Tribute: Mickey 'Boy' Meaker
This page is dedicated to my life long buddy and partner in crime Mickey’Boy’ Meaker who sadly passed away on the 22/12/2025. Thanks for the memories me ol mate. Gone but never fogotten. Below are some of the adventure from the book ‘You Are The Beef” featuring Mickey Boy. Enjoy!
Bon Voyage!
Right! It was time a well deserved break was in order. Me and my trusty companion, Mickey Boy Meaker, were off to sail the seven seas but decided just to catch the ferry and the train to the South of France instead. After all, Southampton docks said that the Mary Rose had sunk ages ago.
Getting across the water was a piece of cake for us because we only had to make our way to Ramsgate to get the Sally Line cross channel ferry to Dunkirk. This would be the first leg of our epic journey across the globe, who knows what perils lie and wait in store for us.
The funny thing was we had tried this trip before and actually only ended up in Dunkirk. But this time there was no way we were coming back after two days, we were there for at least a week. We would be living on a diet of ham rolls and chips because they were the only two things we understood for food in French, perhaps some kind of phrase book might be the best option for the next time, I’ll have to bear that in mind. Armed with two bags and a tent we boarded the vessel HMS Sally. It was plain sailing now! The first leg of our journey and we were on our way. We were only an hour and a half away from mainland France. People were honking up their breakfasts on the short trip. We had our sea legs with us and there was no way we were gonna puke.
We landed in Dunkirk and had to kill some time before we headed off to the train station. We bumped into these lads from Crystal Palace who had come over for the day on a bit of a beano. We got chatting to them about football and stuff like that, and then went our separate ways.
Mickey Boy and I decided to have a customary little look around the shops. Football fashion back then had really started to take off, with designer labels like Armani, Sergio Tachinni, Fila and Lacoste. We scoured the shops to see if we could find any clobber. I really used to like the Lacoste stuff, especially that little green crocodile they had as their emblem. We found a little sports shop and went in to have a look round. This shop had loads of Lacoste polo-shirts, so Mickey Boy decided he was going to try and steal one. He cunningly picked up two at the same time so the shop attendant only thought he had the one but, being English, I think they were suspicious about us right from the moment we went in. We couldn’t speak a word of French and they couldn’t speak a word of English. He was in the changing room for ages and the shop attendant was on him. The shop attendant kept saying things in French to Mickey Boy, trying to hurry him up I think and he’d reply “Fuck Off!” While all of this was going on I found myself standing there on my own, there weren’t any eyes watching me at all. So I pushed my bag under the T-shirt rack and pretended to look through the T-shirts. I unhooked one of the polo-shirts and let it slip into my bag on the floor, glancing at the shop attendant to see if he’d noticed…. He hadn’t. I dragged my bag out from underneath the T-shirt rack and zipped it back up, Bob’s your uncle! Mickey Boy came out of the changing room and handed the two shirts back to the shop attendant. Then we made our way out of the shop. I asked Mickey Boy as we were walking along the road “Did you get anything Mick?” and he replied “Nah I couldn’t, the bloke was on me all of the time”. I told him that I’d got one, then took it out of the bag and showed him. Not to be outdone (because he really wanted one) we went to the nearest department store in the town and went to the sports section that was on the second floor. This was a totally different scenario and there were shop attendants everywhere. But Mickey Boy just had to have one. I had told him how I’d unhooked the polo-shirt and let it drop into my bag on the floor, back in the other shop. So he tried the same tactic, only this time when he unhooked the polo-shirt and let it drop, it fell over the banister onto the escalator below. The next thing we knew one of the shop attendants came round the corner with this Lacoste polo shirt with a dirty, great, grease mark down it from where it’d got wedged at the top of the escalator. All of the shop attendants started to gather around us so we decided to make a run for it down the stairs. The alarm bells were going off and one of the women shop attendants started screaming and spraying CS gas at us as we pegged it down the stairs. We got to the bottom of the stairs and found ourselves in this warehouse. Coming towards us was a security guard, so I knocked him over with my bag, and then we ran off out of an exit and escaped! Mickey Boy never did get his shirt that day.
On another occasion this new football fashion trend had found me and three of my buddy’s traipsing around the streets of London looking for some quality clobber. In our little posse for the day was Mickey Boy, Matt, Pete and me of course. We all worked at the radiator factory and Matt’s Dad worked with my Dad on the Hovercrafts. Matt lives with his wife Natasha in Florida now and Pete is a psychiatric nurse round our way in Thanet (I think). Matt is a West Ham fan and Pete was Arsenal…. Oh yeah, and Mick was Leeds.
This football fashion was all the rage back then. I did have a few mates who already had the smart casual clothes, especially my mate, Russ Miller. He had a £150 Armani jumper and all the other posh names that were around at the time. In fact, Russ was the first person I’d seen wearing a Stone Island jumper. They’re two a penny nowadays but not back then. You can buy all sorts of crap snide clothes on Ebay nowadays and no one seems to give a toss if it’s real or not, but it wasn’t like that in the eighties.
So my three buddies and I were out trying to find ourselves a new garment to bring back home to show off to everyone. I really thought I was the bollocks whenever I got something new that cost a bit of dough and you could guarantee, nine times out of ten, there wasn’t gonna be a geezer in the pub with the same bit of clobber as you, unlike if you shopped at Burtons or somewhere like that.
We travelled to London on the train and headed for Oxford Street to go to Lilywhites, I think it was around there somewhere. We’d already looked in a number of shops but decided to go to the Burberry shop on Regent Street to have a look at the jackets. As we came to the corner of Regents Street a mob of about 100 geezers in a firm marched around the corner and were walking right towards us. You couldn’t help but to look at what some of them were wearing ‘cos they had all the gear on. As they walked past us this little squeaky voice shouted out “What’s he fuckin’ looking at? Go on… Slap him.” The next thing I knew I heard this thud noise, that was like something had been hit by a train, then another one as Matt’s head smashed into a shop window. Crikey! It sounded so loud I’m surprised his head stood on his shoulders to be honest. But fair play to Matt he took that punch really well, right on the side of his jaw, it must have really hurt. We managed to get into this shop, because this had happened after the majority of the mob had gone past us. As we stood in the shop Pete was really taking the piss saying “Matthew trapped a slap! Matthew trapped a slap!” I think it was more out of nervousness than anything else; after all we could have got a right kicking by that mob (that were Arsenal fans apparently). We looked out of the shop window and they’d gone… Thank god!
Back to France…. and Mickey boy and I decided it was time to go and get a drink and to relax for a while after our shopping spree. We walked around the streets and found this lovely looking bar. As we walked in we were greeted by a couple of girls that were of mixed race. I think Mickey Boy thought he was in and had pulled because the bird seemed to be all over him. I looked around and realized where we were, it was a WHORE house! You could even see a couple of beds through these net curtains that were actually in the pub. We went to the bar to order a couple of drinks. When the drinks turned up they wanted to charge us about six quid, which back then was an absolute bomb. The whore was trying to get us to buy her a drink but as far as we were concerned we weren’t even going to pay for the drinks we had ordered, so we tried to leave. One of the whores took our tent and confiscated it behind the bar. Mickey Boy wasn’t having any of it and went in behind her…. NO, behind the bar! They had a bit of a tug-of-war with the tent but he came out on top…. NO, won the tug-of-war! We managed to escape for the second time in the space of an hour, so we decided to make tracks for the next leg of our trip.
As we walked through the streets of Dunkirk I looked into some of the shops and saw all the flick knives and weaponry that was illegal in our country. This reminded me of when we had a school day trip to France. Most of the kids from school had bought flick knives and other weapons from the shops. When we got on the ferry to go home the teachers said that anybody taking anything back to the UK illegally would be prosecuted and expelled from school because there was going to be a massive search operation at Dover by the Customs and Excise officers. Everybody in our mob of young tearaways decided to throw their weapons over the side. When we eventually got to the other side of the channel and into the port of Dover no one got searched at all. Everyone was really gutted. What a waste of money! You can bet your life that if everybody brought the stuff back, we would’ve been checked, it’s always the way.
As we got near to the train station Mickey Boy decided to ask this young lady who was sitting in a car for a light. As she opened the window, he started talking to her, and then casually groped her breast! Naughty Mickey Boy! Out came her CS gas canister and off we went running to the train station. Thinking about it, what other crimes could we have committed in such a short space of time? I’m surprised we never got nicked!
We bumped into the boys from London again, only this time one of the lads had a slash across his head and he could lift his scalp away from his skull. It was really that bad, the gash was a massive gaping wound. There was a great big gang of frogs that were looking for innocent victims, English ones. I say innocent because you never know, the Londoners may have mouthed it off to the gang because they had got well pissed up. Well, they’re on vacation, they can do what they like, eh? I’m surprised there wasn’t a lot more blood coming from his gaping wound. As we stood waiting for the coach with the Londoners, one of them noticed a couple of the French blokes that had done them over, walking through a park. So Mickey Boy and I decided to go to the park on our own as they didn’t know us and probably wouldn’t run off. It’s time for action and we decided to give them a bit of English aggro and kick ‘em in, after all there were loads of French that kicked the London boys in. As we entered the park they sussed us right away and tried to make a run for it by running past us. I kicked one of the bloke’s legs away as he tried to run past me, then Mickey Boy stuck the boot in and managed to kick the frog into the great big iron cannon that was in the park entrance. Unfortunately for Mickey Boy, he had these great big metal toe-cap boots on and crushed his toes on the metal bit inside as he stuck the boot in. The two blokes got away without any serious injuries, only a couple of slaps from me and Mickey Boy. The Londoners didn’t do anything; they just stood there and watched us, but at least we had a go on their behalf.
Our next mission was to catch the train to Paris to get our connection to the south of France. We were getting a night train that you could sleep on, which was well handy as train journeys can be really boring. We arrived in Paris! Now we had to look for somewhere to stay. Obviously it wasn’t going to be the Hilton, not with the amount of money we had between us. We found somewhere down this seedy side street, sorted everything out with reception and proceeded to our room which was quite a few floors up. We ventured out to get a few drinks and to generally have a look around smelly old Paris. We bought some fireworks like bangers and rockets and went back to our accommodation. We were both quite drunk and decided to let Paris know that we were here by starting our own firework display out of our 6th floor window. It wasn’t long before we had an audience shouting obscenities at us from the ground floor. How ungrateful! We went to all that trouble of putting on a show for the locals and that’s how they repay you. I’m surprised the gendarmes never turned up.
In the morning it was time to catch the train to our chosen destination, the South of France. Not very precise I know, but as long as it was down the south and in the boiling hot sun, we didn‘t care where we ended up. We boarded the train and I have to be honest, their trains are a lot better than the trains in the UK, especially the football specials British Rail lay on for our football hooligans at home. All we had to do was to try and get some sleep because we had a very long journey ahead of us.
We got off the train and ended up in a place called St Raphael, which is a lovely little place right next to St Tropez. The only problem was there was something missing, and that was the sun. It was pissing down, raining cats and dogs. We made our way down to the beach which was quite empty, but the rain had stopped by now so at least we weren’t going to get wet. We looked for somewhere to stay and decided that we’d stay underneath the promenade on the beach. The next thing we knew the sun was shining down on our puny white bodies. We walked around the seafront taking in all the marvelous scenery and relishing in the fact that this was going to be our home for the next few days.
We decided to hire a motorbike thing so we could venture out of the town, but decided that it was a bit of a death trap so we ended up terrorizing the locals around the town instead. We ended up stacking it and bending the steering column out of all alignment with the rest of the bike. The bike had a mind of its own; it just went all over the place. Luckily for us they never seemed to notice the damage when we gave the bike back. Good job too, they had my passport.
There were loads of nudists on the beach, which was packed full of totty. Like I said earlier, we decided that we were going to stay on the beach underneath the sea wall. By the evening it became clear to us that we weren’t the only ones who would be staying under the sea wall. We got friendly with these three girls from Brighton and started having a few drinks with them and generally having a laugh. I managed to get off with the older sister, so Mickey Boy had the choice of the other two. When it was time to get some sleep, two of the girls decided to go for a midnight swim and one of them, when she came back out of the water, decided to get into Mickey Boy’s sleeping bag soaking wet. He tried to shake her out, then dragged her around the beach as she wouldn’t let go of the inside of the bag. She was being a right pain, probably because she was really pissed. Someone had already warned us about these Moroccans that go around at night time and cunningly try to steal the contents of your sleeping bag by cutting the bottom open while you were sleeping. We had an international game of football on the beach too, it was England versus Morocco. The game was all in good spirits until Mickey Boy’s challenge on one of the Moroccans had them all seeing red. The bloke Mickey Boy took out was about 8 feet tall and weighed about 3 pounds; he looked like a scaffold pole! The Moroccan got up off the deck and said to him “I cut you while you’re sleeping.” Come on ref, that’s gotta be a red card!
When we awoke in the morning the French police were moving everyone off the beach that had been sleeping on it. We all looked like a load of down and outs, all we needed was a cardboard box and a pot noodle container and we would have been well away.
It was a new day and the sun was beating down on us. This was the hottest day so far (it was only the second day) of our short break. We decided to venture out on the open seas on our vessel, which was this pedalo we’d rented on the beach. We made our way out onto the high seas, which was as flat as a pancake, there wasn’t a breath of wind. Mickey Boy wasn’t used to this baking sun and was starting to frazzle, so we decided to head back to shore so he could get back in shade.
We didn’t have a lot of money so we decided to go to the local casino and see if we could win a few more days in paradise, well actually it was like a red-hot Margate. We had a little flutter on the roulette but to no avail, so we tried our hand at blackjack. The French croupiers seemed to be very pushy when you were playing; they were always trying to rush you into making a move. We started winning quite a bit of money; the croupier’s were getting very frustrated with our lucky play and called for reinforcements. We just kept getting 21 and with the amount of money we’d won we could’ve easily stayed there for a couple weeks longer or even a month. But what goes up must come down! And basically we just got a little bit too cocky and lost the lot. We started chasing out bets, which as any professional gambler knows, can be fatal. It was for us. We would have to head home now (because we were skint), back to the UK.
That was the end of that little excursion but at least we managed to stay for a few days this time. Football would be my travelling for the next couple of years. Once I got the bug, I was hooked!
Silence In Court
Many moons ago, back in my youth, right when my buddies and I were about to discover the boozers, we’d find ourselves up to all sorts of mischief down in our seaside town. Some of my mates had been in trouble with the police on quite a few occasions and ended up going to court to pay the penalty for their crimes.
Two of my mates, Dave and Gary, got done for breaking into a sweet shop and stealing loads of lighters in a smash and grab raid. They caved in the window of the shop, emptied what had been on show and then did a runner. They both got done for their crime and went to court but neither of them went down for it.
I think Gary had spent some time in a detention centre before, because he was always in and out of trouble with the police when he was growing up, and the ironic thing is his dad was the Sergeant in the local police force.
When I was round his house once, we cut up a potato and made the bits of it into small pellets. We would load the air rifle and shoot the bits of spud at each other’s legs. Gary loved his guns and war. He eventually lived his dream and joined the Army shortly after he left school.
One day when we were round his house (probably trying to make a bomb or something like that knowing him), he decided to get the air rifle out again (Oh no! looks like I’m in for the firing squad again) only this time, instead of putting the harmless potato pellets in the gun, he found a different kind of ammo. Gary had found that the end of a Bic biro fitted into the barrel of the gun like a glove…Perfect! Only now he wanted to up the ante. He wanted to fire it into my back….Oh, he did ask me first. I hadn’t done my forensic degree yet but still evaluated the situation and came up with this conclusion! Hmmm…. Potatoes…. Hmmm…. Pointed biro tip. They weren’t quite the same eh? So I said “I tell you what, why don’t you fire it into that cardboard box first to see what it does”, so he did…. took aim…. fired…. Bang…. alright, Pop…. (anyone knows that air rifles don’t go bang but hey, I’m trying to make this exciting). He fired it into the box and the biro tip went straight through it and through a book that was inside the box. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!” “That was lucky eh Gary?” I mean, did he really want to kill me? Or was he just mucking about? I’m not so sure to be honest.
Gary fulfilled his dream like I said and became a soldier in the Army. He served in the Signals and went to the Falklands. Unfortunately, I’m afraid Gary is no longer with us anymore; he recently died from a long battle against the booze but he’ll never be forgotten.
Talking about guns…. There was another bloke at school who shot a girl in the head with a pistol, like a Gat gun. Blimey! We had Skinheads, Punks, hippies and now bloody assassins in our school. It was a blinding shot, straight in the middle of her forehead. Anyone would’ve thought he was a sniper; it was such an accurate shot. Luckily for her there wasn’t any real serious damage, she just had one of them bumps like you see in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
There were all sorts of other goings-on at school; like the teachers staff room was burnt down and another teacher had his car completely burnt out while it was left at the school staff car park one night. There were some right horrors at school back in the day.
My first experience in juvenile court was a bit of a shock to the system. I really didn’t know whether to laugh or cry while I was standing there waiting to get hung, having to say things like “Honestly your honour I’m sorry for what I have done, I certainly wasn’t proud of what I did that night because it wasn’t me it was the others, they made me do it! Honest!” (No, I didn’t say that). I reckon that if we would’ve been a little bit older, the penalties could’ve been a lot more severe.
So this is what happened. One of our favourite haunts around our beloved Broadstairs was down the seafront. We all used to congregate around the seafront in our little tribe of horrors because we were out of sight from the Old Bill, unless they were on foot of course. We used to go into the pubs, even though we were all under age. There was one particular pub called The Balmoral. This old geezer called Gordon used to run it. He didn’t give a toss how old you were, he was just pleased there was someone in there on those quiet nights in the week. Some of my mates used to get served easily in the boozers and would get away with being 18. But some of us had to drink coke and other soft drinks like that. I wasn’t really into alcohol then anyway, good job too because I was one of the younger looking ones and couldn’t get served anyway.
One day while we were along the seafront, Mickey Boy and I saw these other two youths with this contraption called a Polish bomb. I vaguely knew these two blokes back then; one of them was called Geoff and the other one was Greg. These two would also hang around the seafront in a gang like our mob, although they never really hung around with us. This Polish bomb was quite a simple contraption. There were three large cans, a tennis ball and a tin of lighter fuel. All three cans were joined together to make a tube. The top two cans had no tops or bottoms to them. The bottom can was still in one piece apart from not having any drink in it. There was also a tiny little pin-hole right at the base of the can. You’d squirt some lighter fuel into the tube and then shake the can up and down to turn the fuel into vapour. Then you’d put the tennis ball down the tube, take aim, light the hole and fire! Boom………. it was like a cannon going off and the ball would shoot miles up into the air. It really was like a cannon too; I don’t know whether it was legal or not (I don’t want the bomb squad round!) but I bet it would be good for tennis practice having that ball fired at you at the speed of light! Mickey Boy and I thought this was quite fun and hung around with these two bombers for the next couple of days.
One of these particular nights we went down to the harbour and started to have a look around the boats that were moored up there. When the tide went out in Broadstairs, the boats would remain out of the water and stuck in the stinking mud until the tide eventually came back in again. This must’ve been a disadvantage to the fisherman having to wait for the tide all the time. The smell from that harbour was absolutely rotten. I don’t know how the rats would put up with that reek. Talking of rats, you’d often see a platoon of rat bashers down the harbour some nights. Some of the would-be hunters used to tie the bottom of their trouser legs up so that the rats, when trying to escape, wouldn’t run up their trouser legs. I don’t know the real truth behind these old wives tales but they also say that if you try to corner a rat, it would try and jump over your shoulder to escape. Blimey! Let the bastard jump! I’d rather that than run up my trouser leg and bite on the end of my willy! No thanks.
These barbaric hunters (sometimes about 20 of them) would wait on top of the harbour armed to the hilt with rocks, flints and sometimes an air rifle (well only if the old bill hadn’t got wind of it), once they were all armed and tooled up ready they’ send down a kamikaze rat-man (one with his trouser legs tied up) to rock the boat’s the rats were hiding under. As soon as the rats fled towards safety (like back into the holes in the bottom of the harbour) the mob would let rip with all the ammunition. It was absolutely hilarious watching the missiles flying down on the poor vermin. The only problem with this game was that it was a very patient wait; waiting for the rat’s to get their bottle back and come out again. Well, you could hardly blame them, could you? Or they might’ve thought it was just raining hard saying ‘it’s raining cats and dogs out there tonight!’.
This particular night, the night of the ‘crime’, the rat pack wasn’t there. We approached a boat and had a look under the canvas cover draped over the boat from the rear end (the stern) and up to the cabin at the front. Greg climbed in under the cover and found some goodies; there were a couple of cans of beer. So we opened them up and started to drink ‘em. But then we decided to go to another level and break into the cabin to see what other goodies we could find. The lock on the cabin just fell off (yeah, right) and Greg started passing out even more goodies; like a bottle of rum and even some more beer, then a toolbox with tools and another plastic box. We opened up the box and inside were this gun thing and some cartridges in a magazine; some of them red, some of them green. This gun thing wasn’t like a normal gun and it looked more like a metal torch with a trigger on it. So obviously it was meant to fire something.
We left the crime scene and made our way along the sea wall towards Stone Bay to see what this gun thing and the box of tricks could do. We got the plastic box, loaded the gun with one of the cartridges, held the gun towards the sky and pulled the trigger…. WOW…. this red glowing thing exploded into the air lighting up the sea. WOW…. this was as good as any firework, except it didn’t go bang. Then we got a green cartridge out, loaded the device again and pulled the trigger…. WOW…. only this time it was green, WOW…. lighting up the sky like Las Vegas. Suddenly there were blue lights flashing everywhere; it was International Rescue coming to save a sinking boat. Only there wasn’t a boat sinking at all. It was just the Old Bill and Coastguard, and now there was a helicopter scouring the sea. By now we’d retreated back to the cliffs and into the darkness where we couldn’t be seen, and had realised what we’d done and were feeling pretty bad. They’d obviously thought a boat was in trouble and had come to rescue it. We managed to run along under the cliff and escaped from the rescue frenzy! Luckily for me, I only lived up the road. But the others had further to go but still got home alright. We’d forgotten that the police were not after us anyway, because they didn’t know it was us that let the distress flare off.
A couple of days passed and I’d heard through the grapevine that Geoff had been arrested and kept in the cells overnight. The thing is we’d already worked out our alibi for the night of the crime before Geoff got nicked, because we felt that someone had known we broke into the boat and took the flares and drink that night, because we’d seen someone who was involved in the sailing club at Broadstairs on the pier, looking over at us.
To cut a long story short we thought we’d been grassed up by this geezer from the sailing club, whose name was McKay (bastard). He had a younger brother called Ian, who was a big lump who had a reputation for being a bit of a hard man. He was a right strong motherfucker. I suppose you’d put him in the same category as that bad guy in the James Bond films called Jaws. For some reason Ian absolutely hated Mickey Boy and wanted to pull his head off. If they had a fight it would be like a gorilla fighting a crane fly…. oooohhh, nasty. I’d get nervous at the thought of him getting hold of Mickey Boy ‘cos of the fear of feeling powerless. You know, a bit like a gazelle watching his mate getting chewed up by the lions. “Sorry mate but you gotta look out for number one!” You get my drift? One day, in the freezing cold winter just prior to the burglary, the inevitable happened. Mickey Boy and I’d just left my parents’ house and were heading to the seafront to meet up with some more of our pals. When we got to the corner of the main road, we noticed the McKay brothers were just in front of us, about 30 yards away, and just to add fuel to the fire, their sister was there too. Believe you me she was no oil painting either, and she was also built like a brick shit house, and was bigger than the pair of brothers. She was like one of those geezers (and I know they’re normally blokes) who toss the caber in the Highland Games up in Scotland. She was also as strong as an ox and looked like one. I could instantly sense the waves of anxiety flooding from poor Mickey Boy as he was about to meet his maker. You could easily see them coming towards you first (like from a couple of miles away) because of their sheer size. I had two options; I could just shake Mickey Boy’s hand and wish him all the best then run off, or…. try! TRY…. and slay the ogres and stand there and fight. When these giants realized it was Mickey Boy, Ian (the one that wanted Mickey Boy’s head) blurted out in a monster-like roar…. “MMMEEEAAAKKKEEERRRR!!!!” Then, like a rhinoceros, came charging towards us with puffs of steam blasting from his nostrils. But as soon as he was up to ramming speed he slipped on the ice, came crashing down to earth landing on his hip, right on the edge of the curb. There was the most horrific bellowing scream, AAARRRGGGHHHHHH! Mickey Boy seized the opportunity and legged it down this side road out of harm’s reach. We’d cheated death!
We later found out that he’d broken his hip and no, we didn’t go round his house or visit him in hospital with a bunch of grapes to see how he was.
This was why I thought us getting bubbled up to the police had something to do with the McKay’s. This could’ve been another way of getting us back for that nasty accident the younger brother had encountered. Although I can’t say 100% that it was them that squealed. I recently asked Geoff and he said it was a bloke with a beard who was also down on the harbour that night. After all, we’d only heard through the grapevine that it was the McKay’s who grassed on us.
The next time we bumped into Greg (just before Geoff was arrested) we realised something wasn’t quite right. Greg’s mum had told him that the police had been round and that they were looking for the other three; meaning Mickey Boy, Geoff and I. So now we had to fabricate a story (like it wasn’t us) to try and get ourselves off the hook.
We decided to say that we found the stuff in a plastic bag by the pier and not by the boat, whilst innocently playing football or some rubbish like that. We all said that regardless of what happened we’d all stick to the story and that was that.
The next thing I knew was later that day we heard that Geoff had been arrested by the police and they were keeping him in overnight for questioning. Greg’s mum told him that the police had been round their house twice and that he had to come home at a certain time so they could question him and take his statement or, even worse, take them away like Geoff.
On my way home I feared the worst as I approached the front door of the house. Before I knew it the door flew open on its own. “Keith! The police have been round here for you and they’re coming back in the morning at 10 o’clock.” I found this really odd, how the hell did the Old Bill know where we all lived? Because the people I thought had grassed us up didn’t know where we lived. I wanted to alert Mickey Boy but found out that he had an accident and had been taken to hospital. While he was at home watching the telly he’d jumped off the sofa to turn the fire up in the front room. When he knelt down in front of the fire he knelt on a needle that snapped behind his kneecap and it was still in there. Then just to cap it all off he couldn’t straighten his leg out; the pin was stopping it because it was wedged in his knee joint. Oooowww…. Poor Mickey Boy! This was no normal acupuncture and they had to cut his knee open to get the pin out. Blimey! The lengths some people would go to just to get out of being interrogated by the Old Bill are unbelievable. I mean, it wasn’t as if we robbed a bank or something.
The really annoying thing now was I wasn’t allowed out to try and find out what had happened. Shit! I didn’t think it was really going to make any difference anyway because like I said earlier, we had our story all worked out.
The next day came around a bit too quickly for my liking. I’d already had a right grilling from my Dad. I saw a car pull up on the driveway and said to myself ‘That’s not the Old Bill’ because the geezer didn’t have a uniform and he was in ‘plain clothes’. My Dad said to me in a rather ‘you’re doomed’ voice “It’s the CID coming to see you.” ’Fuckin ell!’ I thought. Detective Sgt Edwards was his name and now he was in my front room. Before he said anything my Dad said “Tell him the truth Keith.” By now all that was going on in my head was ‘This is going to be a long day!’.
Edwards started writing something down on the statement sheet and all the time he was doing that I was thinking to myself, just stick to the story, just stick to the story, because after all, the story was very simple. The first thing the CID man said to me was “Look…. we know what happened, the others have already told us!”…. ‘Yeah, whatever!’ I thought He’s hitting me with that old chestnut already, and we’ve only just started the statement. He went on to tell me what had happened that night and insisted that he already knew what had happened. “The others have already told us.” ‘Bollocks!’ I thought, ‘liar!’. I said “Nah mate! No it wasn’t!”, I very unconvincingly uttered. But Edwards insisted and started laughing at me as if I was an idiot. His tactics weren’t working but I was thinking ‘how the hell did he know that?’. He seemed to know what happened better than me… Strange!
Then Mr Edwards got on to the subject of the flares (oh dear, I had them last) and said “So, as you were the last to have the flares, where are they now?” ‘Alarm bells!’. How did he know I had them last? I told him “I threw them away in some bushes miles away” and he said “Where?” By now I was getting quite annoyed with myself because I told him a lie without thinking and now I knew he was going to ask me to take him to where the flares were. “Right then, let’s go and find them”. We left the house and he started to go towards his car, him thinking they were miles away after what I had told him. But they were only down the road, in fact about 50 yards away. We carried on walking down the road to a big flint wall where I’d thrown the flares over. I told him “They’re over this wall somewhere in the bushes.” We both looked at the wall and I thought ‘you’re never going to find them in that amazonian jungle’. There was a great big tree with weeds about 4 feet tall which completely covered the area apart from the pathway that led to a gate where we were standing. ‘Haha you’ll never find them in there’ I thought. As I looked at the gate it had a great big padlock on it. ‘Suss!’ I thought we couldn’t get in that way.
It was time to find out which house the garden, or forest, belonged to. As a kid I’d always wondered what was in this secret garden, because I’ve never been in there before and was curious to see what it was like, and now it looked like my dream was about to come true, or should I say nightmare.
Sherlock Holmes was now knocking on every door in the street, which was great; now half the neighbourhood would know I was a villain. It’ll be in the papers next! (It was). Eventually someone came out of their house and pointed out whose garden it was. The garden owner lived at the top of this little side street adjacent to the garden. He knocked on the door and spoke to the bloke who answered. We walked to another gate (at the top part of the garden) and walked into the garden. He’d obviously looked after this part of the garden because there were flowers and nice looking plants, unlike the amazon jungle at the bottom. I watched him looking around in the dense weeds for ages then, just as I thought he was going to give up the treasure hunt, he found them – the jammy git. He held the flares in the air with a smug grin on his face, as if to say “Now you’re gonna tell us the truth.” I felt like saying “Don’t do that, you’ll have the coastguards down here in seconds and then you’ll have to run and hide like we did.” That would’ve gone down a storm eh? Especially when we told them that someone else had let the flares off. I would’ve really given the game away then, wouldn’t I?
We marched back to my house for another interrogation. But still I wouldn’t give into them and tell the truth. I was starting to have a really bad feeling that somebody else had cracked under the pressure and they’d been caught out with the ‘They have already told us’ line. The police were coming around again the next day to take another statement from me. Now I just needed to find the others so they could tell me what had happened to them, and what they’d really said.
Geoff was let out and was as bewildered as me as to how accurate the statements were from the so called witnesses. Basically they had us hook, line and sinker. Greg had told them the truth, so all Mickey Boy had to do was tell the truth too. I felt a great sense of pride in sticking to my guns and not getting caught out and cracking under the pressure.
The next day came around and bang on time the CID came back round the house to get another statement. This seemed pointless really but they had to have it in writing as evidence for when we eventually would go to juvenile court.
This was going to be my very first appearance in court with my trusty buddy Mickey Boy Meaker. The other two had gone to the magistrate’s court before us but I’m not sure exactly what the charges were for them. I should imagine they were the same as ours because it was quite a long time before we saw Geoff and Greg again. Mickey Boy and I were getting done for receiving and handling stolen property. This was a touch really because we weren’t getting done for actually breaking into the boats. Result! In fact we weren’t gonna be getting done for letting off the flares either.
On the day of the court I remember standing in the prosecution bit with Mickey Boy and wondering how many years we were going to get. But we ended up getting one year’s conditional discharge and no fine whatsoever. What a result that was. As we stood there getting read the riot act I got that nervous laugh syndrome and so did Mickey Boy. My Dad was standing behind me and kept prodding me to stop me from giggling.
That was the end of that little adventure. I recently asked Geoff if he could remember what happened all those years ago and to see how different his story was to my recollection. It was virtually the same.
I’ve also had other experiences in the courtrooms; I’ve been done for drunk and disorderly, trespassing on private property and countless traffic offences on my motorbike. With the trespassing offence there were about eight of us who climbed over onto the railway track at Margate, to sneak into the back of Bembom Brothers (which was Dreamland, they just changed the name for some reason). The only other difference was that you could buy a pass and go on as many rides as you liked in Bembom Brothers, whereas when it was Dreamland you could pay for the rides separately. The funny thing about the trespassing offence was that I was the only one that got done out of the whole lot of us. I even went to court and received a £100 fine, work that out!
I’d also been done on my bike loads of times for different offenses. I was done for doing wheelies up the high street on a Saturday afternoon by a copper that was casually walking by. Why I stopped I’ll never know, I could’ve easily got away. I don’t know how I never got banned from driving to tell you the truth. I got away with murder (not literally), you’d never get away with it these days.
We used to get the police on a right wild goose chase on our mopeds and bikes. We used to drive down alleyways to get away from them. We’d leave it right ‘till the last second before we sped off through the bollards at the car park, where we used to hang around. There is a massive health centre there now and of course, the local library.One night, another geezer called Max and I were having a wheelie competition. I’m not blowing my own trumpet here but I was the dog’s nuts at doing wheelies back then. This particular night, for some reason, I just couldn’t get it together and Max was beating me easily, because he was getting about half way down the car park with his wheelies. He had a ‘trials bike’ and I had a Suzuki GT185, which was a road bike. The difference between the two bikes was that he would stay up longer in the same gear, whereas I could change gear into second then go on for ages (if I got the revs right). But on this particular night it just wasn’t happening for me and my bike just didn’t seem to have the same power it normally had, probably because I’d been thrashing the fuck out of it. Anyway, I thought I’d give it one last shot before I threw the towel in. I went to the other end of the car park (which was a bit like a racetrack) and headed for the slope we used as a take-off ramp to start the wheelies. I approached the slope, revved my bike into oblivion and my front wheel was well off the ground. Straight away I managed to change into second gear and the front wheel stayed off the ground. ‘At last’ I thought. By now I was already three quarters of the way down the length of the car park. The precise second near the end I gave it one last little rev. Unfortunately it was a rev of doom. The bike was vertical and I couldn’t get the front end down. I was doing about 45 miles an hour so I couldn’t exactly jump off because I would’ve landed flat on my face. By the time the front wheel had started to come down I’d run out of road and crashed through the wooden fence of the Jehovah’s Witness place at the other end of the car park.
The first thing I said as I scraped myself off the deck was “beat that then!” To be totally honest it hurt like fuck but there were no broken bones, just a dented ego. There was no way anyone was going to beat that one, not unless they’d risk killing themselves trying, because they would’ve had to have crashed into the building to beat my killer wheelie!
My mates came rushing over to pull the wreckage of a bike from the fence before the Old Bill turned up. Ironically enough the bike was still stuck in the wheelie position in the fence! How cool is that? I still managed to ride the bike away, even though it had a massive kink in the wheel. After all, I wasn’t going to hang about and get done for criminal damage was I?
We’ve all got to get done for drunk and disorderly at some point in our lives, eh? My first experience of getting nicked for this offense was quite a strange affair and to this day I don’t know what really happened to me that night.
Mickey Boy worked at a supermarket called Lipton’s back in the early 80’s. And on this particular night it was his firm’s annual ‘works do’. So Mickey Boy asked me if I wanted to go with him. If you ever saw Mickey Boy working in the shop and you happened to stop and talk to him, you’d probably have a heart attack from laughing at his shop assistant antics. What he used to do was if an old lady asked him for something specific in the shop, he’d point to the item then as soon as they looked to see where he was pointing, he’d pull an amazing face right behind their heads and suddenly pull away when they looked back at him. Mickey Boy had the art of ‘face pulling’ down to a tee. He had such precise timing at this strange skill that my stomach would hurt from laughing so much at him performing this stunt.
This ‘works do’ was being held at the Margate Winter Gardens and there were going to be a lot of people there from all the other Lipton’s in Kent. We went into the Winter Gardens and headed to the bar for a drinking session with his work mates. I’d only had about 3 pints when all of a sudden this strange wave came over me and I thought ’I can’t be pissed, I’ve only had 3 pints. What the hell’s going on?’ This strange feeling was rapidly getting worse by the minute and I couldn’t think for the life of me what was wrong; maybe I had food poisoning or something. I’d made my way to the stairs that led to the entrance because I didn’t want anybody to see me collapse, especially in front of all those people that were in there. I would’ve looked like a right dickhead. I didn’t say anything to Mickey Boy and he didn’t have a clue I’d gone. All I had to do was figure out a way of getting home. I was absolutely all over the place by now; the room was spinning round like nothing I’ve ever experienced before from drinking and I was starting to wonder if someone had spiked my drink with some sort of drug. When I got outside the building it was absolutely freezing cold. I used the walls of buildings to try and stop myself from falling over. I managed to get to Cliftonville high street, stopped in the doorway of this shop and then everything went blank.
The next thing I knew I had this strange feeling, like I was levitating into the air. I opened my eyes suddenly because I had now realized that I’d passed out. Crikey! And the Old Bill were carrying me to the back of their meat wagon. I must’ve been unconscious! I spread my legs out to wedge them in the doorway of the Black Maria so they’d have trouble getting me in, because I wasn’t going down without a fight. They were starting to get quite rough now and I felt a few digs as they eventually got me in and locked the door. There were about six of them wrestling with me; I felt like I’d put on quite a good show but I hadn’t got a clue what I’d done wrong.
The strange thing was I don’t remember lying in the doorway; I must’ve fallen asleep standing up, then slipped down the window onto the floor. I could’ve been there for hours because I was so spaced out. Then I started to remember leaving the Winter Gardens.
I had an absolutely blinding headache for my troubles and started to wonder whether I’d been involved in a fight or something. Everything seemed to be blank and I still didn’t have a clue what I was being nicked for.
The Old Bill took me into the police station and into a room to search me. They took my details (my name and address) and asked what the hell I was doing that night lying in the gutter? Well, the shop doorway. It was quite a successful evening if you ask me.
I found myself being led down to the cells because that was where I was going to be spending the rest of the evening or morning. I could hear another drunk shouting abuse at the police and demanding to be let out as I lay there freezing cold in my cell. I still didn’t have a clue what time it was but I could see it was still dark through the window with the bars on (to stop you escaping). This reminded me of the Community Chest and Chance cards in Monopoly; you know the ones, the GO TO JAIL NOW, DO NOT PASS GO CARD! On the cards there was that little picture of the man’s face behind bars, that was me….naughty Beef!
As time passed on I heard the key go into the lock in my cell door, then in walks a copper who said “It’s time for you to go sonny”.
I was let out, back into the big, wide open world. I was once again a free man. The only trouble was I had to walk all the way back to Broadstairs without a lift, and it was absolutely freezing walking back in just a skinny shirt.
I eventually got the summons through, went to court and was fined £60 for drunk and incapable, not disorderly because I hadn’t really done anything wrong. Basically I was done for walking home or falling asleep in a doorway. Master criminal eh? Marvellous!!
This is a song I wrote about the Old Bill. I suppose the song has a bit of a Z-cars theme to it!!
ATTENTION ALL UNITS!!!
VERSE 1
I WAS PROCEEDING DOWN THE SEAFRONT
ABOUT A QUARTER PAST THREE
A SUSPICIOUS LOOKING CHARACTER
WAS EYEBALLING ME
I SAID “YOU’RE NICKED YOUR COMING WITH US
YOU’RE ON CCTV”
HE KICKED ME IN THE BOLLOCKS
TO SET HIMSELF FREE! I SAY
CHORUS
ATTENTION ALL UNITS FIGHT FOR THE DAY
NEVER LET THE INNOCENT EVER GET AWAY
FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT AND KEEP THE STREETS CLEAN
AND LET’S BE HAVING YOU
VERSE 2
I SAID YOU’RE NICKED YOUR COMING WITH US
WE GOT YOU ON AFFRAY
YOU’LL HAVE FUN DOWN OUR STATION
YOU’VE HEARD OUR SERGEANTS GAY
HE’LL STICK ONE WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE
AND HAVE YOU SCREAMING HELL
THEN IF YOU OVERPOWER HIM
HE’LL RING ON THE BELL! CHORUS
ATTENTION ALL UNITS FIGHT FOR THE DAY
NEVER LET THE INNOCENT EVER GET AWAY
FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT AND KEEP THE STREETS CLEAN
AND LET’S BE HAVING YOU
VERSE 3
YOU SMELL INTOXICATED HAVE YOU BEEN ON THE PISS
A LITTLE BREATHALYZER JUST WOULDN’T GO AMISS
YOUR BLOOD SHOT EYES YOUR BLURRY SPEECH
IT’S EASY WE CAN TELL
SO IF YOU TRY AND LIE IN COURT
YOU’LL GET DONE FOR THAT AS WELL
CHORUS
ATTENTION ALL UNITS FIGHT FOR THE DAY
NEVER LET THE INNOCENT EVER GET AWAY
FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT AND KEEP THE STREETS CLEAN
AND LET’S BE HAVING YOU
Run For The Hills
So was this day going to be Chelsea’s big day? All we had to do was win this home encounter and we’d automatically be promoted back to the top flight, Division One. It wasn’t called the ‘Premiership’ back then. Today, who better than to try and gate crash the celebrations and spoil the party than our beloved opponents Leeds United, who’d been relegated the season before.
Back in the 70’s Leeds were one of the best teams in the land, and really one of the teams to beat. There is no love lost between these two giants, Leeds are still one of Chelsea biggest rivals on and off the field. Since we beat Leeds in the FA Cup in the 1970’s there seems to be a bit of hatred between the two sets of fans I’m afraid, a real rivalry. This game would be just like a local derby. The two teams drew at Wembley in the final back then, and then Chelsea beat them in the replay at Old Trafford. I’m afraid it’s more about black puddings and ecky thumps than silverware for the Yorkshire scum bags nowadays.
I’d already been to a Leeds game this season. I can’t remember there being much aggro, surprisingly enough, but I can remember was walking miles to the ground with Ramon and a mob of Chelsea. We’d left early that day to miss the welcoming party from the boys in blue. They normally lay on buses nowadays, probably to stop the away fans being attacked by the Leeds firm and vice versa, and from the locals probably just wanting to get their two pence worth. But they never did come to attack us that day. By the time the game kicked off, Chelsea had over 5,000 fans there; what a mob! The noise was deafening. Chelsea fans were really taking the piss with the Hovis tune and the theme to the Dambusters. Typically that day, I had the worst headache imaginable and had to sit over the back of the terracing on a mud bank to escape the noisy din coming from our mob.
Like I said earlier, there wasn’t really any trouble on this day, well nothing I saw anyway. There were rumors that they were going to ambush us all on the way to the ground, but it would have had to be a good mob for this one, as there were hordes of Chelsea. Ramon was gutted it didn’t kick off because he had been really psyched up for it for months.
This game was the return at the Bridge and my good buddies Mickey Boy Meaker and Hebbo were going to be my wingman for this game. This was the very first time Hebbo had been to a football game and it’d probably be his last. Mickey Boy was no newcomer to the football terraces and, just to cap it off, he was a Leeds fan too. He even had it tattooed on his four fingers; LUFC!
One day, Mick and I were at Arsenal v Leeds standing in the North Bank, Arsenal’s famous end. Arsenal scored and while all the noisy celebrations were going on, I shouted at the top of my voice (for a joke of course!) “MIIIICCCCKKKK………. Show ‘em ya Leeds tattoo.” There was a deathly silence and it seemed like 10,000 heads were staring at Mickey Boy. Oh my god, he’s gonna die, they’re going to kill him. I shouted out (out of nervousness) “Don’t worry! They won’t do anything, they don’t care who you support.” Mick didn’t say a lot, only “Wanker.” Now that wasn’t a very good farewell speech was it? Luckily nothing happened and he survived to tell the tale.
It was time for the trip to the Bridge for the home fixture against Leeds. Hebbo had never been to a football game before and believe you me, I had to reassure him that everything was going to be alright on more than one occasion. I really can’t blame anyone for getting the jitters when it kicks off, especially when you’re innocently in amongst the aggro, it can be quite frightening. I know even some of the hardest bastards have shit themselves and come unstuck in their football violence days. But Hebbo, he wasn’t of the ‘hard man’ sort and he’s a decent bloke. Hebbo was a musician, a really good drummer, not a mindless football thug. He was coming because I’d told him funny stories about football, stories about the old bill getting it (he loved that) and about the atmosphere at the games and what a good laugh we had.
The trip to the Bridge was straightforward and there was no sign of any Leeds fans on the way to the ground. When we got our tickets and went into the ground, Chelsea the club, had a brand new scoreboard in the away end of the ground, that’s where the Leeds fans stood, caged in for their own safety by the big fences that surrounded them. This to me was a stupid place to put a scoreboard, right smack in the middle of the away end, especially seeing as Leeds by now were going to get thrashed 5-0 by Chelsea by the end of the game!
Leeds fans were really notorious for crowd trouble. Like Chelsea they weren’t going to sit there and take it lightly, and being as they couldn’t get out of the enclosure to fight the Chelsea fans (because in all fairness they had a big enough mob to have a go) someone decided to smash the electronic scoreboard instead. One bright spark put a scaffold pole through it and fucked it up. But where the fuck did he get a scaffold pole from? It turned out it wasn’t a scaffold pole at all! It was a rail that divided the stand sections. They’d been busy smashing up concrete off the terracing with it earlier to use as missiles. I suppose in a funny way it seemed like poetic justice that Chelsea’s ground would get damaged when you consider all the damage Chelsea’s fans had done to other teams’ grounds in the past; like Derby, Sheffield Wednesday, Cardiff and countless others. Not that Chelsea’s Board of Directors would view it that way.
There wasn’t any fighting in the ground, the only problem was when Chelsea scored the Chelsea fans would invade the pitch celebrating, because they knew they were going to be promoted. The police and stewards really had their work cut out that day, and it seemed to take them forever to clear the fans off the pitch. But when the final goal went in (the 5th) it seemed like the whole ground had invaded the pitch. You couldn’t see a blade of grass from the people that smothered it! As Mickey Boy attempted to climb over the barrier to get onto the pitch, a Chelsea fan noticed Mick’s tattoo on his fingers. He asked him what the letters stood for. Mickey Boy replied ‘LOVE’. The guy looked at him as if to say ‘Bollocks does it!’. Mickey Boy said “Don’t worry mate, I’m a bad speller! Ha! Ha!” The guy went off to find some mates whilst Mick tried to blend in with the crowd. Earlier during the match, loads of fans had started stripping to the waist because it was a boiling hot day. Everyone around Mickey Boy had done this. Poor Mickey Boy couldn’t take his top off because it would reveal his other ‘Leeds’ tattoo on his shoulder. That wouldn’t have been a clever move!
When the police and stewards eventually cleared the hordes of ecstatic Chelsea fans off the pitch, there was still a small group of fans gathered around a figure lying unconscious on the pitch. It was the referee!!! My initial reaction was Chelsea had blown it, they’re gonna abandon the match. Typical, eh? But the ref managed to get to his feet and carry on. I think he was just winded. Can you imagine if they’d kicked him in? I bet Chelsea would’ve been docked loads of points and possibly kicked out of the League! Anyway, the game continued to the end and everyone invaded the pitch again. Only this time everyone wanted to run up to the Leeds end. Both sets of fans were shouting abuse at each other but it never really kicked off as far as fighting was concerned. Leeds fans started throwing lumps of concrete at the police and Chelsea fans. One copper got hit in the throat by a lump of concrete; this really pissed off the rest of the coppers, as you can imagine. I saw one fan standing on the pitch away from the Leeds fans, wearing a Chelsea replica kit, looking up at the fans. I think he was probably scouring the stand looking for his mates. Without any warning, a couple of coppers dressed in riot gear ran at him and smashed him to the ground. He wouldn’t have known what’d hit him!
I don’t know what had happened when we eventually left the ground but something must have happened outside because we ended up going another way (the long way) round to the tube station (Fulham Broadway). When we got there and walked down the stairs onto the platform we got a bit of a nasty shock. One; there weren’t any Chelsea fans on the platform and two; the reason we had to go a different route to the tube station was because the Old Bill had let the Leeds fans out to be escorted to Fulham Broadway. Fantastic news! As we ventured onto the empty platform there was a gateway and behind it was a huge group of snarling, growling Leeds fans! There weren’t any heroes in my firm (the 3 of us!). Luckily, the gate was still shut, which gave us some hope. Unfortunately it was short lived. As we passed the goading fans I could hear a copper on his walkie-talkie saying “Echo Tango Charlie Foxtrot” (Whatever!), “We’re going to open the gates now and let them onto the platform.” Us three turkeys, we were clucking like there was no tomorrow. I tried to reassure my companions that everything was gonna be alright. This had, by now, confirmed the fact that I would never take a new bloke to football again, especially someone like Hebbo who wasn’t into all the aggro, or even football for that matter. Hebbo was a real mate, so was Mickey Boy but at least he’d been there before and knew the crack. Deep down inside I still felt responsible for their wellbeing and I’d never live it down if any of them got hurt. This brought back memories of Old Trafford, when all three of my mates got a bit of a pasting.
By now we were one lock, one handle away from a mauling, especially from one of the geezers behind the gate. He had both his hands bandaged like something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon. This was the bloke who smashed our scoreboard with the metal railing, then got electrocuted for his troubles. Perhaps Chelsea had deliberately put the scoreboard in their end to give them a real shock and not for the score after all. It worked!
I could hear that rumbling noise, it was a tube pulling into the tube station. The doors opened on the tube, so we jumped on and sat down. All that was going through my head while we sat there was ‘PLEASE SHUT THE DOORS! PLEASE SHUT THE DOORS! PLEASE SHUT THE DOORS! PLEASE SHUT THE DOORS!’. Then as the copper went to the gate, the tube doors started to shut. The Leeds fans started to spill onto the platform but we had started moving off and safe. It’s amazing how people’s attitudes can change once they know they’re safe. Up went the arms, now we were waving wanker signs and gestures of ’C’mon then’. I felt like I’d been given a ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card. The feeling of being safe was short-lived because our tube was heading away from our chosen destination, so we had to change at Earls Court. When the tube pulled into Earls Court, there was a mob of about 80 to 100 Chelsea thugs waiting for the next tube to come in. I knew they were Chelsea because I recognized the faces. There were missiles like debris and bricks on the platform. I thought ‘That’s strange, the next train in (full of Leeds fans) would be on our platform, so they wouldn’t need the missiles surely’. Nervously I said to Hebbo and Mickey Boy “It’s gonna kick off here”. Then to my absolute horror, on the far platform a tube packed full of Yids (Tottenham fans) came into the station. IT’S WAR!! The missiles rained over to the tube windows, the noise was deafening as another brick smacked into a window. A few Chelsea fans had made their way over to the other platform. The Yids were gesturing ‘Come on Chelsea!’ to us. Hebbo was on his toes because he knew the Leeds train was still to come in. Well, if it doesn’t rain, it pours! This couldn’t get any worse. Sure enough, in came the next tube and would you believe it…. it was completely empty? The Old Bill at Fulham Broadway must’ve been tipped off right in the nick of time (for us). I’d sent Mickey Boy to find Hebbo while I kept the tube door open so it wouldn’t pull off, but for the life of me I couldn’t see the pair of them. I left the tube and had to leg it along the platform and found Mickey Boy. Hebbo had disappeared under the stairs and through a doorway that seemed to go deep down another set of stairs underground. I shouted out, “HEBBO! YOU CAN COME OUT NOW! IT’S GONNA BE ALRIGHT.” He appeared out of the darkness, running up the stairs. I couldn’t bear thinking about if anything happened to him, can you imagine having to explain to his Mum when you got home that her beloved son had fallen victim to an angry mob of Yids at Earls Court Tube Station? I think she’d have been none too pleased. Anyway, we still weren’t in the clear yet. Luckily the tube still hadn’t gone yet, so we jumped back on and sat in our seats. We gazed over to the other platform and watched as the group of Chelsea were on the back foot as the Yids poured off the train to batter ’em. One of the blokes didn’t run, he just stood his ground. I could even read his lips saying “FARCKIN C’MON.” I recognized this geezer from an England International I’d gone to in Luxembourg. I’ve never forgotten this bloke because he sat opposite me in a bar before the game. I felt anxious sitting right opposite him because he had deep scars on his face and looked like he was on a ‘wanted list’. That game in Luxembourg was an absolute riot too. Fans were locked up over Christmas because of all the violence. They were looting shops and smashing up everything in sight. England won the game 4-0. I remember being in the stadium and listening to the whole crowd singing the Dad’s Army theme as the violence erupted “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE KIDDING MR HITLER, IF YOU THINK OLD ENGLAND’S DONE”, it was bloody funny. One bloke I went with got a nasty surprise. He had a Man United, Union Jack flag draped across his back and while he was walking towards the ground, another England fan slashed him across the ear with a stanley knife. He had blood down his shirt and his ear turned bright blue. You’d think that everyone would stick together for an England game. Apparently, one bloke told me that Chelsea and West Ham would always use it as a chance to ‘av a row’ with each other. I don’t know if that was true or not, but still it’s a bit sad.
Back to the NOW lonesome Super Hero! Obviously it’s really an ego thing amongst football thugs to say “At least we didn’t run”, but I’d rather run than get my face slashed up with a stanley knife any day. That was one reason I started to have second thoughts about going with the mob to football. Even at this game I never thought we’d be innocently involved like we were. For this one brave Chelsea warrior on the far platform, he was getting kicked like there was no tomorrow. I wonder if he ever got a medal for his bravery, that’s if he lived.
The tube pulled out of the station and thankfully for a relieved Hebbo, there was no more grief and we made it home in one piece.
That’d be the last time football would ever see Hebbo again. As for me, I can safely say that I was coming to the end of my football adventures too. This wasn’t because of the trouble that happened at the games; that was exciting and scary. For me knowing how close you could get to getting a right good hiding was exciting but it really did frighten the life out of me sometimes. But then again, the following week I would be back on the early morning train for another adventure into the unknown.
Chelsea had won promotion, so we were back with the big boys again. The crowds were now a lot bigger at the home games, which was great for the club because Chelsea had been in danger of bankruptcy at one point. But the atmosphere and the supporters seemed to have changed. I preferred it when we were getting stuffed every other week in Division Two.
Nowadays, Chelsea are probably one of the best teams in the world. I never thought I’d see the day when Chelsea won the league, and then won it again the next season – back to back titles. That’s not forgetting winning FA Cups, League Cups and the UEFA Cup. If you’d have asked me if that was possible back then, I would have laughed and said “Nah.”