One-Eyed Baz

by Barrington Patterson

  So I said, ‘All right then, no problem.’ He asked me to come down and show a bit of face because I’m a well-known guy – OK, I agreed. I’ve known this guy for 30-odd years – I didn’t care because he used to be one of my close friends.

  It had been going on for about two or three days already, so I arranged the meeting down this shop in Quinton, Birmingham. On the day, I went to the shop, and as I turned round the corner he was standing there with about four or five other guys. So I said to him, ‘I thought it was just me and you going down to see the guy?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve just brought some other guys to stand on in case anything happens.’

  OK, fuck it, I’ll just carry on. I went, ‘All right, fair enough, no problem.’

  In my mind, I’m prepared to have it off anyway – no matter what situation I’m going into. I’ve been in those situations before – I’m there to have it. But I didn’t go down with tools or anything, thinking there was going to be big trouble. If a mate asked me to go and do anything, I’d do it – I don’t ask questions.

  So I let them walk in front of me and, all of a sudden, my mobile phone rang. I was on the phone but they carried on; I saw them walking to the shop but I stayed on my phone. I ended the call and, after about 30 seconds, I walked to the shop.

  As I opened the door, it was all kicking off: the other guys had this geezer by the counter and were beating the shit out of him with their fists. So I thought, Fuck this, I’m out of ’ere! I’ve looked around and walked straight out of the shop, jumped into my car and done one.

  Then, a couple of days later, just before Prince Wills and Wossname got married on 29 April 2011, my solicitor rang me and said, ‘The police down Bournville station want to talk to you.’ Straight away I knew what they wanted to talk to me about.

  So I arranged to go up to the police station on the day the royalty were getting married. I turned up there with a solicitor and they said, ‘You’re under arrest for suspicion of blackmail and two assault charges.’

  ‘What the fuck are you on about, blackmail and two assault charges? I ain’t assaulted no one! I ain’t demanded anything off no one!’

  ‘You threatened this man and hit him with a knuckleduster.’

  ‘I ain’t got a clue what you’re on about, mate.’

  This lad’s reading me what’s supposed to have happened: they’re demanding 40-odd thousand pounds off this geezer; apparently £5000 was dropped in a bin at McDonald’s near Birmingham City’s ground; apparently some guy’s gone to the bin to pick the money up and then got arrested.

  So I got arrested. My brief said I was looking at five years. I just went, ‘No comment – no comment – no comment’ in my interview. They didn’t let me out. They kept me in overnight, took me to court on the Monday and I got bail. After everything, I kept thinking, There’s no way I’m pleading guilty to something I haven’t done.

  I’d had runback off my so-called mate: ‘This is what you’ve gotta say, this is what you’ve gotta say!’

  ‘Oh fuck you! You’ve put me in this position now; I’m not gonna get five years for something I haven’t done!’

  But now, because of my new missus, who’s well clued up on things like that, we’ve been reading all the statements I’ve got from the barrister. This guy down the shop said he knows me from the clubs downtown: I’ve never set eyes on the guy in my life. He’s said I’m a cage fighter: obviously he’s seen me on the fucking TV. I don’t know this guy from Adam. In his statement, he said I hit him with a knuckleduster and I forced his son to lie on the ground.

  Come on, I was a professional fighter! If I hit you with a knuckleduster, you wouldn’t know what fucking time of day it was!

  So after these guys were in the shop beating them, when the police came to the shop, he said, ‘I’d just had an argument with the guys because I’d sold this guy some dodgy equipment,’ and then the police left; he didn’t want to press charges. But then two weeks later he did. He apparently explained to the police that these guys had been demanding 40-odd grand off him; they said if you don’t pay the money we’re going to do this to you, we’re going to do that to you, which had nothing to do with me.

  When I was arrested, the police were going through the statements: they had no telephone records of me having any contact with anybody else except for three telephone calls with my ex-mate – and that was the odd time that he was saying to me, ‘Hey look, I want you to come down the shop with me.’ But between him, the guy who’s got the shop and another couple of guys, all the telephone conversations tied up with the whole lot of them.

  So I knew they didn’t have anything on me. The guy picked me out of the ID parade: I held my hand up and said, ‘Yeah, I was there! I didn’t go down there for no trouble, I just went down there with my pal and when it all happened I just turned round and walked out.’

  Of course, when all this happened, the police didn’t want to know about it until they heard my name. It’s the same as when I got arrested for the football a couple of years before; the same guy arrested me again.

  I was on bail for eight or nine months before I went to Birmingham Crown Court: the trial lasted about two weeks in April 2012. I don’t know whether this is a record or not, but we went through five sets of jurors in this case. Because on the first day of my trial they called in the jurors and one of them sent a note to the judge, saying that they knew me. Every time the jury came out, somebody knew me or knew one of the other defendants. I think it got to the stage where they were going to put the case out to another court, but, wherever I am, I know so many people – or so many people know me. This went on all day. After five later attempts, we still couldn’t start the trial

  I think they were getting sick and tired of having to keep swearing in juries all the time. On the sixth attempt, we got a jury; they eventually managed to find jurors who didn’t know anyone. Deep down I knew I was going to get out of it because I’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  On the first day of my trial, I didn’t take my missus to court as there are just some places you don’t take her. The prosecution looked moody, as always, but that was a minor point as I had a good barrister.

  Before the trial started, I got all the depositions from my brief. To be honest, I didn’t have a clue what I was looking for, but Tracey spent hours going over them. She never stopped; she turned into a brief overnight. She requested transcripts of the only 999 call that was made plus copies of the alleged victim’s son’s statement, as he was in the shop on the day. If he saw his dad get beaten up and he made a police statement, why wasn’t he being used as a witness?

  She got all this info from my barrister and spent hours going over it. It transpired that the victim’s son had said in his statement that I was the last to arrive at the shop and I didn’t hit anyone. In fact, I stepped in when someone went to hit the guy’s son – hence why he wasn’t being used as a witness, and why the statement was missing from the original court documents.

  So far that’s one-nil to me.

  Now to the guy who made the 999 call: during the call he states there are 10 men going into a shop; I am parked over the road at the junction, watching them fighting in the shop. He clearly states that no weapons were seen; when asked by the operator, ‘Do you know these men?’ he states, ‘I don’t know them, never seen them before.’ He then gives his name and ends the call.

  The next day, Tracey went up to the shop and parked where the alleged witness did. There is a 20-foot drop from the dual carriageway down to where the shop is; you can’t see the front of the shop as there is a 20-foot concrete advertising board. She had to go right up to the window to look in and got loads of photos that would later prove this guy wasn’t where he said he was. I always said he was in the back and didn’t want to explain what he was doing in a shop that sells crop equipment.

  That’s two-nil to me.

  As the guy left his name on the 999 call, Tracey looked him up and did a background check on him. I couldn’t believe
it when she showed me what she found: he was due in court for cultivating cannabis to the value of £20,000. Bingo, caught out again!

  We couldn’t find his police statement in the court papers but we found a statement from a guy with a different name, referring to the 999 call that was made. That statement was made six months later, in which he goes on to name me and my two co-accused and states we were carrying bats and had hoods on. Unbelievable!

  Where the fuck had this guy come from?

  Tracey did a background check on him and he had no criminal history. He didn’t even exist on any public records. But it transpired that the guy who made the 999 call with the long criminal history had been given a new name and a clean record to give evidence against us. So that’s three-nil to me.

  The next day at court, Tracey gave all the information to the barrister and he wasn’t happy. He went straight into the prosecution and kicked off with them for trying to pull a flanker. The prosecution decided not to call their only witness, so that left the alleged victim.

  When the ‘victim’ got in the witness box, he told the funniest stories of how he was attacked by at least 10 people using bats and knuckledusters, and how he remained standing through the whole thing. We were in the dock pissing ourselves laughing. So were the jury – his medical records showed a four-centimetre scratch on his lip. Even the judge cracked a smile.

  When my barrister was questioning the ‘victim’, he said, ‘What kind of things do you sell in your shop?’

  ‘I sell equipment to grow indoor plants like tomatoes.’ That one had the court in fits again. What a twat!

  ‘So you don’t condone people growing cannabis then?’

  ‘Oh no. I’ve never had anything to do with drugs. I run a legitimate business.’

  This guy was saying that, although he’s got a grow shop, he’s got nothing to do with any grow, but my missus caught him out. When we got home from court that day, Tracey still wasn’t giving up. She got back on the computer, set up a blag email address and asked the guy at the shop for advice on a crop. Of course, he’s got a webpage: ‘Buy this! Dust for buds,’ and things like that. So she sent him an email: ‘I’ve got some little buds, I want to get my buds bigger. What do I do?’ He sent her an email back: ‘There isn’t anything you can tell me about crops. I’ve done loads. I can sell you this fan and that chemical to get your crop sorted.’

  What a mug!

  So then we printed it off and gave it to our barrister the next day, and he gave it to the prosecution. When the ‘victim’ was in the witness box behind his screen, my barrister waved the email at him and read it out to the jury. He was wounded. What could he say? I would have loved to see his face.

  Even the judge looked over at my missus and gave her a sly smile.

  It’s now four-nil to me but, as we know, you haven’t won till the final whistle goes.

  I was next in the witness box. My barrister had the whole court in fits of laughter; he did me proud that day. He said, ‘Hold up your fist, Mr Patterson,’ then he turned and looked at the jury and said, ‘Do you think Mr Patterson needs to use a knuckleduster, even if they do make them to fit hands the size of an elephant’s foot? If Mr Patterson hit the victim with a bare hand, we could safely say he would still be lying down.’

  He then went on to wave my book contract around and asked, ‘Do you think Mr Patterson has to resort to blackmail when he has a lucrative book deal and parts in films? We have all seen how well known Mr Patterson is; it’s taken six juries to get this trial underway, so why would he roll up in a convertible with the roof off and no disguise to beat up the alleged victim?’

  The jury was out. There was nothing else anyone could do now but sit and wait. No matter how well it had all gone, you can never be sure until you hear the foreman of the jury say those words: ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’.

  We went for a walk and came back; they were still out. At 4.30pm, we were sent home till the next morning; at 2.00pm that day, our barrister called us: ‘The jury are back.’

  As they all walked back into court, none of them looked over at me or my co-accused. That’s never a good sign.

  The judge said, ‘Have you reached a verdict on all three of the defendants?’

  ‘No, your honour.’

  ‘Who have you reached a verdict on?’

  ‘Mr Patterson.’

  I’m now thinking they’re going to make an example out of me.

  ‘What is your verdict?’

  ‘Not guilty on all counts.’

  I was buzzing. It was finally all over. This case had been hanging over me for a year.

  The jury were sent away to battle it out over my two co-accused. One of my pals had brought in his jail bag just in case. Not me – I don’t do that. It’s bad luck.

  When the jury came back on my two pals, the judge said he would accept a majority verdict. They both got a ‘not guilty’ on a ten to two. What a result!

  When the case started, it was front-page news: ‘Barrington Patterson in blackmail plot’. I got a ‘not guilty’ and it was two lines on page six. Jokers!

  After the trial, I asked my missus to marry me. To my surprise, she said yes. In 12 weeks, she got the whole thing sorted: she had the dress made and got me and my best man, Todd, suited and booted, with a lavish reception for all our friends and family.

  Just days before the wedding, I got a call from the manager of the venue saying the Old Bill had been to see him. They were concerned that we were having our wedding reception there, as the Blues were playing less than a mile away that day against Reading. But who the fuck are Reading?

  I’m not telling my missus about the call. I need to think about this one. Then she calls me, having a fit. She’s copped wind of it and she’s going mad; she calls up the copper to sort it out and they want to put Old Bill outside the reception. She tells them it isn’t happening and that she isn’t organising her wedding around the football fixtures. So it all went ahead without the Old Bill.

  It was a wicked day! There were 400 people there in all. It was nice for all of us to be in the same place for a happy occasion – the only time we get together on that scale is for funerals. Loads of people have since asked: ‘Can’t we have another party like that one?’

  * * *

  Sometimes I thrive on the little bit of reputation I’ve got, it’s nice and all that. I went up to Whitley Bay on my birthday for a stag night: ‘Hello, Barrington, how you doin’, mate? You wanna drink?’ ‘If you wanna buy us a drink, buy us a drink.’ ‘You’re that bloke off the telly, aren’t ya?’ ‘Yeah – buy us a drink.’ So sometimes it’s a good thing and sometimes it goes the opposite way.

  I look ahead but I don’t plan things – I just live from day to day. The reason is that before my dad died he planned a lot of things: he planned to retire; apparently, he was going on holiday with his wife when he retired. He never got to his retirement; he died a couple of weeks before.

  Once he was older and about to stop working, I’d go down and see my dad at Wisbech, whereas my other brother and sisters wouldn’t. Colleen will say, ‘Your dad wanted you to have this’ – they don’t mention my brother and sisters, it’s like they don’t exist. He’s got a daughter in New York and they don’t mention her at all.

  But when I go down there Colleen gives me things – ‘Here’s £1000 towards the wedding, your dad would have wanted you to have it.’ I sat her on the top table at my wedding.

  My dad passed away in January 2006 of cancer. Up until then he was as fit as a fiddle, working and living a quiet life with Colleen near Peterborough. I will always be grateful that he saw me fight professionally. When he passed away I grieved for him – but I also grieved for the lost years.

  ANDRE

  Barrington has got a heart of gold and a soft side to him that not many people have seen, barring his close friends and family. I have seen Barrington at his lowest points, like when his dad died and we went together to the funeral in Norfolk. This hit Baz really hard but, like
brothers, you stick together through the hard times to help each other through it. Baz always comes and talks to me when he has a problem and I do the same with him. Or else Baz just takes the piss to make you laugh when you’re down.

  Barrington is so soft with his children – if you could see him around them it’s not ‘Big Bad Baz’; he just melts, but that’s the nice side of him that people don’t see.

  I was honoured to be godfather to his son Kye, and Barrington was best man at my wedding to my beautiful wife, Alana, and did us proud on the day. Once again, the soft side of Baz came out in the words he wrote about me and Alana. Top man!

  Barrington has finally settled down and I know that he loves his new bride, Tracey, dearly. I wish them all the best for the future.

  From his brother, Andre Yerou

  So as for me, I don’t plan a thing. I take each day as it comes. You plan things, they never work out. I get up in the morning, thank God I’m alive; I go to bed, thank God and ask him to make sure I wake up in the morning.

  I just live my life; I try to treat each day as if it’s my last day on earth. So I’m glad to enjoy each day as it comes. If I had my time all over again I wouldn’t change anything.

  I won the fight – as you can see!

  Just married: Tracey and I are photographed between my mum, Dorothy (left), and my step-mum, Colleen (right).

  I have a sister in New York: Joy is pictured (centre) with her family.

  Me, Todd, Sharkey and the boys (left-right) were all Townies.