Читать книгу Record Breaker - He is the Fittest Man in the World, and He's Got 125 Records to Prove It - Paddy Doyle - Страница 8

ERDINGTON WAS GROWING into a multicultural area at that time, and I used to hang around with a lot of black guys. We lived in Minstead Road and there were a lot of black families in our street. They were good friends of mine, the black kids I grew up with. One day a Jamaican guy, who was married to a white woman, called the police. He’d had a porch built on to his house. I was only about four at the time, but I’d taken all the putty out around his new porch windows. I remember my dad told me off good and proper for that one.

The houses in the area were mostly pre-war semis. My road was a pretty rough one: there were some real characters living there. The police were always going up and down the street because there were so many confrontations between neighbours, black and white. There were a lot of Irish families there, but no Asians. They moved in later, in the late seventies, when there was no longer anywhere for them in Uganda and places like that. It was a working-class road, rough and ready. It’s still the same today, I’m told. Someone got shot there a while back.

Our neighbours had some problems with me, as well. They kept hens, and one day I got into the run and smashed all the eggs in there, out of sheer devilment. I don’t really know why I did these things. I just thought, Cor, there’s some eggs here. I’ll smash ’em! About half an hour later I could hear our neighbour going barmy, shouting, ‘Who’s done this? Who’s smashed all me eggs!’

He must have known who it was. I was a known troublemaker in the street. I used to throw bricks and stones through windows and run back into my house, double quick. Or I’d ask for a go on a kid’s bike and scoot off with it. I’d go home on it and leave it outside my house. I didn’t pinch it, as such. I’d just go inside and forget about it. I wasn’t trying to thieve the bike; I was a kid and didn’t have the mindset to sell the machine. I just said, ‘Can I have a go of your bike?’ and then left it in my front garden. Next thing I knew, the kid’s parents were speaking to my dad, and I’d get, ‘Patrick, what’ve you been doing?’ My dad always called me Patrick. Other lads I knew were getting into trouble too, but I had another outlet for my energy, and that was sport.

I was always interested in competing. I started primary school when I was four, and running and gymnastics interested me right from the beginning. I thoroughly enjoyed gymnastics. It gave me the basic skill that I use today. A lot of the records I’ve got, such as press-ups, are gymnastics based. I represented the school in junior gymnastic competitions. But I came sixteenth out of thirty regional competitors, and you had to be in the top fifteen to be selected to go forward for the national competition. I wasn’t a great gymnast but I was good enough to compete for the school.

I represented the school on other occasions too. I used to run for my junior school at the Midlands Inter School sports days. I came third in a one hundred metres race and second in another when I was about seven years old. I think I received certificates for those but they’re lost and gone. The judo certificates I’ve still got.

Judo was my first activity-based sport. I was eight years old when I was taken along by my cousins to my first lesson. My mother’s brother, Uncle John, lived with his family in the same road as us. My uncle and aunt had come over to England with my parents and, although they would eventually go back to Dublin, they brought up their family in Birmingham. I think my uncle could see I had a lot of energy to get rid of. It’s possible the adults around me decided I needed to let off steam in a controlled environment.

I’ve got a lot of respect for my Uncle John. Years later, when my father died, I grew very close to him. He became a father figure to me. I love the guy and there’s a real bond between us. He’s a hard man and a character, like my grandfather, and I’m told we use similar expressions and our personalities are the same. We put our points across in the same way. He’s smaller than me, only five foot three, but he likes sport and follows it avidly. Uncle John’s sons were already having judo lessons and I think it was his idea to include me when they went along to the Atled Judo Club in Chester Road, Erdington.

Immediately I loved the idea of contact sports. I found I had a skill or a talent for judo. It was the right sport for me to begin with because it incorporates aggression, and I was always ready to hit something. I loved the idea of my fists coming in contact with someone. But I had no idea I would soon be winning medals and certificates and taking part in regional competitions.

My instructor at the club was a guy called Bob Atkins. I’ll never forget him: lovely bloke, brilliant instructor, although I don’t know what he’s doing now. He had a good way of teaching the sport. He brought on juniors like me, got them to progress and do well. He encouraged us a lot, and the result was I stuck at judo for three or four years.

The classes were held on Friday evenings. I turned up for my first lesson in my ordinary clothes and watched my cousins doing mat work. It was a whole new environment for me and it was exciting at that age to walk into something different. I liked the rolling about and the wrestling, the grappling and holding, and my interest developed from there.

I went back to the class the following week with my new judo outfit and started working for my first grading. Gradings are thorough physical tests which take you up to the next colour belt. I think the gradings in those days were a lot tougher than they are today; the regulations were tighter then. I reckon tests are simpler now, less demanding, softer. Standards change. Going for a grading in the seventies was a lot harder than it is now.

Outside examiners from the old Amateur Judo Association would come along and test us. We started with a white belt and worked, first of all, to get a yellow one. There was about three or four months between each grading. I never failed a grading test, thank God. Even at that age, failure was something to avoid. I didn’t like failing. Not in sport.

Funnily enough, I could accept failure on the academic side of my life. It didn’t bother me if I failed an English or a maths test at school, but it would have bothered me if I’d had a setback sportswise. I didn’t know where sport was going to lead me but, as long as I was doing well in that, I didn’t feel bad about classwork. I was a slow learner in school anyway. Some people are born with the ability to learn from books faster than others and some are born with more sporting skills. It’s horses for courses. I was quicker on the sports field than the person I sat next to in class. So, in class, I would literally take a back seat.

Judo lessons were my big interest for several years. By the time I was eleven I’d got my green belt and I’d been in about fifteen club competitions, one about every two months. With my gradings, and allowing for injury, which happened even at that age, this was packing quite a bit into two and a half years. One time I was doing mat work and someone swept me back. Something snapped when I landed. I’d broken my ankle.

But the urge to compete was there and I got several certificates in the Midlands Junior Judo Championships. The first one was for the Under-11s Championship on 27 June 1974, where I came fourth in the finals. The following year, in the finals on 3 May, I took the bronze medal. Then, in 1976, I won the silver.

The 1974 championship was my first real taste of competition. I was an orange belt by then, and travelled with the club to a comprehensive school in Walsall. The place was packed; there were a lot of competitors. I’ll always remember one of my opponents had me in a neck hold and I wouldn’t submit. Eventually the blood supply to my brain was blocked and next thing I was unconscious. I came round on the mat about thirty seconds later. I opened my eyes and wondered where I was for a minute. The medics checked me over. ‘Next time,’ said the referee, ‘Submit.’

OK, I was in the wrong: I should have submitted. But I never give up. I’d rather die than lose. I’ve always said that. Even at that age, I wouldn’t give in. I’d have to be near enough killed first. ‘Why didn’t you submit?’ they asked me.

‘Because I didn’t want to give in.’

They stood back and looked at me. ‘That was a stupid thing to do,’ said the coach.

But I was in the last four. I could have got a bronze medal. It was stubbornness. I wanted that medal.

Your body adapts to being pushed around and bruised all over. Maybe your ribs get pummelled, the shins and ankles, the back and the stomach, but it’s worth it. I highly recommend judo for toughening up the body. It’s an excellent sport. I used it as a stepping stone, four or five years later, to go just that bit further. I wanted a full-contact sport: boxing, punching, to go that extra mile. And that was to capture my interest as much as judo had earlier on. Every time the Olympics came on TV, I’d watch the boxing, the judo and the wrestling. Contact sports are at their highest standard in the Olympics.

* * *

I took a break from judo for about six months when I joined another local club, St John’s Gymnastic Club in Erdington. I did this off my own bat and went along every Wednesday evening. The first time I went, they assessed my level of ability. After that they worked on my weak points and turned them into strengths. Gymnastics involves a lot of floor work and balance. Balance was a weak point for me and they helped me improve that. It was something different, which I enjoyed doing, and I ended up being able to do groundwork, including forward and backward rolls, forward somersaults and splits, and balancing on one arm and doing one-arm press-ups.

The club encouraged me to get my BAGA I, II and III from the British Amateur Gymnastics Association. We already did gymnastics at school and I told them I was doing extra gymnastics at a club. This improved my ranking in school gymnastics and, by the time I’d finished primary school, I’d got my BAGA IV and taken part in several school gymnastic exhibitions. I made the finals of the Midlands Schools Championships but I never got into the top fifteen. But, without that outside club coaching, I wouldn’t even have made sixteenth place; I probably would have come last. So the club gave me a real lift in gym work.

A lot of people do a sport for a couple of weeks then stop making the effort. But I always kept at it, trying to reach competition level. I’ve wanted to come away with the T-shirt, or the experience of the event. So, if I came sixteenth, it was an experience to get to sixteenth. I’ve never given up. At school I always tried my hardest in PT and gave one hundred per cent, and I got on much better with the PT instructor than I did with the other teachers. His name was Mr Arkinsall. But there was one moment when I didn’t please him so much.

I was complaining I hadn’t been selected for the school cricket team. I’d always turned up for training and practice but I was never selected to play. Coming back from practice one day, I gave the PT teacher a load of cheek because I hadn’t been chosen to play, and he hit me right across the head. I’ll never forget it because he was the head teacher as well. It actually did me some good. In those days teachers were allowed to wallop children to discipline them, and I got hit several times by different teachers. Nowadays, if that happens, the parents are down to the school straight away. I disapprove of that. I come from the old school: I had the cane and the slipper on my backside when I got to senior level.

Dad never hit me. He was very soft with me at home. Maybe that gave me more confidence to be bold outside the home. Not that I thought of myself as being out of control or wild. That’s the way I was, and it was part of life. It seemed totally natural to me that I was always in trouble. I didn’t follow anyone along that path, I was never coerced. But, without knowing it, trouble found me. As soon as I stepped outside the front door a feeling of devilment came over me. We’ve all done things that have got us into trouble, but I probably took that to the extreme. I attracted certain kinds of friends, normally older than me. They came from a different school in the same area, so no one around me knew what I was getting up to. It was only when the police came to the door that my father knew about it.

I must have been about eight or nine years of age when the law first called on Dad. I’d broken into a youth club with a friend. We smashed a window and got inside and used the phone. That was it really. We were just looking around the place when the caretaker turned up. As he didn’t know who was in the building, he phoned the police. Later he said that if he’d known it was eight-year-olds who’d broken in, he wouldn’t have called the cops. I was taken home and given a telling-off by my dad. It was a bit of a shock, my first involvement with the law. But you get over it.

Not that I was regularly involved with the police. That break-in was the first and only offence for a very long time. It wasn’t until I went to senior school that I got into trouble like that again. Instead I was using my newly learnt judo skills in any confrontation that came my way. If there was a scuffle at school, if I was being picked on by a taller boy, I’d go for his legs. I’d lift one leg and sweep it along the back. I’d push with my shoulder and all my body weight would go on to him. He’d land on his ribs and lie there winded. Then I’d get him in an armlock and strangle him. That used to stop them picking on me.

But I’d only use my fighting skills to defend myself. I was never a bully, I can say that. I used to sort out the bullies but I’d never, ever bully kids myself. Bullies were scum to me. They used to have their idiots following them around. I wouldn’t tolerate them. Even at that age, I’d avoid their company. That kind of behaviour didn’t interest me. I was involved in more rebellious things than that outside school, but it never meant picking on weaker people. I was already sure of myself. I knew what I wanted. I think a bully is an insecure person, whatever age they are. As you get older and see and experience more confrontations, you don’t need a degree to see why some people are bullies. Having mixed with a number of violent individuals over the years, and having been violent myself, I know why a person behaves like that.

I was always a positive character; that’s the family spirit in me. And I was given a very positive home life. My father didn’t beat me, so my character was never beaten down. I never needed to think about picking on other people because I didn’t feel threatened myself. I was a rebel, a pain in the arse to neighbours and teachers and the local law, but what I did was what other kids were doing at that age. It’s just that I did those things too many times. I never thought about it. I was too busy doing it.

From the age of seven or eight, the black guys I used to play with thought I was a complete nutter. They called me ‘Bruiser’ because I always had a black eye from all the scuffles and fights I was in. From the age of eight up to about twelve years old, I used to read a comic called The Victor. I used to buy it every Saturday and was inspired by a character in it called Alf Tupper. Alf would turn up at different sports competitions at short notice and with holes in his trainers, having done his paper round and eaten fish and chips, and still win a race.

I didn’t have a hero in the real world. There wasn’t anyone I looked up to or idolised, except this comic-strip character. He was probably between twenty-five and thirty-five, and lived in a run-down house. He’d get into scuffles after race meetings and always win the fights. He was rough and ready and I identified with everything about him. Alf was loyal; he had a good heart. He’d help anyone out and he’d take on any sort of challenge. There were so many similarities between us, though I never planned it that way.

One of the turning points in my life came the day my father met another woman and we all moved in together. I was six at the time and it was a real period of adjustment for me, having to adapt to new rules in the home. In fact, I completely rebelled against the situation, although I had to remain there until I was sixteen because the courts had ruled that I had to live with my father. My father and this woman never married, and they split up after falling out. But that was when I was about seventeen or eighteen. So this woman was around during the years when I was getting into scrapes, and she tried to take a disciplinary role. But I always rejected her attempts at authority. The way I saw it, she was trying to mould me into something I was never going to be.

I knew what I wanted to be. The first time I won a judo medal, at the Midlands Junior Championships, I felt great. I must have been about ten at the time. I remember going to the judo club that morning and then on to the centre where the championships were being held. It was a whole new experience, not knowing who I’d be competing against. Afterwards, I remember going round to some of the neighbours and showing them my medal and certificate. I was proud to be a fighter even then.

Shortly after I stopped going to judo at about twelve years old, I went to a boxing club, just to get a taste of the sport. It was Aston Villa Boxing Club, next to the football ground, and it was a fair journey to get to each time. I went along for about a month or so, and I got my nose punched in. It was my opponent’s first night there and he meant to wound me. We were only twelve at the time. He cracked my nose and there was blood everywhere. I punched the guy back and made him cry. It was my way of saying, ‘Don’t come on strong with me, chum, ’cos I can come on strong too.’ I didn’t care if he cried; he’d made my eyes water and I did the same to him. I suppose, looking at it now, I’d say, ‘Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it,’ but you can’t verbalise that attitude when you’re twelve years old.

I was leading an active life, and getting into trouble was part of it. One minute I was training, next minute I was fighting in the street. Some sports were forced on me. I was never interested in football but it was part of the school curriculum. I played left back because I was good at stopping people when they came forward. I used to tap their legs, not the ball. I was good at knocking people down. They put me near the goal because people couldn’t get past me. Better than a goalkeeper. But I never made the school football team. Instead I enjoyed running. I had a real surge of energy, I remember. I’d call out to my dad that I was off for a run, step out and close the front door and come back later.

I’d keep a mental note of the progress I was making. I was devising my own simple training programmes without really thinking about it. I’d say to myself, ‘I did that last week, so I can push myself a bit further this week.’ I never wrote down what I’d achieved. I knew in my head what I wanted to do.

Already I wanted to be an athlete of some sort. My dad used to watch the boxing on television and I used to watch the matches with him. He also enjoyed athletics and we’d watch the races together. I think watching the athletes on TV inspired me a lot. I used to think, I’d love to do something like that, and then, I could do better than that. Instead of running a hundred metres I wanted to run miles. To me, the hundred-metre races at school were boring. I always wanted to push my body to the extreme. I always wanted to go further. I knew I could do better, maybe not in terms of time but in endurance. I wanted something more physically demanding.

I can remember looking out of a window when I was four or five and living in Minstead Road, and thinking I wanted to do something with my life, be somebody in sport. It was important to come from nothing to something. I’ve never had any heroes or people I’ve looked up to during my sporting career. I’ve probably been too busy studying my own performance. I just got on with it. I’m a role model for others, I’m told, but I didn’t look at someone else and say, ‘I want to be like him.’ At the age of eleven I used to watch the BBC’s Record Breakers when Roy Castle was presenting it with Norris McWhirter, and I said to myself, ‘I want to be on that programme.’ When I did get on it, I met both Roy and Norris twice. Lovely bloke, Norris. And I wanted to be in The Guinness Book of World Records too.

By the time I got to senior school the teachers had given up on me and let me sit at the back of the class and do what I wanted to do. I was already my own person with my own mindset, and I used to give teachers a mouthful of abuse. They’d let me alone in the end. It didn’t bother me if I got told off. I’d just shrug my shoulders and go out for a run. I remember one time we had a football match. I said to the sports teacher, ‘I’m not playing football. I’m going out for a run.’ And he let me do my own thing. Off I went, doing shuttle sprints, running and press-ups. Shuttle sprints are a good exercise where you sprint between two lines, fifteen metres apart, for explosive power training. This was to help me with my latest interest in boxing.

Dad knew he had a problem with me. And as I got older the incidents multiplied. There was the time he opened the door to a black guy and an Asian, both about my age. They said to him, ‘Is Paddy there?’ I must have been thirteen or fourteen at the time.

My dad said, ‘What do you want to see him for?’

‘We want to fight him.’

Dad shouted up to me, ‘Patrick, there’s some blokes here want to fight you.’

I came down and he told me to go outside with them. He locked the door and stood at the window, watching me.

We started fighting on the grass verge in front of the house. I got the Asian guy in an armlock. He was about three or four inches taller than me, but I was squeezing the hell out of him and I wouldn’t let go. I think he’d brought the other guy along for support, because he just stood and watched. We were out there for about ten or fifteen minutes, scuffling and getting a few scrapes. My dad didn’t offer to come out and help. He just watched from the window and, when I’d beaten the Asian guy, he opened the door and let me back in. And I went upstairs and washed my face, and that was the end of it.

Once you get into sport and you start looking strong among your peers, you find yourself being challenged. Whether I liked fighting or not, I had to deal with that. From the age of about eight or nine, trouble found me. As I got older I developed a reputation for fighting. Lads dropped round to challenge me. But people get confused between someone who’s tough and someone who’s crazy and goes up against it. I wasn’t crazy really, but I was a hell of a rebel. Being a rebel can mean you’re out of control: if there’s a rule, you want to break it. Being hard and tough is another thing: you’re constantly fighting. As I grew up I was mixing the two elements together, or it was happening to me somehow. I was rebelling and getting into fights all the time. It was as though I was being pulled in two directions at once. I didn’t know which way I was going.

After I left school I never went back. I never socialised a lot there, even at senior level, although I’d stop kids being bullied. But I used to keep myself to myself, rather than go around with a group of friends. As for girls, I liked them a lot but I was wedded to my sport even then. To be an athlete, you’ve got to be focused. That can seem very selfish or self-centred to others, but it’s not. You’re being ambitious. Sport is a short-lived career and you’ve got to take advantage of it while you can.

People may think, He’s a selfish basket, he is, and females, especially, can say, ‘He’s always down the bloody gym.’ And during some relationships I had when I was doing sport, I must admit I was mostly down the gym. I still am. But my argument is: I’m bringing money home for my girl and me to go out and have a meal, and to put towards our holiday and to pay the bills. When the money was in the pot, I was generous with it and helped people out. There are two sides to me: I can roll with the punches, but there’s a soft side too.

If people want to rumble me, I’ll rumble them back, twice as hard. But there’s another side: I’d help out, genuinely. I’m not stupid. I can weigh up a situation very fast. I’m a good judge of character. This comes from having a streetwise childhood, being brought up in a working-class family. I can remember getting my clothes from second-hand shops, charity shops like Oxfam. Life was pretty hard but we had a lot of home-made food. When we moved from Minstead Road, after Dad met the other woman, we lived about a mile up the road, in a more well-to-do street where children had a set of parents with regular jobs.

I was like an only child when I was young. My brothers and sisters had all moved on. It might have been one reason I was self-contained: I was always happy to do my own thing at home. Moving schools was a big disruption for me. I went to two junior schools and two senior schools. I’d already had the upheaval of my mother and father splitting up. I went to one junior school for twelve months, then another junior school. Then my father met this lady and we moved again.

I was getting nowhere in the classroom, especially at Jaffray School, my first senior school in Erdington. It was a multicultural comprehensive; a lot of black kids went there. I was there for a couple of years, from 1976 to 1978, and I was always in trouble, fighting with the troublemakers. They should have put us in the gym, put some boxing gloves on us and let us sort it out.

One day I was picked on by a black guy. I’ve got a lot of black friends and I love West Indian food, and this guy, Joseph Harris, is a lovely guy now. He’s turned out well and we both do karate, but he had a loud mouth at school and he picked on me. He kept pushing me in the dinner hall. Afterwards, in the playground, I automatically got him in a judo hold, a tomanagi, and threw him over me. I’d stopped doing judo by then, but you don’t forget the things you learn at an early age. He went flying through the air like a rocket and landed on the concrete, on his head and shoulders.

All of a sudden I’m in the headmaster’s office again, getting the cane. Six of the best. And I’m thinking, Well, I never started this. But the other boy got the cane, as well. I’ve seen him since and he said to me, ‘I remember the time you rag-dolled me.’

I said, ‘Well, you deserved it.’ We laughed about it. He’s a black belt in karate now and we’re the best of friends.

And, lo and behold, I found myself fighting his cousin, Winston ‘Spider’ Harris, in a European Record Full Contact Fighters Combat title fight in August 1995. In that competition I fought different boxers in five hundred and sixty rounds over a period of a month. Winston is a lovely guy, like Joseph, and he’s been British Kickboxing Champion seven times. So I fought and beat one family member in the playground, and fought and beat one in the ring.

Often I meet up with people I fought at school. We say hello and talk professionally and laugh about past confrontations. We were kids then, and you grow up. If you’re a man of the world you do the business and defend yourself, and you don’t have to think about it for the rest of your life. You laugh about it; that’s what men are all about. I’ve never been one for picking up a knife or a gun. It’s not my style. It was always bare-knuckle fighting out in the playground.