many other books on this subject have appeared. I’ve read a few: some are good, some are bad and some seem to have been written by total fantasists. So if you want to read a book about gunplay, extreme violence, blood ‘n’ guts, fast cars, psychopathic gangsters, death and mayhem, then I suggest you pay a visit to the crime fiction section.
However, there are scenes and moments of real violence here. You will also discover that a real fight is nothing like it is depicted in the movies. If you are a fan or a practitioner of the martial arts, boxing or unarmed combat, you will also find something of interest here.
This book is a little sad in places and you will meet a few strange, odd, violent and unpleasant characters. My aim is to try and put you, the reader, in my shoes so you can experience what it would be like to stand on the front door of a nightclub. You’ll be right with me from my very first night to my last night.
So if you feel you are ready, then stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, take a deep breath, strap on your bulletproof vest and come with me. Remember to show no fear as we meet the weirdos, drunks, bullies, dealers and hordes of weekend warriors face to face.
SHOW NO FEAR - REDUX
By Bill Carson
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the memory of Johnnie Ennis (the Uncle), Jack Coleman (Crackerjack), Bill Smith (German), Reggie Brown (Brownie), Patrick Boyle (Jock), Andy Barker, Jim Brompton, Jim Parsons, Tony Palmart, Gretchen, John and Sylvia Bradley and Ben Harper. Be seeing you all at sundown.
CHAPTER ONE
YOUNG WARRIOR
I have always done some sort of training. I started with karate. It was the summer of 1973 when it all began and I must have been about fourteen at the time. The karate club was only a short walk from my house. The first I knew of the club’s existence was when I saw a friend of mine walking through the park with his sports bag. I was playing football and I called out and asked him where he was going.
“I’m going to karate,” he said.
Karate? That sounds interesting, I thought.
I fell into step with him and he explained that some fella had given him a good hiding. Revenge being his initial motivation, he’d decided to learn how to fight so that if he ever bumped into the guy again he could dispatch him with a few well-aimed karate chops on the back of the neck.
At the time, the TV series Kung Fu was being broadcast, and Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris fought their way across the cinema screens all over the world. These films were hugely popular and martial arts clubs were springing up all over the place in response to them. Even the singer Carl Douglas jumped on the band wagon with his single ‘Kung Fu Fighting’, which reached Number 1 the charts. Kids everywhere were making cat-like noises and hopping about and kicking each other up and down the playgrounds of England. The world had gone martial arts mad and Kung Fu crazy and, in doing so, had sowed the seeds for the future.
Some of the other lads decided to tag along with me as well. The building we arrived at was a large wooden construction with a corrugated iron roof. One half was a snooker club, the other a karate school. The two very different sports were divided by a thin wooden panelled wall. Once I was inside the club a sense of tranquillity descended over me: there was reverence here and I felt like it was supposed to be.
As we waited for the lesson to begin, we witnessed a few strange activities taking place. There were people bowing to each other and everyone was dressed in white pyjamas. They were doing some very odd limbering up exercises. As the instructor walked in, he bowed at the threshold and the students quickly and silently fell into line.
The other lads who came with me were all taking the piss and trying to act out the movements. Thankfully they left after a while. But I didn’t: I stayed right to the end. I knew as soon as I set foot in the place that this was where I belonged. I joined up as soon as I could and I’ve never looked back. That was forty years ago and I have been involved in the martial arts ever since.
I didn’t have a great deal of confidence when I was a kid. I was often thought of as a bit of a dreamer. I would run home if someone started picking on me. One reason that some people decide to run away instead of standing their ground to fight is through lack of knowledge. You don’t know what to do when confronted with violence and so, as the adrenaline kicks in, you get scared and make a run for it. Karate made the difference for me, and from that moment on I stopped running. Karate gave me the knowledge to dispel my fears it also gave me the confidence that I thou
ght I’d never have.
I stayed at the karate club for many years met and trained with some great people and I had some unforgettable superb times there. I can still remember the first real fight I had. I had a tough job in those days and was working as a scaffolder on a huge building site in central London with my dear old dad and all his mates. I think I was barely eighteen when I started working there. It was quite rough sometimes and I saw many fist fights occur. Generally they were quick and nasty little affairs, but having said that, they were all forgotten about the next day providing it was a fair fight. And sure enough, as day follows night, one afternoon it was my turn to provide the pugilistic entertainment.