by Ray Winstone
The first play I was in at drama school was called The Trojan Women. I’m not sure who it was by – I couldn’t even pronounce the name – but I had to wear a little skinny loincloth with nothing covering my chest, and this Greek helmet with all these feathers in it. I’ve got the spear, the sword, everything – its almost like ‘they’re taking the piss, now’. As soon as I opened my mouth in that outfit everything I said sounded ridiculously London-y. It turned the whole thing into a comedy, but not necessarily in a good way – it’s not a good feeling when you can see everyone laughing but you’re not sure if they’re laughing with you or at you.
It wasn’t the most sympathetic piece of casting – I felt like a total dick. I suppose they just threw me in there thinking they’d test me, and I failed the test miserably. The next play we did was some jolly-hockey-sticks Agatha Christie thing, where I was meant to come through some French doors but one of my mates had tied them together, so I tried to squeeze in through the French windows instead and got stuck. Even though no one was taking the whole thing very seriously, once I finally got onstage it actually felt OK. I couldn’t be getting any worse because the only way to go from The Trojan Women was up, and at least I wasn’t wearing a loincloth.
The third part was the breakthrough. It was in Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story, which I actually managed to learn properly because it was good and I wanted to do it. The play’s about a couple of guys who meet on a bench in Central Park, and Mr Morris directed me and a guy called David Morris (no relation to Vernon) in it. That was where I really started to learn, partly because it was a two-hander and I like small company, and partly because I played the weaker character. I didn’t have to be the nutter. I got to play the guy who was scared and had an emotional crisis. This was the first time I’d ever done anything like that, and I was surprised at how comfortable it felt – almost like freeing myself.
I enjoyed the intensity of just having two people in a scene and what happened when they met shaping the direction of the story. David Morris was a terrific actor, far in front of where I or probably anyone else was at that school at the time. With him leading the way I was improving from rehearsal to rehearsal. And by the time we finally put the play on, the audience were quite shocked by how good it was (especially given what a disaster my earlier appearances onstage had been). I could feel myself holding their attention, and when you do that it’s like finding your timing as a boxer – you feint and you pull them in, then you jab and get ’em off balance. That was when I started to think, ‘Maybe I can do this after all.’ It wasn’t just that I was taking it seriously, I was really enjoying it.
Needless to say, not every assignment at Corona went so smoothly. Shakespeare was something I thought I’d never be able to do, because it was too wordy for me and I didn’t have the necessary command of the English language. As it turned out, not having that received pronunciation they teach you gave me quite a natural way of reading Shakespeare.
I did the thing I normally do, anyway, which is leave all the punctuation out. People stop in the middle of sentences all the time when they’re talking, so why shouldn’t characters in his plays do that too? This technique stood me in good stead, and even though I might not have known what all the individual words meant, I seemed to be able to get across the overall meaning pretty well.
We’d have lessons on it where they’d tell us precisely what everything was supposed to mean according to the experts, but my attitude to the Shakespeare scholars was that they could fuck off. It’s the same with a play as it is with a book – fair enough, the authors’ intentions were important to them at the time, but it’s how the whole thing comes alive in your imagination that matters to you.
Sadly, the examiners of my London Academy of Dramatic Arts exam didn’t feel the same way. I’m not sure how much use those exams are – they certainly aren’t going to get you a job – and they’re normally incredibly boring because everyone has to do the same fucking speech. In my case it was the ‘Wherefore rejoice what conquest brings’ bit from Julius Caesar, which I probably know better now than I did then. I decided to make my version a little bit different to liven things up, so I set it in a pub. This was before Steven Berkoff and all that, so it was still quite an original idea (or at least I thought I was).
To me, the way the speech read was that this was a geezer praising the new guy coming in and mugging the old one off – the gangster who used to run that plot has been topped and all his mates are saying, ‘Hold up, better get in with Tiberius.’ So that’s how I did it. I got zero for acting ability, which I can’t argue with because it’s an opinion. But the one that really got me was zero for imagination. I thought, ‘Everyone else has done it exactly the same way except me, so surely I brought something to the table that no one else did?’ I wasn’t thinking I should’ve automatically got ten, but I should’ve certainly got something.
The good thing was that instead of discouraging me the way that it might have, the unfairness of this was actually a bit of a turning point for me. It brought my stubbornness into play by making me think, ‘You’re having a pop here, and I think I’m right, so I’m going to show you.’ I wish I thought someone who wanted the best for me came up with this idea as a deliberate plan to motivate me, but I don’t.
One of my first professional engagements was at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. It was a revival of the Alan Klein musical What a Crazy World We’re Living In, which Joe Brown had done as a film years before. By the time I got there in the mid-seventies Joan Littlewood (whose name was always associated with that theatre) wasn’t so involved with the place any more. Her partner Gerry Raffles, who still ran it, was about to die of diabetes. He’d stood in front of the bulldozers when the Stratford shopping centre redevelopment threatened the theatre building with demolition, but he’d taken his eye off the ball a bit afterwards. I’d never have got cast in a role that required singing and dancing otherwise. It wasn’t a very good part, and I wasn’t very good in it. ‘Dad’s gone down the dog track/Mother’s playing bingo’ is one of the only lines I can remember.
I went to Stratford East with very little idea about the technique of being onstage and all that palaver, but what I learnt there about the reality of life in a professional theatre had much more impact on me than any acting tips I picked up. It turned out that my idea of it was much cleaner and more glamorous than the way things actually went down.
I’d expected almost regimental discipline and a dedication to the craft worthy of Sir Laurence Olivier. Instead, I found a load of fucking hippies smoking fags and drinking beer. I hated all the mess backstage and the whole thing felt a bit studenty for my tastes – it crushed a lot of my illusions about how the acting game was run. Maybe that was no bad thing in the long term, but when you see some actor you know off the telly and they’re just like some scunger, you end up thinking, ‘I don’t wanna be that.’ It destroys the fantasy.
As if getting paid £30 a week and a bowl of rice wasn’t bad enough, you had to put up with Vanessa Redgrave coming down to tell you how you should give half your wages to the Workers’ Revolutionary Party. Now I respect anybody else’s opinion, but I’ve never been into all that commie lark. My thing was always ‘you’ve got to look after your own’, which I suppose is kind of what communism is in a way, or at least how it usually seems to turn out when people try to put it into practice. Either way, I ain’t giving you £15 a week of my money. ‘Sell your house, darlin’ ’, that was how I looked at it.
I didn’t say that while Vanessa Redgrave was giving her talk, of course. That would’ve been rude. I sat and listened to her for a while and then got up quietly to make my exit. She saw me and called out, ‘Where are you going?’ When I politely called back, ‘Thank you, but I’m leaving. I’ve heard enough’, she seemed pretty pissed off, because she shouted, ‘But you won’t learn anything unless you listen’, so I said, ‘Well, I won’t fucking learn anything from you’, and off I went.
I’ve never met her again since.
She’s a fantastic actress and she’s probably a nice woman as well. I’m sure she did her bit for the party, and good luck to her, but from what I can gather it came out later on that some of the people running her organisation weren’t exactly whiter than white in how they conducted themselves. A lot of that kind of sleazy shit was going on in those days, and not just in the Top of the Pops dressing room.
There’s a Pizza Express alongside the theatre now, where we played football in the builders’ sand. Another shopping centre’s gone up since – the much flashier Westfield, which was opened just in time for the Olympics – but the Theatre Royal looks pretty much the same as it did forty years ago. I’m not sure it’s even had a coat of paint since then. It’s still there in all its horrible purple glory.
I guess we’re still living in a crazy world too, so no change there either. I’ll never forget the opening night of that musical. My parents came down to Stratford to watch it. My dad was all suited up with a silk hankie in his jacket pocket and he had a gin and tonic in his hand. I came off stage and I’d been terrible – danced the wrong way, told jokes no one laughed at, the lot – and he just shook his head and said, ‘Give it up while you’re in front, son.’
CHAPTER 14
YORK HALL
I’ve got to tell you about the boxing match I had in Canterbury when the Repton and Fitzroy Lodge clubs went down there together. I’d been out Kent way a couple of times before as a young kid – to the hop farms. Going ‘hopping’ used to be a bit of a working holiday for East End families who wouldn’t have had too many chances to get out of London otherwise, but that particular boxing match was more a gypsy coach-crash than a busman’s holiday.
My dad’s mate Terry Spinks, who’d won the Olympic gold medal, was there. I’m on the scales weighing in ready to fight. I’ve got the velvet shorts on, the green-and-gold top – to be honest with you I look a million dollars (if I don’t say this, no one else is going to). Then the kid I’m fighting gets up there. He’s got a pair of old pumps, baggy shorts, no front teeth and a broken hooter. So straight away I’m thinking, ‘He’s been hit a few times, this is gonna be easy.’
Right from the start of the fight, I’m just going ping! Picking him off nicely. Can’t miss – he’s walking into ’em. Then at the end of the first round, I hit him square on the chin and he’s straight down on the canvas – wallop! He came out for the second like a fucking lunatic – bit me, elbowed me, kneed me in the groin, stood on my feet, hit me with everything. He just lost the plot completely. I probably won the fight easier than I would’ve done otherwise, but he did make me pay for it. I don’t think I got out of bed for a day and a half afterwards.
He was a little rat, but he had some heart. My career record as an amateur boxer was eighty wins out of eighty-eight fights, and in all that time I met one opponent I disliked as a person. It wasn’t this kid with the broken hooter, it was another guy who I could tell was a nasty fucker from the moment we shook hands.
Even while I was boxing him, I was thinking, ‘You are not a nice fella.’ He had all the technical knowledge to be a good fighter, so why was he trying to head-butt me in the clinches? He didn’t want to know when it was time to shake hands after I’d beaten him, either, and I just thought, ‘You can go fuck yourself. You’ve just had one hiding – do you want another one?’
That fight was one of the very few bad memories I took away from York Hall in Bethnal Green. Obviously there’s Wembley and the Albert Hall as well, but as far as grassroots boxing in England goes, York Hall is the home of it. The building is a swimming pool in the daytime, so if you go there at any other time, it doesn’t really feel like anything special. But I had some great nights there, and when you step into that ring and the roar goes up, there’s an atmosphere like nowhere else – because it’s a municipal baths, you can imagine the echo you get.
I had thirteen wins at York Hall, and it’s been my lucky number ever since.
A boxing match is nothing like street fighting. First off because you’ve got a referee to stop it – that’s a major difference. Also, street fights (when they’re not a formal ‘straightener’ like that time in Spitalfields Market) are usually over anger, whereas if you let anger come into boxing, you’re probably going to lose.
The one time I lost at York Hall, it wasn’t me who got angry. The kid I was boxing was good and it was close, but I thought I won it. In fact, it was probably the best I’ve ever boxed. But the Repton was a big club, and every now and then they used to surrender someone to make it look fair. York Hall was effectively our home venue so they had to show that we weren’t in control of the decisions, and that night it was my turn to be sacrificed. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I know this might sound like I’m making excuses, but as a general rule in boxing you know when you’ve won and you know when you’ve lost.
Either way, old Sammy Keyworth who worked with us on Roman Road Market wasn’t too happy about the decision. He’d come along to watch me fight, and when the verdict went against me he took umbrage in a major way. The mayor of Tower Hamlets was sitting in front of him, and Sammy was so angry he kicked the guy’s chair over. The mayor went flying in all his regalia, chains and ermine everywhere – it was hilarious.
I got a nice little consolation prize at the end of that evening when I won the Fighter of the Night award from the Marksman pub. As you can imagine, it was pretty unusual for that to go to a boxer who’d lost, so I think that showed where their sympathies lay.
Another great night at York Hall was when I won John H. Stracey’s trophy as Fighter of the Year for going a whole twelve months undefeated. He’s a great mate of mine even now, John. I’ll never forget the time he won the world title against José Nápoles. The funny thing about that was that they didn’t televise the fight live – it wasn’t on till the day after, and the commentator (I can’t remember if it was Reg Gutteridge or Harry Carpenter) had to put the voiceover on afterwards, pretending he hadn’t already seen it. But he couldn’t help himself, so he kept saying things like, ‘I definitely feel John H. Stracey is going to win.’
The East End had more than its fair share of world boxing champions in those days. Charlie Magri was another one. He was a great boy, Charlie – I think his dad was a tailor. He boxed at the Arbour youth club in Stepney, which wasn’t far from the Repton, and he was about the same age as me, so we all became mates when he was coming up through the ranks. I was there when he won the world title and I had a drink with him after he lost it. You made so many connections in boxing – more than any other business I’ve ever come across, and they’re real friendships as well. Obviously you meet a lot of people in the acting game, but there’s more loyalty in boxing.
I had three fights in one night at York Hall once at the London Federation of Boys Clubs championships (which I think I’m still the only person to have won in three different years). That took me right the way through to the NABC’s, but it all went wrong with the last punch of the semi-finals. I jabbed the fella and he ducked his head and took my hand under with him, which broke the finger on my jabbing hand. If it had been the right hand I’d have probably got away with it, but as it was I couldn’t box in the final. Obviously, I was gutted at the time, but I’d have had to take on a good fighter. His name was George Walker, and he was a big strong kid who might have been too much of a handful for me, anyway, at the time. But we’ll never know because he got a bye and became the champion.
Boxing for the Repton does open doors, because it is a big famous club and they do produce some great fighters, but I never looked at myself as being good enough to join them. That’s not me being modest, I honestly didn’t imagine myself as being that good at anything. I never had that . . . inner belief is, I suppose, what you call it. Even now when I watch a sportsman perform really well I always think it’s absolutely fantastic, but I never see what they’re doing as something I’d be capable of, any more than I did when I saw Bobby Moore lift the World Cup.
I did get to
box for England a couple of times. I was still a junior then – maybe sixteen – and I got picked because I’d won the Middlesex and London championships, which automatically gives you the chance to box for your country. I’d have been a light welterweight at that time, and it was a home nations fixture, England versus Wales.
There were two bouts and I boxed a kid called Gary Ace in the first one. They’re tough kids from that part of the world and he was a good fighter, but I had the secret weapon that was Repton coach Jackie Bowers in my corner. You never wanted to go back in your corner at the end of the round when Jackie was there because he’d give you a harder time than the other fighter would. He’d tell me, ‘You’ll never be a fighter’, and I’d say, ‘I don’t want to be a fucking fighter, Jack – do you think I want to get punched in the face all my life?’ That’s how the conversations between us used to go.
I had a lot of time for Jackie, both as a coach and as a man, and he did me proud that night. Because I was known as a counter-puncher, Gary was expecting me to be on the back foot from the off so Jackie said, ‘Just walk straight across and hit him on the chin with a right-hander.’ I did, and he went straight through the ropes. That kind of livened him up and from that point on I boxed beautifully – he says modestly – and I won in the end. My other fight was against another little Welsh tough-nut. I did alright in that one as well, but not alright enough to win. I’m not saying I was robbed, but it was a good job Sammy Keyworth wasn’t there.