by Nigel Benn
Mum responded in the repentant tones of a sinner at confessional. ‘Yes, it’s a boy,’ she whispered.
Dad went berserk. Angrily, he kicked and punched the red telephone kiosk in unbridled fury, hoping it would fall over in the misguided belief that it might help to relieve his frustration. A woman neighbour, who happened to be passing by at that moment, brightly remarked, ‘It’s another boy, then, Mr Benn?’ He gave her a grim look and stormed into the house, muttering that he would be going out in search of the gypsy woman.
Later that day, he visited Mum in hospital and she asked if he was still disappointed with her. He replied, ‘I’m disappointed, but not with you.’ Apparently, she just smiled and said she was going to be happy with her boys.
When they’d got over the shock of another son, they christened me Nigel Gregory Benn. However, in spite of everything that had happened, they were determined to learn their lesson the hard way and five years later tried once more for a little girl. This time, there was no gypsy woman on whom they could heap disappointment and anger when their seventh son was born.
What a shame we weren’t Irish because I learned during my army days in Northern Ireland that the seventh son of a seventh son has special powers.
With hindsight, the number of men in the Benn family should have been expected because Mum’s brother had six sons and her sister, five, before she gave birth to a daughter.
Andy was the only child in our family to have been born in Barbados. He was eight years older than me. The rest of us were all born in London. Dermot is five years older than me, then John who is three years older; next is Danny, two years older; Mark, one year; and Anthony, the baby of the family, is almost six years younger than me.
Although they already had five sons when I was born, Mum was still only 26 and Dad 30. It’s just as well because they needed to be young, healthy and strong, as it would have been impossible otherwise to feed and control seven boisterous lads, each of whom had the appetite of a horse.
Although we never went hungry, there were lean times and seven lively boys sharing a small three-bedroom house put a strain on everyone. The brothers were forever fighting over food or clothes or just brawling with one another for amusement.
Thankfully, Mum was a genius at making ends meet and creating meals out of virtually nothing, while Dad provided a heavy-handed discipline in an attempt to keep us all on the right side of the law. I always feared his temper if I did wrong. He is a big man, 6ft 1in and powerfully built. Before he whacked us — and he did so only when we deserved it — he would say in a broad West Indian accent, ‘If you don’t hear it, you must FEEL it.’ And feel it I did, far too often for my liking because, when he hit, it was like being struck with the force of an express train.
While today it seems that most parents would be arrested for the type of discipline he administered, I’m grateful for it. Were it not for my father, I’d probably be in prison instead of enjoying success as a world champion.
I sometimes wonder what I would be doing now if my parents had stayed in Barbados. They left behind them enough relatives to fill Wembley Stadium.
Mum tells me I was a good baby. That probably means I didn’t cry much, only occasionally sucked my finger and was generally easy to manage. Unfortunately, she was in for a tough time, for my infant years were to be the lull before the storm.
School was never much fun for me. I first went to Woodlands Infant School in Ilford and then to Cleveland Primary, where I was extremely boisterous and grew up well before my time. After that I went — sometimes — to Loxford School, where I took my CSE exams. As a child, I never felt I was a black kid in a white community. There had never been any racism in our family, although we were aware of its existence. Here again, I have to thank the sensible attitude of my parents. They upheld good old-fashioned virtues, which included respect for others, no matter what their creed or colour might be and, at the same time, gave us a feeling of equal standing in the community, so there was never a feeling of inferiority or superiority.
Until the age of eight, the worst thing that happened to me was getting lost at a fairground. I’d wandered off and each of my parents thought I was with the other until they met up and realised I’d disappeared. They were terrified that I might have been abducted and quite overwhelmed when they found me sitting casually on a chair, with my feet up on the table, in the Lost Property office. My mother wept with relief. As for me, I just hadn’t a clue what they had been going through and sat there without a care in the world. My other memory of the early years is of being on a school coach, stuffing my face with orange cheese and then being sick on the bus. That experience turned me off orange cheese for good.
While each of us boys had very different personalities, Dad tells me that I was probably a little more steamy than the other kids. I always had to be moving, he would say, and my parents also noticed I had unusually strong vitality and bags of energy. As I grew older, this vitality had to have an outlet and that is when I began treading the same path as Andy.
Looking after myself came naturally with five older brothers. We were always fighting and squabbling, whether it was for food, clothes or out of sheer malice. I guess my first lessons in fighting started at home. We also progressed to such things as lock picking, because Mum would desperately try to eke out the weekly provisions by locking some of them away. Inevitably, we would pick the locks and gorge on the spoils. There would be fights over cans of beans, loaves of bread and milk.
When the food ran out, we’d knock up ‘bakes’ from flour, water and sugar and sometimes we’d have to live on that for days. Mum would do the week’s shopping on a Friday and, if she left it around, it would be gone by Sunday evening. Toast, butter and sugar became another favourite, as did chips and bread.
Although money was hard to come by and there wasn’t an abundant supply of food, we brothers somehow managed to dress with style, although this would also lead to fights. Clothes were probably more important to us than food, and from an early age I would admire the way my older brothers dressed and looked. My brother Mark would buy exotic crocodile, lizard and emu skin shoes. They cost a king’s ransom but were essential accessories to complement his smart trousers and jackets. These small treasures would all be locked away until another brother decided to pick the locks and borrow the items. On discovery, the inevitable fight would break out, but what else could you expect with up to five brothers sharing one bedroom?
If the fighting became too violent, Andy would protect me from the others. He was by far the toughest of the Benn brood and nobody would take him on lightly. I felt happy and contented in his company and revelled in tales of his street fighting and his daring. I was too young to be judgemental about his actions and too much in awe of him to question his motives. After his death, I cried and cried for him. I missed his warmth and his charisma. I was unwilling to banish him from my mind. I wanted to be Andy.
It is possible, if I search my mind and try to be honest, to come to the conclusion that, for the rest of my life, I would seek his replacement. That, at least, is one interpretation that could explain my actions because, after Andy’s departure, I befriended much older boys than myself and was determined to be the toughest kid in the neighbourhood. From the age of 11 or 12, I would be found in the company of older boys and young men, some of whom were twice my age.
Later, in my professional life, whenever I saw what appeared to be exceptional or Svengali qualities in people, I tended to be impressed by them and, on occasions, fell under their spell until disillusionment set in. At the end of the day, I should have realised that the best people for advice were back in Henley Road — my mum and dad. They are the only ones I really listen to now.
After some expensive and harrowing experiences, I now manage my own affairs and tend to keep people at a distance unless I know them really well. I have been very badly let down and hurt in the past by people to whom I extended my loyalty and friendship within a business relationship. Learning through my
errors, and some of them have been very costly, I have become more cynical in my choice of friends and business partners.
Outside my immediate family circle, my first fight was with bare knuckles at a local swimming pool with a kid called Leo Isaacs. I was about nine and Leo was three years older and full of himself. Now he’s a good mate of my brother’s, but then I just wanted to hit him. He was short, powerful and stocky. I wouldn’t like to fight him now because he is really strong and a specialist at holding you in a deadly headlock. But I didn’t know that at nine, and I punched him straight in the eye and scored my first victory.
The fights with my brothers were too frequent and too numerous to list, although there were a few memorable ones.
On one occasion, my brother Danny thought he had killed me. We’d been fighting over a can of baked beans when Danny had had enough of me punching him. He grabbed me, held my arms and bit my tongue so hard that his teeth went right through it. (All the scars on my face and head are not from the ring but from injuries sustained when fighting my brothers and members of the public in the streets around Ilford long before I became a boxer.)
When Danny bit me, I was in a state of shock and couldn’t talk. However, the wounds healed relatively quickly and soon we were at loggerheads again. This time it started after I’d given him a lot of verbal. I was taking the mickey and he told me to shut up. Kids can be pretty cruel and we were no exception. Danny had once had a fit while eating a toffee. The sight of it was hilarious and will stick in my mind for ever. We’d all watched him sitting in front of a heater, a toffee stuck in his mouth, and his head jerking towards the ceiling and these two large eyes were rolling around uncontrollably. A doctor had been present and was tugging at his ear lobe to bring him to his senses.
After that, we called him Toffee. Adding insult to injury, we would play a version of the TV series Give Us A Clue where you mime a scene in a comic fashion and someone has to guess who or what you are enacting. Danny wasn’t amused at me parodying his fit while playing this game and when, amid gales of laughter, I refused to stop my antics, he went for me with unexpected aggression.
Seizing me by the neck, he began to choke me. There was no way I could get out of his grip so I relaxed my body and went totally limp in his hands. As he released me, I slumped back in the chair and pretended to be dead. He must have believed he’d killed me because he went screaming into the street, yelling in despair, ‘I’VE KILLED NIGEL. I’VE KILLED NIGEL.’ Then he came back to find me still in the chair but with both arms raised and two sets of fingers defiantly and offensively extended in a Churchill gesture to maximise the insult. He wasn’t sure whether to whack me, throttle me again or kiss me because I was alive.
Most of the family agreed that the similarities between me and Andy were quite uncanny. Mentally, we were almost like identical twins. Perhaps this would explain my restlessness and search for thrills, which followed the same pattern established earlier by my older brother. Why, otherwise, would someone who is surrounded with family love and affection go so determinedly off the rails as I did from about the age of 11? Was I, like Andy, in desperate need of constant physical stimulus through having too much energy, or was I blindly following a role model? Perhaps it was a bit of both.
One thing everyone agreed on, though, was that I was a natural fighter. People with recognised gifts, particularly academics, often find a patron who will ensure that they are given the mental stimulus their brain demands. That usually involves leaving behind playmates with whom they grew up and joining a group much older than themselves. I had no such sponsors and my fighting capabilities were, as yet, unrecognised but, nevertheless, something inside me told me I should find a group of companions much older, tougher and more experienced than myself. I needed that challenge. I also needed to find someone I could respect and model myself on. Another Andy. The time had come for me to grow up.
2
THAT LOVING FEELING
‘Oh no, it’s the police. Dickson, go and fetch Nigel, he’s in trouble again!’
Mum’s emotional response to the news that I’d been nicked or was in some kind of trouble was always the same. If I hadn’t been waiting in the lock-up I could have whistled her song. The plea for Dad to bail me out had become like the signature tune of a TV soap. With the amount of practice she’d had, Mum was pretty good at reciting it. Nevertheless, it was always sung with mixed feelings: commiseration for the inevitable slap I would get from Dad and frustration at my inability to reform. Contained in those feelings was a pinch of vindictive satisfaction of the ‘I told you so’ variety and ‘Why can’t you be like your brother John?’
My brother John was her favourite, Mr Goody Two Shoes, who couldn’t put a foot wrong. The contrast between saint and sinner was never greater and there was no question about who was the black sheep of the family. But John’s angelic state didn’t lessen my love for him. He was always loyal and he was always there and when, later, he encouraged me to become a soldier and join his regiment, he put me on the road to success.
I never felt underprivileged, poor or resentful of those who had money. If I wanted something badly enough, I’d nick it. It was as simple as that and I never had any great moral dilemma about what I had done. The only fear I had was of Dad finding out. He was the insurmountable obstacle in my path to what might have been a criminal career. Dad could put up with me fighting in the street but he would never condone stealing. That was totally unacceptable to him. If I was caught, the punishment he would hand out was something to be feared. In common with other boys with strict fathers, I used to think that he hated me.
To a slightly-built lad barely into his teens, my father was a giant. His hands were rock solid, with skin like sandpaper, so rough you could light a match on them. If you were on the receiving end of his anger, you’d see more than stars. The night sky would explode and the entire Milky Way would appear, followed by the sun and the moon and, before you knew it, you would be on the floor crying your heart out with pain and self-pity. In my case, I deserved it but, having got that ordeal over, bravado would once more overtake me and, instead of showing remorse, I’d simply vow not to get found out again. Then I would return to the street, displaying my scars like medals from a victorious battle and refuse to show any sign of my earlier penance.
The good thing about my father was that he never weighed himself down with grudges or brooded over the past. Mostly, he thought I was a good lad with loads of energy and spirit, and he didn’t want to tame it, he simply wanted to point it in the right direction. We are now the best of friends. I love him and Mum and my children more than anything in the world. If someone ever hurt my family, there would be no question of letting them off the hook. I’d get even no matter how long it might take.
My family means everything to me.
As much as he was able to, Dad supported me at every fight and often accompanied me on training sessions abroad. There is nothing from the past that has destroyed our friendship and love. If anything, the past has cemented the very deep bond which has always existed between us.
When it came to being punished for my wrongs, Dad was absolutely fair. On rare occasions, however, even he would have misgivings about the pain he inflicted, although he would never admit that to me when I was young. There were also times when he tried to reason with me. Like the day he bailed me out on his birthday when I was still in my teens.
Mum had greeted him at the door and he could see black clouds on her face. There was no way she was going to say ‘Happy birthday, Dickson.’
He had finished work earlier than normal and had raced home to celebrate. To his dismay, instead of being hugged by Mum, she told him, ‘Nigel is in a bit of bother … Forget the party!’ He went mad and said he was going to kill me — murder me. His special day had been ruined and it was all down to me. I’d been short of a few bob and was caught stealing a jacket in a London street market. My timing couldn’t have been worse.
The local police asked Dad to collect me
and, as soon as he arrived, the arresting officer, who was a bit of a PC Plod, could sense his anger. ‘You’re in a bad mood,’ he said, like some sort of modern-day Sherlock Holmes.
Dad responded a little too positively for my liking. ‘Yeah! And I’m about to kill my son.’
Earlier, I had pleaded with the police not to tell my parents. It’s quite funny, looking back at it now. I must have seemed like the cartoon character Brer Rabbit, about to be roasted by the fox and pleading for this to happen, rather than be tossed back into the brambles, which was what he really wanted. Unlike the rabbit, however, I really didn’t want to be thrown back in the brambles. That meant going home. For all I cared, they could roast me alive so long as they didn’t call Dad. I entreated them to let me go or to incarcerate me for ever.
‘Just don’t phone home,’ I begged.
In those days, police never seemed to listen to me and, when Dad showed up, I cheekily asked if I could go home on the bus. Could he lend me eight pence for the fare? I suggested timidly. There was no way I wanted to drive back with him. Thankfully, someone up there had my interests at heart because, after talking to the police officer, he calmed down a bit and we went back together. Instead of giving me the hammering I had expected, he sat down and talked about the way he felt and impressed on me how much he wanted us children to be honest and caring members of society.
I now welcome the discipline he imposed. Although he was pretty strict and we had some tough times together, I respect the fact that he only did it to keep me out of trouble. He always said, ‘As a child, I used to get it from my parents, too, and it didn’t make me love them any less.’ That’s my attitude as well and I’m sure it is down to him that I haven’t served a prison sentence.