Britain's Scariest Bouncer Who Knocked Out Over 1,000 People

33:55But that was chock-a-block every Saturday all the way through the summer with coach parties of guys off their tits, pissed up, on drugs, and all from different football teams and different parts of London. Monday on NBC. US Marshall! All new Line of Fire. The thrilling new crime drama. The world sees us as heroes, but they don't know what the job really costs. One family of federal agents. It's one thing to put yourself in danger. It's different when it's your family. Balances duty to their country. An assassin is still out there. Stop! And each other. How do you protect the world and the people you love at the same time?

34:31Every case hits home on Line of Fire, Monday on NBC. Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have eczema. So I get how it can steal your time. But why let eczema take over when you can talk to your doctor about ebglis?

35:14reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EpGliss. Before starting EpGliss, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lilly. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about EpGliss and visit EpGliss.com or call 1-800-LILLY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with your summer price forecast. Now, unfortunately, we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you 100%. Now, over here at Mint Mobile, we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices.

35:53Every plan to just$15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required,$15 per month equivalent, taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow and network is busy see terms so we quite often had massive fights sometimes they'd be fighting each other and we'd be trying to break it up but sometimes they would be just fighting us so but you learn you learn some real good people skills when you you have to it wasn't the case that i would just have a punch-up you didn't want to have a punch-up we don't have no one was a punch-up when there's there was five of us working in there five very good doorman right but even five you still don't want to fight with 50 do you It's like 10 men each.

36:32It's a bit much. What was the most lively place? The most trouble? One of the most troublesome places, there's two that stick in my mind. I mean, every place has its odd day, but the two worst ones was the Kemsey Arms, which was a pub. We used to call it the house on the hill. It held about 800 people. So it's a very big pub. And it's on the middle of a housing estate. And there's only one road in and one road out to it. So once you're in there, you can get stuck there. I've had to go and rescue the doorman sometimes with three carloads of other doorman, because they barricaded the road and they couldn't leave.

37:08That's the same one I got shot at with the sawn-off shotgun. That was an absolute nightmare. It had a big car park around the back of the pub, but no one used to park in it, because if you park your car there, it either wouldn't be there or there wouldn't be any wheels on it when you got back. So everyone used to park out on the streets, but it was a horrible place. First time I went there, first time I worked there, a guy actually died in my arms he'd taken some drugs and he'd obviously taken too much and I was watching I was busy watching it's like 800 people in this place so you're busy watching the crowd on a slightly higher area so I can see all the heads and I'm watching this group over there and they're having a great time but they're a bit loud and jumping around a bit and all of a sudden this car went over so I'll give him a second to get up or his mates pick him up oh he's not getting up so I'll go over there bearing in mind we're a brand new dormant in this place right so we're not exactly popular either.

37:58No one really knows us. So I got over there and they went, no, he's all right. He's just pissed. He's just pissed. I went, mate, he looks like he's not very well, to be honest. Let's get him some fresh air. So I picked him up and I'm carrying him like a baby. I've got him in my arms and I'm walking him through the pub and all his mates are behind me, like a big entourage. And as I go through the front door, I've got to turn sideways with him to get him through the front door and he pissed down my leg and he went all limp in my arms. Oh, shit, he's died. And I was like, I went, he's dead. And they went, he's what?

38:28I said, he's brown bread. And they went, no, no, no, no, he's not. He's just drunk. Put him on that seat. Put him on this bench. I said, I'll put him there if you want. I said, but he's not going to sit up. I put him on the bench and he fell straight off. And then some two young lads come running out and they'd seen me carrying him out and they went, we're first aiders. Let's get to him. And his mates wouldn't let the first aiders do anything. And in those days, that was before the doorman had been trained in first aid. So, I mean, I didn't know any first aid at that point. It was quite early in my career.

38:56um and uh anyway so it was 25 minutes by the ambulance got there and he was blue by then he was dead and they pronounced him dead you know as they arrived and then all of his mates decided it was my fault because i threw him out i said i didn't throw him out and carried him out like a baby he was already unconscious you know but that's the sort of place it was it was horrible what was the best place you walked oh um well frank's nightclub was nice um prison was nice but i'd say every place has its bad days you know that's just the way it is when i first started on the door the old door when i started working was a guy called elwin and he taught me a lot and he said to me we had a club that would probably work in was the ace of clubs that was quite a rough one he said um this old 350 people he went there's 365 days in a year he said everyone once a year is going to have a bad day he said so just remember that when you're dealing with stuff he said because that guy might not be an arsehole all the time he said so try and treat him fairly try and put him out without hurting him he said you'll probably come back shake your hand next week and he was really he was great at talking to people so i was lucky that he was one of the good dormen i first sort of worked with what was the worst thing you've seen the worst thing i've seen what dormen wise oh mate i mean i mean graham uh graham the one of the two i was talking about earlier on metal mickey and graham i mean i mean i've seen metal mickey actually using a crossbow and firing bolts of people across car parks um graham was uh held the um he used to do taekwondo and he held the record for breaking i think it was six one inch boards something like that five or six one inch boards with his punch so this guy if he hit you you were going to be broken and then one night we had a fight outside frank's nightclub he wasn't working but he was there and he turned on this guy and he did a reverse spinning kick to this guy's um sort of hit him in the hips shattered his pelvis with his kick i mean so he broke the guy's pelvis with a spinning kick and then when the guy hit the floor he jumped on top of him and punched both his cheekbones off of his skull.

40:50The guy was blind for two months. Now that to me, I mean, he was going to prison for that without a doubt. Um, and he deserved it, but that was probably one of the worst. Yeah. One of the most savage attacks on anyone. I mean, you know, to, to have you, to have the power to do that, to kick someone's pelvis and break it and then to punch someone's cheekbones off his skull. It's too much, isn't it? Yeah. You know, did you ever have the corpus? Loads of times. I mean, I actually halfway through my career, I was getting arrested so often because I was working in all the troublesome places and because my natural instinct was refrain to my boxing so if someone attacked me I used to hit them yeah because that's what I was I did boxing and I was because I was bigger and stronger now so I was hitting people harder than you know I should be um and it got it did start worrying me and I started getting nicked for lots of GBH years with intent and all sorts and I thought if I carry on like this I'm either going to end up killing someone I'm going to end up in prison and I didn't want either um and at the time i had a guy work for me a doorman called john morley um he was a third dan black belt um aikido instructor and i don't know if you know anything about aikido yeah it's a brilliant it's a brilliant martial art because it's very defensive um and it's all about sort of wrist locks and chokes and all this sort of thing so i started having private lessons with him every week for like the next year or so maybe a couple years um yeah me and my son used to have private lessons once a week so I learned everything up to about brown belt standard never took a grade in didn't want to take a grade in because if you take if you are a brown belt let's say or a black belt in career you know whatever martial art it's always held against you if you do something so but it did it made it gave me a whole new set of skills so instead of actually hitting someone I would now try to maybe put a choke on them or lock them up you know or get them out without damaging them and and it really did change I mean and I tried doing the same sort of thing I also used to I used to have a guy called Ken Hargreaves who was like a control and restraints expert and he used to go around his his own he had his own door company and I and I witnessed how good his doormen were when I saw them dealing with fights and I wanted the same professionalism with mine so I used to actually pay him to go around to all my venues and teach all of my doormen this advanced control and restraint which was very similar to Aikido to be honest but it was uh it was something that you could teach the whole teams and so that's why I got such a good reputation i think for a while because we did it we didn't do it the old way we did it a more professional way what was the longest you worked on a door the one door one door geez you just constantly changing no i wasn't constantly changing i did i mean the ace of clubs i was only there for the first couple of years um because basically the roof caved in um we went to go to um i think i was about probably about how i ever think i know it's probably no longer than that i was because i was 23 and i went to start so i've really done about four years in ace of clubs so that was a really rough one and it was only two of us for a pub and a club um no radios no uniforms no metal detectors nothing it's just like it was just very very basic um then we went to work one night and it was uh it flooded and so the the roof had caved in we didn't have a job so i went around locally and i got offered four jobs that same night different bars and the one i chose actually was the the one that paid the least but it was the newest venue in town owned by frank thorley i was 23 at the time and uh it was like half the money i was used to so i was getting 35 a night in the ace of clubs and all of a sudden i was getting 17 pounds a night but it was a really really posh club it's where all the birds went yeah so i started doing three nights a week there and um very soon they spotted that i was a different caliber well frank thorley actually gave me a pay rise after the first couple of months because the other bar wanted me back once it was all repaired and he went i don't want to lose you he said what do you needed to stay i said well match the money so he did and then i think there was a really good head doorman there at the time called gordon chambers who unfortunately has passed away now but when he decided to leave then i was basically i was in place for the head door on that so i think i was i was probably in frank's nightclub for maybe the next 10 years yeah what about the gangsters because you've you've been shoulder rubbing shoulders by the old gangsters they i think i met those i met i started meeting people like that when i was about let me see i was probably yeah after i started the agency so i'd have been probably about 30 i started the agency at 28 but i started getting into other areas at 28 so i was off to you know folkestone and then it was like um gillingham and dartford and whatever um and then one of my friends actually said oh you need to come up to we go to the ministry of sound in london you know which is a mad club and they said you've got to meet this dave courtney he's a lunatic you know so i went there after work one night it was actually it was the night i'd been shot at by the gypsies so it was a pretty you know crazy night um and i've gone back to canterbury after the after they tried to shoot me gone back to my mate's house but then we've gone on to london dave courtney turned up about three o 'clock in the morning and he was a funny bastard he really was but you can't believe a word he says by the way i mean anyone whose motto is what is it uh never let the truth get in the way of a good story you know and he tells so many lies i've sat like this on a podcast with him and straight away He's like, oh, 2000 Dorman, didn't I?

45:55I'm like, no, you didn't. But yeah, he was a funny bastard. And I did become good friends with him. But I think we had about sort of 10 years where we were really close. Monday on NBC. US Marshall! All new Line of Fire. The thrilling new crime drama. The world sees us as heroes, but they don't know what the job really costs. One family of federal agents. It's one thing to put yourself in danger. It's different when it's your family. balances duty to their country. An assassin is still out there. Stop! And each other. How do you protect the world and the people you love at the same time? Every case hits home on Line of Fire, Monday on NBC.

46:38Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have eczema, so I get how it can steal your time. But why let eczema take over when you can talk to your doctor about EBCLIS? EBCLIS, Lubrikizumab LBKZ, A 250 mg per 2 ml injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kg with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies, ebglyss can be used with or without topical corticosteroids.

47:11Don't use if you are allergic to ebglyss. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EPCLIS. Before starting EPCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lilly. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about EPCLIS and visit ePCLIS.com. Or call 1-800-LILLY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Do you hear that? That sound, right? That means that summer's officially here. It means that grown adults just sprint into the street for a frozen dessert shaped like a cartoon.

47:45But this summer, Mint Mobile has a better treat. Every plan, including unlimited, is$15 a month. And unlike ice cream, it won't drip down your wrist or look nothing like the picture. Does anyone have any cash? Give it a try at midmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. And then as my business was getting bigger and bigger, Dave started saying things like, it was his company and I was working for him and stuff like that.

48:16and I did some like jobs for like Freddie Foreman one time and um I had to go and speak to some people and you know um I did a bit of attitude adjusting shall we say um and uh you know Dave took the credit for it and it was me um so yeah I got to meet but but through Dave I got to meet a lot of people so I got to meet I mean I visited Reggie in prison a few times Reggie Cray when we was arranging the security um for the for the first funeral for Ronnie um and obviously when you do a funeral like that i mean the amount of people i met on that day it was crazy absolute like-minded lunatics if you like oh i'm still friends with half a dozen of them now you know we've remained friends um you know it's been it's been it's been a bit of a wild time but that was probably the wildest i suppose back then when between being 30 and 40 probably what was uh foreman like freddie foreman it was like it's like having i went around his house once for tea and biscuits and he's such a gentleman.

49:13I mean, a real gentleman. It was like having tea with my dad. He's a proper, you know, except for he did tell me how to dispose of bodies by wrapping them up in chicken wire. He was telling me all of his secrets. He was really, I can imagine in his time, I mean, a proper, proper, you know, proper fella. Someone you wouldn't want to piss off. Yeah, no, they were. All the skilled ones were proper old school. I mean, I was sooted and bitted. I've got to be honest, I have so much respect for all of them. I mean, Dave used to do this thing in Deptford. There was a club there. I don't know what it's called now.

49:48It'll come to me in a minute. Anyway, it was owned by a guy called Harry Haywood. And Harry was a member of the Hole in the Wall gang back in the day. So he was an old gangster. And Dave used to put these raves on there and I used to go up to see Dave. But most of the time, I was just sitting in the office out the back talking to Harry and listening to his stories because he was fascinating. I enjoyed his stories more than I did the rave. how was reggie clear reggie um yeah i mean it was again it was very sort of very surreal because when you grow up as a kid you know reading about these people in the in the newspapers and books and then you actually all of a sudden you meet them you know and you're actually you're in there chatting to them you think this is just so mad but the visits were the visits were pretty mad made to prison i mean they were sneaking in bottles of vodka and ecstasy tablets and everyone was smashed by the end of the visit.

50:36But yeah, but I mean, I met Lenny McLean a few times, Frankie Fraser, Tony Lambriano all the time. We used to take him out raving and then drop the remains off home to his wife afterwards. I interviewed the brother. What was the brother's name? What was the old member? Chris Lambriani. That's his brother. Yeah, well, I probably only met him once or twice. Yeah, so it's not like a starstruck, But when you see the movies, you're kind of in awe in a weird way. Yeah. You know? Like I say, it's a bit of a superstar, isn't it? What was big Lenny McLean like? He was always really nice to me. A lot of people, funny enough, I had sort of had quite an early obsession with Lenny McLean because I remember when I was about 21, I decided one night just to drive to London.

51:23And I live in Ramsgate, so it wasn't something I did every time. And I went to the Hippodrome to see if I could just go and say hello to him. And I walked up, I partied in Leicester Square and I walked up to the door. I went, is Lenny here? And I was a reasonably big lad then. The fellow went, who are you? What do you want? You know, and I went, I just want to say hello. I want to meet Lenny McLean, the man, you know. He said, well, he's not here tonight. He said, you're probably lucky he's not. He'd have probably just decked you. And I went, why? He said, he doesn't like people coming up who don't know.

51:49So I ended up, there was a guy there. That was a guy called Max who was the head doorman, a real stocky little fellow. But I ended up staying there the entire night, just chatting to the head doorman. And we got on really well. yeah and I so I mean as later years sort of come on like I said I met Lenny he used to have his own little private car parking space in Leicester Square and he said if I'm not using it son he goes you can have that how was it though even though you knew Dave for so because when he done that video about his suicide that was ballsy that's one of the bravest things I've ever seen to say I'm fucked I've had a good life I'm out yeah I was I was shocked though I mean but I saw him I saw him April that year I did a podcast with him for Ladbible.

52:29He asked me to do that. It was a dreadful podcast, by the way. And I told Ladbible I'd never do another one with him because they only put, it was shit. But Dave lied all the way through it. And I said to him on the way there, because he said, pick me up. He said, drive me there. And I said, what are we going to talk about, Dave? I said, don't start lying, will you? Because I know what he's like. And the first thing out of his mouth, I remember when I had 2000 doorman. And I got a camera on me. Oh, yes, Dave. Yeah, I wasn't very convincing. um but yeah so what's the question yeah when he when he committed suicide he took his own life it was very sad i think he should have i know he was when i saw him in april he wasn't very he wasn't very well i mean he he had he had heart problems he had like some sort of like rheumatoid arthritis which was really painful for him um but he didn't he didn't take care of himself i'm not being funny you know he never did take care of himself all dave did was party oh geez it was just it was just Party, party, party.

53:25It was like whiz for breakfast, alcohol for dinner. Do you know what I mean? And pills for dinner. It was like, he didn't do anything good. He didn't go to the gym. He didn't watch what he ate. He didn't exercise. And you do tend to fall apart. I abused the shit out of myself as a younger man, and I wish I hadn't. But you're partying drugs. I partied my ass off. True professional. I mean, I loved it. I mean, I make no bones about it. I can't, you know, because if I said I didn't do that, there'd be thousands of people calling me a liar. but one of the things I like to do with all my podcasts and in my book is I tell the truth.

53:58I tell it as I remember it, everything, right? If, you know, if I did something wrong, I'd say it. If I did something right, I'll tell you. But yeah, I took way too many drugs. That's a good thing. It was fantastic. What was the ease then? Did you ever go to Genesis? No, I didn't go to Genesis. What was Genesis? He was Andrew Pritchard. They used to do the raves scenes. I think the ICF and that worked those doors. right no i didn't do that i did um i mean i mean obviously i was working so when i was working i didn't really or shouldn't be off my head um but after work then it was like yeah because most of clubs i worked at in down in kent they were finished at 2 a.m so you know there was every weekend we were off somewhere else and it was like quick shower change gone um and then come back to work again next day but uh yeah every weekend for about 10 years when i met dave was a party weekend it was either the ministry or it was the gas club on a sunday gas club i used to like because that was where all the doorman used to go for their night out on a sunday so that was like testosterone heaven in there i mean it was all just full of great big lumps and i got to know everybody so you know i was sort of vip'd around the west end i could walk into string fellows or legends or anywhere and just everyone knew me what was string fellows like back then um yeah it was great it was i mean i had really good dorm in there very professional doorman there the tip top actually i'd say used to be alex used to run that um he must have been there for 20 odd years alex the doorman he was there for a long time if i went back there i think i went back there a year or two ago i was up in london and was popping totally changed but i was really surprised one of the doorman actually recognized me from back then he was like he said marcus you're right yeah that's in for free how was it planning ronnie's shindler what was the a deal behind that um dave did i mean dave was asked to do that and he he did put a great team together i mean he he pulled people in from all over the country there was i mean there was people from everywhere how many i mean not and i wouldn't say they were qualified doormans but i would say they were qualified thugs most of us because the streets were packed for the afternoon there must have been there must have been 175 easily security on it at least but um it was the funny thing really well not funny but Dave typical Dave he arranged it he asked anyone most people as soon as you said to them do you want to do the Craves Funeral the security yes everyone was like yes I want to be part of that because we knew it was going to be something you know a lot of monumental you know it was something you'd look back on you know sort of the rest of your life I did that and anyway so Dave said to us all after the funeral he said we'll all meet in the blind beggar and I'll pay you all he didn't turn up no one got paid I think Dave got paid but we didn't so so he's got everybody working for he's got everyone working for fuck all yeah that's just another typical Dave isn't it really did you go to the bare knuckle events I never saw I never went to any of Dave's bare knuckle stuff I used to go to the O2 ones the bare knuckle stuff yeah I mean Dave used to go there but it wasn't his event was it or he might have told everyone it was probably did no it wasn't his event they used to just they'd give him a free ticket because they knew it would like drag more people in but it wasn't his event Dave didn't have a bare knuckle event So even you started getting a little older with it, did you start to slow down or did you try and have something to prove?

57:12I think I'd like to think I got older and wiser as I went along. I certainly calmed down a bit. I think by the time I got to sort of 40, 40 I was probably still a bit naughty at 40. But certainly by the time I got to 50 I definitely got a bit older and a bit wiser and calmed down a bit. but I was still working I was working even at 50 I was working every weekend I was I was getting myself around all the bars I was really doing regular doors myself um yeah because that's just the way I was um you know I I said I didn't I didn't really stop doing the doors till we got into lockdown so I was sort of late I was late 50s um and then I then I just that's around about the same time I got on my back went I'd have spine surgery I had a shoulder replaced I've got steel shoulder.

57:55I've got all sorts of, I've got Kevlar patches in me. I'm like, frankly, I'm stamp proof way down the front. Yeah, I've had so many injuries. Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have eczema. So I get how it can steal your time. But why let eczema take over when you can talk to your doctor about EBCLIS? EBCLIS, Lubrikizumab LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies.

58:36EbGliss can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to EbGliss. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EPCLIS. Before starting EPCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lilly. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about EPCLIS and visit ePCLIS.com or call 1-800-LILLY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Do you hear that? That sound, right? That means that summer's officially here. It means that grown adults just sprint into the street for a frozen dessert shaped like a cartoon.

59:12But this summer, Mint Mobile has a better treat. Every plan, including unlimited, is$15 a month. And unlike ice cream, it won't drip down your wrist or look nothing like the picture. Does anyone have any cash? Give it a try at midmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. And we're back. Streaming on Peacock. May I present to you the award-winning staff of the Toledo Truth Teller.

59:41Slap me. Let's draw something loose. Ay, yes! I like that. The Certified Fresh Series returns. Your boss. You always like this? Or is this just an act? Oh no, this is mad. Oysters, everybody! There's a certain satisfaction when you work with someone. Maybe we could be a family. You sadistic pig! The Paper. New season streaming September 9th, only on Peacock. This show gives me a reason to live. So yeah, I'm an absolute fucking mess. But I look alright on the outside. Yeah, fuck it, I'm not. Did you ever come across the A-stick boys? No. I knew of them through everyone else. It was around the same time.

1:00:15It's really weird that we never really crossed paths, but I never heard anything good about them. I mean, all I ever heard was that they were bullies. And maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I heard. You know, that's what I got told. They were bullies and they were drug dealers. And I was never any, or never either. The police always thought I was a drug dealer. They always thought I was involved in drugs. They raided me on so many occasions. At one point, there was a whole group of us, and the police used to refer to us as the Magnificent Seven. and it involved like a gym owner, a nightclub manager and there was a whole group of us.

1:00:47We all trained in the same gym and so we partied together and we used to go with one of them. They used to put on their own parties called Juicy Tunes and they were brilliant parties, really nice people, really friendly, great music. I used to provide the security and I used to quite often get them into some of the bigger venues for it. I'd arrange, I'd set up meetings with them and that but I never got involved in any drugs. I took plenty of drugs but that was one thing I always knew. I knew I wouldn't be good at prison. I just knew that I wouldn't like the food. And I watched lots of people who were local drug dealers.

1:01:18And I saw them one minute, they've got their five minutes of fame, and they're driving around in a lovely motor. And the next minute, oh, you've got 10 years. You've got 15 years. You know, I didn't want to go that way. And I could, let's face it, I was earning good money, right? Legitimately earning good money. I mean, at the height of it, I was earning four and a half grand a week. You know, that was beyond my wildest dreams. And I did invest a lot of it out in Thailand. I had 12 houses out there you know I didn't waste all of it I did parties a lot of it away I wished I'd saved a bit more but I wasn't totally stupid with it yeah it's a mad life the old doorman but London seemed to have been proper it's old school doorman when you hear the stories Lenny McLean who was the other bare knuckle fighter from London Roy Shaw Roy Shaw yeah did you ever come up is he from yeah I met Roy I met Roy a few times I met him in Stringfellas a couple of times Roy, again, most of them, most of those old boys were gentlemen.

1:02:15Because remember, they were old boys by then as well. But I mean, Freddie Foreman, yeah, Roy Shaw, you know, Lenny, I'm sure every one of them back in their younger days were a bit hot-tempered and a bit noio. But as they were older gentlemen, they were very nice. I never had, I was always treated very nicely by them. I always treated them with respect as they deserved. And I always got the same in return. So yeah, you know, the saying that dave tried to nick off for me was it's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice and that was a little bit of a motto i used to sort of like live by at one point it was um yeah i always tried to do the right thing i always did you know Oh, yeah, I've got no bones about it.

1:02:58Yeah, I don't think you can. You know, if you live that sort of crazy lifestyle, then it's always going to come with the box and bounce. I mean, a lot of people make comments like when I say, it says on my book, you know, I knocked out a thousand people, and then say, how can you say you're not a bully? Well, because I weren't a bully. As far as I'm concerned, every one of them deserved a clump, right? If someone, you know, if someone is attacking you, if someone's attacking me, for instance, if I see trouble in the club, I'll go over and try and defuse it. And if the guys will listen to me, then it'll be all good.

1:03:24But if they'll turn around and try and stick a glass in my face, then I'm going to knock him out. Did you ever get stabbed? Oh, yeah. Glassed, stabbed. Yeah, just about everything you can think of. Remember, like I said, glass stabbed, run over, beaten with, yeah, hit with baseball bats and pull cues and, yeah, all sorts. I've had untold shooters pulled out on me. I had a shotgun put in my face, a loaded shotgun, put under my chin one day. Wasn't much fun. but I went I didn't they didn't pull the trigger they didn't have the bollocks to I actually said to the guy to pull the trigger I looked him straight in the eye and I went you haven't got the bollocks do it fucking do it and luckily he didn't I didn't think the gun was loaded I thought he was just bluffing but I found out later it was but I went out on my own and I got there was four of those lads and I went and got three of them and put them in hospital did you ever get the phone calls from any big families to say listen most people don't warn you when they're going to do something most people just I mean, all the times you get threatened on the doors, you know, the most scary times is when you don't get threatened.

1:04:30You know, like you've had a fight with someone and they just get up, look at you, dust themselves off and go, I'll be seeing you. That's the scary ones. Not the ones that go, I'm going to do this. Because let's face it, if you was going to shoot someone, you're not really going to tell them, are you? Not normally anyway. It's not a great move. But I've had problems. I've had people come to my house, people who I've considered friends. I had to throw a guy out once. He was a mate of mine. And he was totally out of order. He was in this bar. It was very, very busy. There's about four deep at the bar to get served.

1:05:03And he got the ump. So he threw a glass, picked a glass up and threw it at the barmaid. And it broke and cut her arm and it smashed the till. It bounced off her and smashed the till. And it's all cameraed up. Anyway, and we got a call to go into the manager's office. And he rewound the tape and he went, he said that's your mate there he said look what he's done and he said i want him out now so we said me and lloyd have we're friends with him and i went over to him what are you doing you've got to leave he said we're throwing us out i went we'll have to throw you out if you don't just walk out i don't have to throw you out you're my mate but you're out of order you're throwing a glass at the barmaid you cut her arm you smashed the till you've got to leave so he left and then i got a phone call i'm gonna burn your house down with your dog in it and he would do that as well this guy he's an absolute nutter so anyway i thought lloyd big lloyd said to me you better go home he said because he will burn your house down right so i've shot i've had to leave the door and shoot off home and i got to me house and i had a little staffordshire bull terrier at the time it's the only dog i've been 16 years i had him lovely little thing called monty and uh anyway i got home and and my house was all right it wasn't burned down and my dog's okay so i thought i'll just sit here for a minute anyway sure enough there's a knock at the door and this guy scouse everyone calls him scouse he can have a right scrap he's a proper i mean i've seen him get up and do bare knuckle fights just on the night you know he's a proper hard bastard and a good fighter but he's he's now knocking on my door and i know he's a tool merchant as well so i've got a collection of like big spiky horrible looking knives that i used to collect when i was out in thailand and places so i've got one of these great big spiky nice things on right and i got that behind me back and i opened the door what do you want brian he went come outside He says, you and me, on the driveway now.

1:06:39I want a scrap. I said, what's in your hand? Nothing. I said, you've got your hand behind your back. What's in your hand? He went, I've got that. He's got a screwdriver, right? I went, oh. I said, I've got this. And he went, oh, we don't need weapons. Because mine was bigger than this, right? So he put his screwdriver down. I put my knife down. And I've stepped out on my own driveway. And I went, what are you doing? I said, you were out of order. I had to tell you to leave. He said, yeah. Well, come on. Let's have it. And I went, I'm not fighting you. i said you want to fight me you start it so he did so he just literally attacked me so anyway i've sort of grabbed hold of him he was also known for biting your nose off this guy he was one of them he's a biter and a gouger real nasty fire but anyway so he's trying to do all that to me and i've grabbed hold of him i don't know how i did it but i sort of somehow just turned him upside down and dumped him on the concrete right knocked the wind out of him and i've stood back and let him get up so he got up and he's had another gun at me and this time i've slung him up against my my house wall and I've eaten so hard in the ribs and I know I've broken his ribs alright and then the third time he's come at me he's lost his ring he's got a gold like a Rolex ring or something and he goes hang on a minute I've lost my ring so the fight stops right he's got a busted rib he's all bashed up and we're looking for his ring on my driveway now so I found the ring and he goes should we just go inside and have a beer instead so literally I've let him in my house we've sat there on the sofa we had vodka and orange actually and we sat there next to each other he's all battered and and uh he's tried to like bite me and gouge me and whatever and he went that was a bit intense wasn't it and obviously it was a bit pointless as well no but i mean that was i mean it was just mad fighting we've been friends for 15 years and i've got to be honest i'm still friends with him now but the friendship's not quite the same as it was you know because i wouldn't do that to a friend like i said that's what i said to him like you have to start the fight i'm not i'm not fighting you i'll defend myself but i'm not fine yeah yeah mad bastard yeah did you what did you do reggie's funeral no because actually there was some there was some very nasty rumors got about after the ronnie's funeral um one of the jobs we had to do um was someone tried to break into the funeral parlor when the body was in the in the john english in bethnal green so we had to do like um day and night time security until the actual funeral day i did a couple of a couple of the nights but some people were doing things they shouldn't have been doing apparently like someone said there was a picture of um ronnie with a walkman on i mean i was told i'd david given me instructions i took one of my doorman up with me um guy called andy copes who was really fanatical about the craze so he actually just volunteered and loved it but we had to look after that we had to look after the funeral parlor and david got people knocking on the door all hours of the night who wanted to pay their respects so we were literally lifting the coffin lid off so they could pay their respects and say goodbye and putting the coffee lid back on.

1:09:29But I'm not so sure that everyone else who did the shifts during that week were doing as well as we were. I certainly didn't take any liberties or do anything wrong. But there was talk of people snorting cocaine off their coffee in and, you know, putting a Walkman on him and taking a photograph and all this. And I don't know if it went on or not because it didn't happen when I was there. But anyway, so Dave didn't get the job for the next funeral. Yeah, because he's not paid anyone in the last one. He didn't. That would be another reason, I suppose. He would have had a job getting a team together, wouldn't he, for a second one?

1:09:56yeah what do you think of it all now when you look back of the life it's all madness but i'm it was it was it's been it's been fun but not all of it was fun like i said i mean a lot of the stories i laugh about now weren't very funny at the time you know i mean getting your head caved in with iron bars and baseball bats and all that and getting people trying to shoot you and i mean living you know i talk about it a lot in the book you know i mean when when i first started i didn't even want to be a doorman it was it was an accidental thing really i just happened to be good at it. But I think the fact that I hated bullies so much made the job appeal to me.

1:10:33Not because most people think Dorman are bullies, but I wanted to stop people being bullied. I'm still the same now. If I was in a public space and I saw someone slapping a woman about, I'd have to stop it. I'd have to do something. And it's got me in a lot of trouble over the years, to be honest you know um i've knocked fellas out who've been one guy was kicking the shit out of his missus and i've knocked the fella out and then then the woman gets up and phones the police and i get nicked yeah that's happened a few times that type of scenario um but um yeah i just i just don't like bullies i can't stand it i've never started a fight in my life and i never will did you get a buzz of knocking people out uh i don't know i don't know there's actual but i suppose you do I suppose you get an adrenaline rush on it, don't you?

1:11:20Even when you get shot at, that's a huge adrenaline rush. It's not something that's nice, but it's a massive adrenaline rush. Yes, when you survive it, you come out the other side of it. I never went to work wanting to have a fight. You can have a fight every night of the week if you wanted to. And if you were, like I say, if you're a type of bully sort of person, then you could just be picking on everybody. I wasn't interested in that i was more interested in stopping the problems um i got between a lot of problems i got between a lot of like big problems like where there was like i'll give you example there was a family that um i i hid a whole family um because they were going to go to court against some gypsies or whatever and um i knew they were going to get shot and and i you know and i got i got the guy and his family i got a deal basically i went and brokered a deal with the gypsies that if i stopped the court case going ahead i.e got rid of the witnesses they would leave the family alone and that's what the family wanted um and i did that and that guy is actually living in america now there's still a friend of mine and he was very grateful for it did you ever wear bulletproof vest yes i used to wear at one point i've had i've had various bulletproof vests but i had one which was bulletproof stab proof needle proof and it would stop a 44 round or a 12 gauge shotgun but it wasn't the sort of thing you could fit under a lycra t-shirt do you know what i mean i didn't like wearing bulletproof vests i when i was going when I was working in Dartford, there was a lot of people up there that sort of wanted to kill me.

1:12:48And I did have to wear a bulletproof vest going into work, coming out of work, because I was vulnerable at both those times. I mean, like, you know, when I, my house at one point, I was still in the same house. I've been there. Everyone knows where I live in my area. Everyone knows that's, you know, I live on the main road. So there's nowhere to sort of really hide. But I used to have like a front guard and with bushes and things in it. And then after I got shot at the first time, the bushes had to go and I block paved it all and I put big, you know, lights around it and at one point i had this i still got a button actually i don't use it now but um i've got like these floodlights all around the front of my house i've got cameras around it as well and i used to i used to have two different cars as well because people should smash my car up wherever they found it you know so i used to have a good car and then i used to have a shit car for going to work and uh because they could smash that one up as much as they like it was a bit like roadhouse you know and i'd come home to my house sometimes and i wouldn't go straight to my house just in case someone was there so i would i would drive as i drive past my house i had this little button i'd go boom and all these lights would go and illuminate the whole thing around my house the driveway everything and if if anyone then i then i'd go and turn my car around make sure no one was following me then i'd go home and then when i got in the house the door would be sort of double locked my bedroom door would be locked and i'd have a loaded gun on the side of the bedside cabinet that was when i was going through some very serious times then that's that's draining yeah that was it worth it well what choice did i have i mean i'd got in a situation where i'd upset people who thought they wanted to kill me so i couldn't just sort of go i'm gonna leave now i couldn't just i couldn't just walk away um and then you've got your sort of pride and your reputation as well so you know i mean basically you know if you if you get in that if you get in that situation you've got to see it through to the end one way or another so what do you do?

1:14:35I mean, the police aren't going to protect you. The police weren't going to do anything. They weren't going to sort it out. When I got shot at the first time, the police were more interested in what was I up to? Why was someone wanting to shoot me? I said, I'm adornment. That's all it is. No, no, it's got to be bigger than that. It's got to be something else. Oh, and then that's when they started thinking it was over drugs. It wasn't over drugs. It was because I threw a guy out and I had a fight with him. He started a fight and I broke his leg. I broke his ankle i didn't mean to break his ankle but i threw him across the pavement and i broke his ankle because he kept hitting me and attacking me um you know but he was part of a big london family and they sent a couple of fellows down to kill me um what can you do what about celebrities celebrities never been shot by any of them i looked i looked after loads of celebrities um over the years um because we had the my security company in margot had the contract with the winter gardens which used to have all the top singers and acts and bands and comedians and and always so whenever they wanted security if there was someone i liked on there then i'd go i'd put myself on that roster so i'd be i'd be doing the security and it's the same with the clubs back in the day i don't know if you remember but in the 90s particularly you know like back in the 90s like the east enders was a very popular sort of you know soap opera and they all did the tours around the clubs didn't they so you'd have you know um like you know Steve McFadden and all the you know what's the name Phil and Grantham yeah yeah all of them they all did the tour she was connected to the gangsters old Peggy oh listen I had a great pie at her house yeah she knew everyone she was proper yes and old Frank old Frank used to wear the big glasses he knew all the gangsters yeah is it Frank what's his name butcher wasn't it Frank Butcher yeah yeah yeah no he was proper proper old boys he was alright I'm sure he was a comedian I went to a big private party one night where she was there and I think he might have been there as well.

1:16:27But yeah, it was a great party. There was loads of celebrities there. Yeah, because she knew the craze. Old Peggy. Yeah, yeah. There's old photos and stuff of them. Yeah. So the celebrities were sound, footballers. Yeah, I mean, I got on with, I get on with everybody really, to be honest. You know, I'm just, I'm really quite an easygoing guy, to be honest. But like I said, I was the sort of person, I was a really, really nice guy unless you push my buttons in the wrong direction. And then I could be your worst nightmare. And I wouldn't back down. so I did what I was supposed to do. I did my job.

1:16:58And I didn't let anyone walk over me on the doors either. I mean, I threw quite a few famous faces out of the clubs who probably could have caused me some problems because I wasn't going to take their shit. You know, I had other people who would try to get to the front, they'd push to the front of the queue and think they were someone special. And if they were polite about it, it'd be different. But if they weren't, then I'd just make them go to the back of the queue and make them look stupid. Done that a few times. You know, um, why do you think you lasted so long? I think cause I was nice. Before the shootings and the starboards and everything.

1:17:33I was underneath it. I was still, I was, I think I was really fair. I was really fair with everybody. Um, I mean, I still, I've always, I mean, some people won't work in their hometown. They don't want to be, if you actually employ a dormant, I don't want to work in my hometown. Why not? If you're doing your job properly, you should be making friends, not enemies. Um, you know, um, I mean, the only enemies I made were people that really were breaking the rules and I had to stop them. You know, I kept, I had drug dealers in my area in Thanet. I had a couple of brothers down there and I gave them chances to behave themselves, but they couldn't.

1:18:05They just kept beating people up, probably over drugs. But in the end, they were doing that much. They beat up my area manager once as well. It really pissed me off. He was a good, really close mate of mine. And yeah, attacked him with a knuckle dust for no apparent reason one night. And I kept them, I barred them from everywhere. And because I had all the big i had all the big venues and all the nice venues all the popular venues they're dormant so the only places they could go were the shit venues so i ruined their social life completely and i made no bones about it um you know and i kept them barred for for years because they were just they were just the people you couldn't let them in because you knew if they were if they were in a bar and people saw them the other people wouldn't come in or if you left it then they would just start a fight for no reason they'd end up glassing someone or stabbing someone or you know yeah they were they were always bullying and beating people up see the rings you've got as like knuckle dusters have you always wore them they were sort of a bit of a trademark with me i think i've had these for many many years this one here particularly the thing is i've never used a knuckle duster never ever have i put a knuckle duster on and hit anyone with it but i have worn these and these are legal and i've been in some very bad scraps in my time where i don't know if if anyone out there's ever been in a really big scrap and you, well, you're just literally fighting for your life.

1:19:19And this little fella here with a little pommel on it, there's, um, yeah, it's got me out of a few scrapes, if you say. Um, yeah, it's a bit of a legal knuckle just to. When did you start going to Thailand? I started going to Thailand when I was 37. Um, fell in love with the place immediately. And then I rent, I holidayed there for another couple of years. And then by the time I was 40, I formed a limited company, bought some land had a house built and started really getting to grips with thailand and i was i was first of all it was just holidays um and i very soon got involved with doing charity work out there i was already doing charity work here but i found the money went a lot further out there and i used to go into the orphanages and the street kids refuge and started doing work with them um and i still do it to this day i've actually got i've got on facebook there's a a page called big guy charity go on there and you'll see you'll see the last i've been doing it for 23 years but we started that up about 14 years ago and um and this year we've actually just managed to get lloyd's bank to give us a um community account so if people want to donate um 100 of what we raise gets spent on the children directly um every year i take out um this year on the 24th of January I've already got seven orphanages coming out about 500 over 500 children we'll be taking bus into the beach and we'll be giving them drinks ice creams food all day long all right it's an awesome awesome day um and on top of that this year we're gonna me and my wife my wife is Thai um we're going back up to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai just before the lockdown we we set up some little schools up in the mountains um and uh they're only small schools but um I want to go and see how they're doing and I want to see if we can do some more good with them.

1:21:07So I've got to raise a bit of money before then. Before December, we're going up to Chiang Mai. So I've got to try and raise some money before then and then money enough for the other one. What made you get into all the charity work? I've just always been, believe it or not, from a very early age, I was always into charity. Is that because the billion? Yeah, it might have been. I don't know. I just, do you know what? I'll tell you what really started me properly on it was, um and i can tell you the story for you if you want to hear it so i had a i'd always been doing sort of little bits of nice things let's say but real charity work started from i had a friend called charlene or charlie she was known as um wasn't a girlfriend she was she was married she'd got three kids she was just a lovely girl really pretty girl she was a croupier in one of the um casinos in margate and uh she got breast cancer she'd been going to the doctors for a couple of years with lumps and the doctor told her not to worry about it and it was nothing and blah blah anyway it was wrong and at the time she got diagnosed it was like stage four so she had to have double mastectomy she was a very beautiful girl so for any beautiful woman for any woman to have a double mastectomy both her breasts cut off I mean it's pretty traumatic um and at this time when she found out she'd got cancer and had to go through that her husband um ran off with her sister so she's not only lost her husband but she's lost her sister and she's now got cancer and three kids to look after and she had her boobs cut off all right and she was in a really bad place and and i was like i was a good friend of hers and she rung me up and i'll try not to get emotional during this um i may need a tissue but it always gets to me a little bit so um she we used to go around and see her once a week just to see that she and the kids were right and uh she she had all this treatment and she'd had like say the mastectomy but in the end she rung me up one day she said, look, you're the first person I'm going to tell.

1:22:52She said, but I saw the doctor today. She goes, I'm terminal. She said, I'm going to die. She said, no one's going to give a shit. She said, that's what really, you know, I've got three lovely little children. My husband's run off with my sister. I've got no family as such. She said, no one cares. And I, sorry, I came out of her place and I was so choked up with it. And I thought, I've got to find a way to prove to this woman that people do care. So anyway, at the time, I was a very popular doorman in the town at the time, a bit of a big face, if you like. So I rung up Thorley's Taverns, and I said, look, I told him the situation.

1:23:31I said, you know, about the girl. I mean, they knew she had cantering, but I said, no, she's terminal. I said, I want to prove to her that she is loved by a lot of people. I said, is there any time over the Christmas period that you're not using escape nightclub and they said yeah the 28th it's closed I said can I have it for free and they said yes so I've got a nightclub so then I went to uh DJs so I went to five different DJs I said told them the same story I said look I need I want what each one of you to do an hour of your best music but I'm not paying you it's for free it's for Charlie they all agreed so then I had to somehow get everybody locally to know about the secret party right without telling her so anyway i i rang charlie up beforehand and i said to her look on the 28th i said can you get a babysitter for the night i said i want to take you out for a meal to giorgio's restaurant in margate it's a lovely little italian restaurant still there now and uh so she'd had she had to wear a wig she'd lost her hair from chemo but she still looked you know when she was dressed up she still looked half decent you know so i took her out for a meal and we're in georgia's and uh finished the meal and said she said oh i'm a bit tired i want to go home i said let's just pop in this cape nightclub she went i said come on just wondering let's just pop in there and so i talked her into it anyway so you walk down the stairs you get down the stairs and it's like it just opens up in front of you and it's like a dj box with a big banner on it we love you charlie and there's like four or five hundred people in there partying their arse off and everyone has sort of seen her walk down the stairs and everyone's just come over and she's like she's like crying i'm sorry crying she's like what's this i went remember you told me like no one will care i went they care okay um sorry that's okay so anyway so i charged everyone five pounds to get in right including in dave corney who tried to get him for nothing right he brought a big crowd of people down and went to walk through and i went oh five are each it's a charity event right and he actually brought down um oh what's his name the guy was guy's name was kevin who was going out with um oh who's the guy who was on eastenders used to rather like the cocaine daniela yes daniela daniela she came down with her boyfriend and um and he put a thousand pound in it was really nice of him so we raised I think 3 ,600 and something pounds on that night and Charlie had a fantastic night really lifted her spirits um and and I went over at the end of the night with an envelope full of money because no one paid by cards and it was just all cash so I walked over and I went and I said Charlie this is for you she went oh no no we'll go we'll go 50 50 I said no this whole night was for you and your children I said look there's there's quite a bit of money there I said there's about you know 3 ,600 and whatever it was I said I said look it's up to you what you want to do with it It's your money, all right?

1:26:25I said, but you still look all right at the moment. You're still reasonably well physically. I know you're terminal. I said, but you've got three lovely kids. I said, why don't you take them to Disney World, Florida? Have a last holiday with your kids. And that's exactly what she did. And her daughter, which was the smallest one, funny enough, she came, she'd done the holiday. She'd just made it back, and she started getting really sick when she got back. and by the October October the 11th I think she died

1:26:58but that was I put on that charity event everyone that attended it loved it so much they said you can't just you can't just not do another one so we did something every year for the next few years until I went to Thailand and in the end I just got fed up with it in England because people in the end I was like the bad wives one the first year it was fun we got the children there to write us a wish list to Santa Claus. And we went out and bought their wish list, which was great, you know. But the following year, they gave us a list from Argos of what they wanted. And each kid wanted like 100 quid's worth of toys or something.

1:27:33That's not how I want to do this. So I took the money out to Thailand and I started doing, I started raising a lot of money for Thailand. You know, averagely, I mean, my best year, I think I raised 15 ,000 one year for Thailand. I used to put charity events on, in broad stairs in Frank Thorley's units and raise money from local businesses do big raffles and auctions and then i've yeah then then when i met my current wife i started we started the facebook page and and we're still doing it 23 years later we're still you know we're still looking after orphans and and opening schools and and doing stuff and it's not you know i'm not i'm not huge not big time charity it's not a registered charity but it's certainly something i'm passionate about and and i really enjoy doing it and i think it's great but that's where it started yeah fair play though try to help others that's the best thing in life i believe anyway because we sometimes get lost.

1:28:23We sometimes get caught up in our own self-importance. We forget what really matters. Who's the most feared person you've came across? Who's the most scariest? Scariest? Oh my God. My wife when she's angry. No, I don't know. Is there anyone you're wary of? It's not the big name gangster that could be the wee fucking hitman that nobody ever heard about. I'll tell you what, I went out to Spain one time. I was going to buy a, I was looking at buying an apartment there just before I ended up buying a house in Thailand in the end. But prior to that, I had this money saved up. I had like 120 grand saved up and I wanted to buy something abroad in a hot area.

1:29:03So I went to Finger Roller. My friend was selling a flat there. I went there for a weekend and I met a guy out there who scared the crap out of me. Oh, what's his name? He owned a bar out there. I actually thought when I turned up there to this bar i thought he was the doorman because he's a great big guy with no hair and i thought he's obviously the doorman but he wasn't he was the actual bar owner oh jesus i've got to try to think his name i used to stay in mihas yeah it's in finger all that's the mountains there's a place called tramps and somewhere else it's a mad place finger all between bella medina and marbella this guy's name's on the tip of my tongue but anyway basically he had this bar and it was full of like hit men from all over Europe, basically that frequented it.

1:29:47And I spent the weekend there and they liked me. I got on really well with them. And at the end of the weekend, he said, you know, we all like you, you're all right. He said, I tell you what, he said, if you want to join our little fraternity here, you kill someone for us and we'll kill anyone you want. And I was like, I'll just be a doorman, please. I'll just go back to doing my door work. I wasn't really interested in killing anyone. But yeah, he was one of the craziest guys I ever met. I mean, he was telling me stories of where they'd thrown this guy in a, it was in a foreign country where they'd thrown this guy and he got eaten by alligators and stuff.

1:30:17And as you get rid of the bodies and all that, he told me stories about hacking this guy's arms off with a chainsaw. I was gruesome stuff. Um, yeah, he was scary guy. Yeah. Yeah. But in Europe, when you kind of go to places like Spain and Germany and other places, that it's a high, more high profile, London, Britain, you've got your families, drug lords. but over the years i've met i've met i've met probably a lot of people that are actually quite scary and quite mad i mean the mad ones are the ones you just you just don't you can't tell and they don't like they don't have to be big uh they can be some absolute psychopaths you know little fellas um yeah i mean i remember once there was another guy i met um he's probably still alive actually i'm pretty sure he's still alive yeah i don't know if he wants me to tell a story about him though yeah don't mention his name but tell the story uh no well he didn't do anything terrible his name's Digger alright and he used to work for the A team but I met him I met him years ago when we were back in the day back in the rave days and that and I was working I had a venue in Folkestone the Prisian had a VIP lounge there and he'd been in the VIP lounge all night I think I was actually there was a rave on there that's right a Juicy Tunes rave my friend Ricky Ards had put that on and I was there socially that night but I saw I saw all of my door team racing towards this VIP bar so I thought I better go in there so I ran in there as well and when I got there this guy's there with his mate and he's just punched the barman in the face all right so the doorman are just about to like grab him and throw him out and i said and i went whoa whoa so wait i said oh dawn hang on a minute let me talk to him i said what are you doing and i sort of half i half recognized the guy i'd met him before i think and uh he said well this bomb he said i've been buying champagne all fucking night he said i've just asked him for a bottle of mower and he won't serve me and I looked at me and watched I went he shouts at one here the club shouts at two but the VIP shouts at one he can't serve you after one o 'clock you shouldn't have punched him in the face for that he was just doing his job I went give us a bottle of moe so the guy the barman's a bit pissed off he's got a smack in the eye he said give me a bottle of moe I went there's your bottle of moe please enjoy it he went good move on your part he went and I went what do you mean he said well he said I can see all your boys are in here he said we were just about to have a bit of a tear up he said then he said you'd have probably won the battle he said but you wouldn't have won the war that would have followed it uh anyway and the funny thing was um i met this same guy i was in a club in london i can't remember what club i was off my nut at the time but i was in this club in london and i'd obviously upset some people up there and i had a group of guys who were just about to like i was having a bit of a confrontation with and all of a sudden who should pop his head up this same guy he went he's with me and he's all right you leave him alone and all these guys just shit themselves and walked away so it was quite funny yeah he was a he was a proper face back in the day did you build a lot of friendships yeah i did um i mean sometimes the friendships come from the funniest places i've had i've had like i've had tear-ups with people on the door and they've ended up being a good friend you know um i'm not saying that's the way you should start a friendship but um i mean quite often i would just get on with people anyway because i was i always thought i was polite with people i was polite and i wasn't stupid um so i'd give people a chance i'd give people a bit of respect and and as long as that that worked for both of us that was great you know and sometimes it did um i mean sometimes you could have the nastiest people come in who would behave themselves they'd come in buy a drink and wouldn't cause any trouble you know and you'd have a good night but um yeah sometimes you wouldn't when are you at your happiest um where am i at what now in life yeah in life i'm at my happiest probably when i'm in thailand um i've got a beautiful house there i've got a beautiful wife now um yeah i'm probably at my happiest when i'm yeah over there in the sunshine enjoying it you know is this your fourth marriage no this is my third yeah well third time's a charm third time lucky i say no i'm i've never i'll never look anywhere else honestly i've got a little diamond at the moment she's she's been stood by me through a lot and uh but she's also very like-minded she's very when i first um when i used to go out with different women in thailand i would test them all right i would like i would i would take a new girlfriend to like a posh shopping center and i'd go anything you want darling and if they were like gold diggers and that they'd sort of go i'll have this and this and this and this all right and i when my current mrs uh rungna par her name is i took her to a right big big shopping center and i said anything you fancy she looked around she went yeah she'll get most of this shit at the market for half the price and then when we left there we're walking down the street and she she took some money out of her purse to give to some poor people at the side of the road i thought yeah she's she's the right sort of person and then when i showed her some of the charity stuff that i've been doing before i showed her some videos of it and she was like she just started crying she went i want to do that can we do that and on her first first birthday of hers we were together i said look i said you got a choice i said um i said i can either take you out for a you know an amazing birthday you know meal spend loads of money on you or we could take some orphans out to the water parks for a day what do you want to do she chose to take the orphans yeah so that was a we took 96 kids out the first time we first time with her you know i took 96 orphans out to the water parks that was her birthday present where did you get married we actually got married in thailand at the armari resort it was a huge wedding and i bust about a lot of her family live about 300 kilometers away from where we live so i bust um about 30 of her family down put them up in hotels for the night before and uh we had a massive yeah massive um ceremony we got married with we had nine monks um married married us um which is quite crazy.

1:36:03Well, we only just, actually this year, July this year, was our 10th anniversary. And we got, we renewed our vows in a church in England. Congratulations. Yeah, so we've just done that. Is that your longest? That's my record. That's a record for me. I never get, both of the others were seven years. It was like a seven year itching gone. Not me, them. Yeah. They say love only lasts seven years. So they say if you get past seven years, then it's made for life. Yeah, well, that's what it feels like. So yeah, Yeah, I really feel like I've got a partner for life. How do you feel with it all now? How do you feel?

1:36:35Because you're a great talker. You talk well. Thank you. You know, so you're a very pleasant charity. It works an amazing thing. Like, I think that's so amazing for people to help others who think nobody cares. Yeah. People do care. They do. I mean, it's amazing how many good people there are out there. I mean, a lot of people, a lot of my friends started putting in, because they know me well, and they know I've been doing this for a long time. I'm not ripping anybody off. I'm not I end up putting loads of my own money in to make the money even more and um you know I get in Thailand people used to come give me donations now I say look don't just give a donation please come along please come along to the day out we do at the beach just you know come along and take part help us you can help us serve the drinks or the food or whatever and then anyone who comes along they just they keep coming back we've now got so many volunteers we've now we've got like we've got actually cut them down a bit we've got to go we can only have so many because we can last year we had about 20 volunteers so i mean obviously we choose them you know with people we know but everyone wears a it's like a red and black um t-shirt with big guy charity it's very professional looking um and we've got we've got quite a few people that every year will sort of you know donate and help us do it because they know it's a good cause and they know that where the money's going because we're very open about it we show like what i want to do now this is why i wanted this bank account i wanted it for so long because it's very hard when people say i'd like to make a donation and where's the bank gonna i'll put it in mine it doesn't sound very it doesn't sound like the sort of thing but now we've actually got a big guy charity account um so that's you know we've got our own um charity account um through lloyd's and what i want to do is get as we get closer to the time i'll you know i'll publicly put the statements up of how much money we've raised um and even list you know if people want to be listed a lot of people just want to do it anonymously but anyone who wants to be listed i'll put it up but we're so transparent so when we go and spend the money we also write down all the costs for the day how much the food costs the drinks costs the buses costs so people can see what we're doing you know yeah good on yes good how are you feeling today brother i'm feeling yeah chatty that's a good thing for me what's your plans for the future um oh well my first thing is i'm still concentrating on my health um um the doctors don't seem to be able to do anything with me and like i said i've spent a fortune on it.

1:38:50I spent£3 ,000 in the last month just on blood tests and seeing specialists. And at the end of it, they went, I don't know. I can't just, because I'm not earning a lot of money at the moment like I was. I'm now retired. I'm not working the doors. I'm actually doing my teaching qualification at the moment, my level three teaching qualification. I'm going to go back and teach doorman how to be doorman and hopefully do a good job of that. That'll be a part-time job and that will give me a bit of extra income. At the moment, I've got three rentals. I own five houses, one in Thailand, one in England I live in, and three rentals that I rent out.

1:39:21And the only income is the three rentals. So I haven't got a fortune every month to live on. So all this money I've been paying out for healthcare has been coming out of my savings. So I need to get doing more work with books and appearances and teaching and earning a bit of a wage again. But I honestly been feeling so ill last this was it um last october i was so ill i i had thyroid toxicosis i lost 10 kilos in weight without trying i couldn't walk more than 100 yards i couldn't train um i looked like i was dying i mean the doctors thought i had cancer sent me for pet scans and yeah i felt like dog shit um um and so i've sort of got a bit better but i'm still not over it yeah hopefully you find it out hopefully i'll find out so the main thing is to get my health back then i want to get back into doing the i want to get i want to actually i want to get on the circuit for giving after dinner speeches and stuff like that because apparently there's there's an a there's agencies i've applied to one of the agencies i mean if anyone's out there anyone's watching this and they would like to hire me to come and speak at your charity event or an after dinner speech or anything or just a q a you know and just chat about the naughty 90s i'm quite happy to do it yeah well you're a big storyteller you're great at telling you've got your book out now you know all the big names who you worked with all the old faces so if anybody watching and listening definitely how can people reach out to you um they can get hold of me on facebook um which is obviously under my name marcus joseph redwood um and i'm also on instagram as well um yeah just message me and i'll you know give me a message on that and then i'll send over my actual number if you want i've got nothing i've nothing to hide but yeah yeah i've really enjoyed this today yeah likewise for anybody watching marcus that's maybe in a life of struggle right now what advice would you have for them everything it's never put it this way i think winston churchill said it best he said when you're going through hell keep going get through it because nothing is permanent but when you when the old the old adage of nothing is permanent it's true about good things and bad things when you're having a great time and you're making loads of money nothing's permanent all right it will pass so if you are making if you're having a good time and you're making loads of money, then make sure you put some away because it ain't always going to be, it ain't always going to be great times.

1:41:35But if you're having bad times, just know, just knowing yourself that it isn't always going to be bad times. But I think if you can change anything in your life, you want to, if you want your life to change, you have to change yourself. Everyone's identity, your personal identity is the, the, the only thing that can change you and change your life is changing your identity, who you are and who do you think you are? I mean, that's a that was a huge thing i did all those anti-robbins seminars years ago and i absolutely loved it right but nothing will change your life more than changing yourself yeah you can't wait for someone to come and rescue you it's not going to happen yeah yeah tony robbins was classed i used to watch him and les brown les brown was old school he was old motivational teacher i was so um i was like i went crazy when i done the first one with tony you do the firewalk and all that yeah and and my business exploded i had 50 doorman when i went and saw him the first time and i went back one year later with 120 doorman all right it took me 10 years to get to 50 but i went to 120 in one year because of what i learned at that seminar and my it just changed it just opened everything up and i loved it so much i every year after that i bought six tickets to that event and i gave them to friends of mine who were struggling and i i booked their hotels paid for their hotels their tickets, everything, and sent them on Antony Robbins.

1:42:55And I'd done that. You know, that was like, that was, I don't know, probably a bit mad, but it was my way of paying back. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with your summer price forecast. Now, unfortunately, we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you 100%. Now, over here at Mint Mobile, we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices. Every plan to just$15 a month. Give it a try at midmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra.

1:43:28New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. And we're back. Streaming on Peacock. May I present to you the award-winning staff of the Toledo Truth Teller. Slap me. Let's draw something loose. Ah, yes! I like that. The Certified Fresh Series returns. Your boss. You always like this? Or is this just an act? Oh, no. This is mad. oysters everybody there's a certain satisfaction when you work with someone maybe we could be a family you sadistic pig The Paper new season streaming September 9th only on Peacock this show gives me a reason to live Kelly Clarkson here with Wayfair I know holiday magic starts at home and Wayfair makes it easy they have everything from Christmas trees and mantle decor to outdoor lighting and inflatables that I'll use year after year head to Wayfair.com today Wayfair, every style, every home yeah you seem to always want to help people which is a good thing don't never lose that Marcus it's nice to see people want to help others well that's what I said that's why although you know I talk about there was loads of fights there was loads of nasty situations but I wasn't a horrible person I was a nice person who was pushed into a horrible situation yeah I can see that Marcus would you like to finish up on anything else um

1:44:41no I think I think we've covered most of it but um yeah yeah we can always get you on for a part two there's plenty more to your story this is to promote your book get a bit of understanding about you for anybody who's out there buy the book for anybody listening big guy big guy is on Amazon hearing more stories there's a lot of stuff that I've never covered which is in the book for people to go and get read themselves but Marcus I wish you nothing best for the future brother thank you God bless and take care thank you