That evening, I received a phone call from Venables, who said the management at Epping wanted me to be sacked instead of Done. No reason had been given. What particularly annoyed me was that now I had been sacked, Done refused to stand by me. He said that he needed the money – the fact I’d lost my job was unfortunate but there was nothing he could do. I was livid and my friendship with Done became at best strained.
Done worked at the Ministry of Sound occasionally and, in an effort to patch up our friendship, he got me a job there to replace the nights I had lost at Epping. The Ministry door team were a powerful firm: nearly every man could have ‘a row’. Done was a good friend of Carlton Leach’s, who had once been the head doorman at the Ministry of Sound, but Leach had recently been sacked and his door team removed from the club. Two brothers from south London, Tony and Peter Simms, had taken over and there was immediate conflict between Leach and the Simms brothers. I asked Done if Leach minded us working for Tony and Peter because I felt our loyalty lay with Leach – he was, after all, Done’s friend. Done said they had discussed it and Leach was fine with us continuing to work there.
A few days later, I learned that Done had lied to me. When he had approached Leach, he had been told that it would be appreciated if he didn’t work for Tony and Peter Simms. When Done had explained that he needed the money, Leach told him he would pay his wages not to work there. Done decided he would take money from both the Simms brothers and Leach. I told Done I wanted nothing more to do with his deception, so we ended up falling out once more.
I was still seeing a fair bit of Tony Tucker. He asked me what the problem was between Done and me, so I told him. Tucker, who was also a good friend of Leach’s, was incensed; he said he was going to go down to the Ministry to stab Done. I told Tucker Done was not worth it. Instead of attacking Done, Tucker simply told Leach that Done had been taking money from him and the Simms brothers. When confronted, Done denied it and slagged me off, claiming that I was a liar and had been trying to cause trouble. Done and I fell out for the last time. We never spoke again.
One night while working at the Ministry of Sound, I hit a man in the face with a lead cosh. He had been threatening another doorman and me because we had refused him entry since he was drunk. We had politely asked him to go away several times but our good-natured requests had fallen on deaf ears. Eventually, we told the man ‘Fuck off – or else.’ His response was to step forward with a raised fist.
Smack! The sound of the lead cosh making contact with the man’s jaw and cheekbone echoed all around us. I knew something had broken in his face, I knew I had hurt him. He fell motionless to the ground and another doorman advised me to disappear. The following day, Peter Simms rang and said the man had suffered a broken jaw and a fractured eye socket. ‘Management would prefer it if you didn’t return,’ he said. Peter and his brother Tony are decent men and had been good to me. I didn’t want to repay them with grief, so I said I understood.
Back in Basildon, Raquels continued to be a cauldron of trouble, which would simmer and then boil over every night. Trouble came not only from the customers but also increasingly from those I worked with. Venables knew I had the serious hump with the way he ran security. A good friend of his, Dave Godding, and a man named Joe had been involved in a fracas in The Piano Bar and Joe had hit a man and dislocated his arm. Godding wanted me to call an ambulance. I refused, because if you do that, the police will arrive too. Godding went behind my back and dialled 999. Then he had the nerve to tell me he was going to ring Venables and complain about me. I went berserk. I shouted at him, telling him in no uncertain terms what I thought of Venables. Godding got very nervous and left the club. The next day, the manager, Ralph Paris, asked me to come in and see him in his office. Ralph told me Venables had resigned that morning because he said he didn’t think he could work with me any longer. I didn’t have a problem with that.
Before I’d arrived at the club, people had taken liberties all the time. I decided to use excessive violence to combat violence, and by doing so I had reduced the amount of trouble. People were thinking twice about starting anything in the club. It’s easy to say with hindsight now but I should have realised that excess would eventually be met with excess.
Chapter 3
The Raquels door team was still made up of local men and they
were still afraid of the local louts who had earned their reputations in the playground and were intent on taking them to their graves. The only way I was going to regain control of the club was if I brought in people from elsewhere who wouldn’t be scared of taking them on. But for now, the local doormen were all I had and I would have to make do.
I was nervous about my position, but controlling the door of a nightclub is all about front. I couldn’t show my fear or walk away after criticising Venables: I was going to have to stand my ground.
The legacy of the last door firm was over and I was determined not to make the same mistakes as my former boss. More and more people began to get seriously hurt; knives and other weapons were regularly used. On the surface, revellers were beginning to see a decrease in violence but behind the scenes those who wished to cause trouble were paying dearly.
In one incident, a local man came to the front door and became abusive because I insisted that he be searched before he entered the club. He went away and returned with a rounders bat. Maurice Golding, a doorman from Bristol who worked for me, was hit across the head and the man ran away. We all chased him and the manager followed, trying to reason with me to calm down. We caught the man 500 yards away from Raquels outside the local bingo hall. The doorman who caught him began to hit him, but I told him to stop. I kneeled on the man’s chest and cut him twice with a sheath knife: once on the face, once on his upper thigh. The manager was outraged. I posed the question: if he had chased Maurice with the bat and Maurice had fallen over, what would he have done with the rounders bat? It was only right that he got a bit of his own medicine.
Another night, a man from Leeds was refused entry because he was drunk. He produced a knife and began waving it and shouting obscenities. I told him to put the knife down, but he kept shouting, ‘Do you want some? Do you want some?’
‘It’s up to you which way this goes,’ I said. ‘Put the knife down.’
He refused. He was slashed and left with a deep, open wound to the left-hand side of this face. Again, I justified this by asking what would have happened if I had walked towards him without a knife and he was still brandishing his? I’ve always said the aggressor dictates the way things go. If they put their hands up, I’ll put my hands up. If they pull out a weapon, I’ll pull out a weapon. It’s entirely their choice. Violence is a messy business.
One Sunday evening I arranged to go to Epping country club with three drug dealers: Steve Curtis, Nathan Kaye and David Thomkins. I had met them in the Ministry of Sound. They told me that they were from the Bristol area. I had agreed to introduce them to Tony Tucker because he was trying to recruit new drug dealers for his clubs.
I’ll always remember introducing Steve, Nathan and Dave to Tucker. He asked me if they had any drugs with them. I asked them and they said they could sort Tucker out but they would want £40 from him. Tucker looked at me, looked at them, then started to laugh. ‘Tell them to hand over what I asked for or I’ll take the fucking lot.’ This was typical of Tucker. He wasn’t in the habit of paying for things, particularly drugs.
I decided that I would discuss a deal of my own I had in mind with Tucker concerning doormen for Raquels. I explained to Tucker about the trouble I was having and said I needed the backup of a strong firm. I told him that if he went into partnership with me, I would run the door and he could reap whatever benefits there were to be had from providing invoices and any other ‘commodities’ – drugs, protection, debts and so on. I would not bother him with the day-to-day running of the club. The only time I would call on him was if I had a severe problem and needed backup. In return, trouble or no trouble, he would make money each week from the club. Tucker nodded in agreement and we shook hands.
On 4 September 1993, Tucker and I began working together at Raquels. The agreement brought new faces onto the scene in Basildon. Men who worked for him and were looking for a change would come and work with me. One evening, I got a call from a doorman who said his mate, Gavin, was looking for work. Apparently Gavin had been sacked from a club in Ilford after sending a customer to hospital. The doorman said he’d already spoken to Tucker on Gavin’s behalf but had been told there was no work. This struck me as odd because I’d already mentioned to Tucker that I needed an extra doorman. I suspected he had another reason for saying no.
The politics of the door is worthy of academic study. The microcosm is a catty little world built on bubbling jealousies, stifled resentments and long-borne grudges. One week someone was in favour, the next he was a grass, a bottler or a wanker. People won’t speak to each other for years for quite petty reasons. Perhaps someone sweated on their towel in the gym, or tipped over their nail varnish. Many bodybuilders are better manicured than Jordan and Jodie Marsh put together; if you could calculate which groups spend the most on sunbeds, leg-waxing and hairdos, you’d find it a toss-up between call girls and bodybuilders. I hated all that doorman politics. I like to take people as I find them, not as they’re ‘generally known’.
I rang Tucker and asked him about employing Gavin. He said he didn’t really like the guy, although he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give a reason. In the end, he said, ‘It’s up to you, Bernie. If you need someone, then take him on.’ So I rang back my contact and told him to send Gavin along.
When I got out of my car at Raquels that Friday evening, I noticed an Asian-looking bodybuilder locking up his car. I was always very vigilant when entering and leaving the club. I felt that was the point at which a doorman was most vulnerable to attack from people seeking revenge. The Asian man walked towards me and asked, ‘Are you Bernie?’ After eyeing him up with caution, I said I was. He stuck out his hand and said, ‘All right, mate. I’m Gavin.’
During the evening, I asked Gavin why certain people seemed so set against him working at Raquels. He explained that Tucker had once turned up at a club where he was working and hadn’t wanted to queue, pay or show any sort of respect to the doormen. That would have been typical of Tucker. He’d walk to the front of any nightclub queue and when asked for money he would look at the door staff with utter contempt. Tucker had ended up being bashed. He’d lost a bit of face – an unforgivable outrage in the world of the door. As a result, he didn’t want to give work to anyone who’d been part of that door firm.
I liked Gavin from that first conversation. Quiet and uncomplicated, he meant what he said and said what he meant. His catchphrase with leery customers was, ‘What’s your problem, mate?’ Then he’d usually try reasoning with them. If they continued to be aggressive or violent, he had no hesitation in creating new customers for the NHS. He didn’t care for reputations – and could certainly fight. In fact, he turned out to be one of the best doormen I ever employed. In a short time, he became the man I relied on most when war broke out. Away from Raquels, he became my best friend.
One evening, two skinheads with tattoos on their heads and necks came to The Piano Bar. They arrived with four non-skinhead friends. I could see them looking at Gavin, then making remarks and laughing. They started doing the same to me. One of them stood behind me, aping me. I turned round and grabbed him by the throat, pushing him backwards as I did so. He fell back and hit his head on the corner of a small glass pillar, which shattered – as did his tattooed head. Gavin heard the sound of breaking glass and ran from the other side of the bar with a bottle in his hand. He told me later he thought I’d been attacked with a glass. He saw my ‘attacker’ on the floor but couldn’t see the gash at the back of his head. Gavin whacked his bottle a few times over the skin’s already-skewered skull. Then we both pulled him up and dragged him to the doors. His mates seemed too stunned to do anything. We threw him into one of the glass doors, which also smashed, cutting his upper arm. He was still struggling a bit, so we beat him before throwing him down the stairs. His mates meekly followed him, only shouting abuse when they’d got safely outside.
About half an hour later, customers near the exit doors began screaming and shouting, ‘Fire! Fire!’ Gavin and I ran to the stairwell and saw flames leaping up from the bar entrance. I told the manager and staff to deal with the fire, then Gavin and I ran out through the flames into the street. We found the skin with the sore head standing there with a red petrol can in his hand. Perhaps the earlier beating had slowed his reflexes because, although he looked surprised to see us, he didn’t run immediately, a significant mistake on his part.
I ran across to him, my Irish hurling stick in my hand. He dropped the petrol can. ‘It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me,’ he pleaded. He turned to run, but I hit him across the back with the hurling stick. He fell to the ground. Gavin began kicking him in the head with his steel boots. The skinhead begged us not to beat him any more. Gavin stamped on his head and I hit him so hard across the back with the hurling stick it broke. He lay there unconscious.
We picked up the petrol can and doused him with the remaining fuel. The other skinhead, who’d run a short distance away, began screaming, ‘Please don’t burn him! Please don’t burn him!’ We told him to come to us, as we weren’t going to do anything. He wasn’t stupid; he stayed where he was. We gave him the impression we were about to light the fire. The skinhead became hysterical. In the end, we threw down the petrol can and walked back to the club.
A week later, the skinhead who’d run away came to the club’s front door, pissed out of his head, asking for ‘that fucking Paki’. Gavin and I dashed downstairs to the dissatisfied customer.