Читать книгу On the Doors - Working as Britain's Hardest Bouncer, I Was Hit, Stabbed and Faced Guns - But I've Never Been Beaten - Stellakis Stylianou - Страница 6

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT BEING TOUGHENED – OK, ‘HARD’, IF YOU LIKE – THAT GIVES YOU A SECOND SENSE ABOUT WHEN IT’S GONNA GO OFF. YOU CAN SMELL IT; YOU CAN FEEL IT. IT’S IN THE AIR. IT’S EVERYWHERE. YEARS OF KNOWING IT; LOOKIN’ AT THE PUNTERS; SIZIN’ ’EM UP. YOU JUST KNOW WHO’S TROUBLE AND WHERE IT’S LIKELY TO COME FROM. AND THEN ONE DAY, ALL OF A SUDDEN, IT HAPPENS RIGHT OUT OF THE BLUE … AND YOU AIN’T EXPECTING IT. IT HAPPENED TO ME WHEN I WAS GOING DOWN THE KEBAB SHOP. I LOOKED AROUND AND SUDDENLY REALISED I MIGHT HAVE BITTEN OFF A BIT MORE THAN I COULD CHEW.

This night-stick hit me on the back of my left shoulder – wallop! There were four of the fuckers. I thought, Bollocks, this ain’t fair. I noticed the sticks, the pick-axe handles first. And the funniest thing is, there was no fear. You don’t have any time to be afraid. I thought, Right, move in fast. Up close it’s impossible for them to get any swing on the clubs. And I was up there, I was in the middle of it. I was fighting for my life, as I’ve always fought …

I’d been on the door down at the Station Hotel in Welling, South London. I think it’s called The Moon and Sixpence or something poncey now. Back then, in the Eighties, it was the first Whitbread venue pub that had bouncers on the door. And this particular night it was packed with the usual bunch of drinkers, some rowdy, some laughing, most pissed, place heaving. And there were these Millwall supporters. They looked like trouble and I wasn’t surprised when the buzzer went at the pub entrance to tell us guys on the door that something was going off inside. I rushed in, flexed up, ready.

The hooligans had been jostling the crowd, spilling drinks and generally looking for trouble. We steamed in. I recognised the leader, he had a reputation for being the hardest of the Millwall supporters and he had a team of about half-a-dozen other scum with him. They had already smashed the place up once before and ruined a day down there when Brian Jacks and Henry Cooper had made a special charity appearance. That was the sort of little bastards they were.

Anyway, they weren’t gonna do it again. There were four of us on that night, so we grabbed hold of ’em. They tried to be a bit cocky and I said, ‘Listen, I ain’t interested in what you got to say, you been causing trouble in here long enough. Now you’re out – fuck off.’

They struggled a little bit but it didn’t take much to restrain ’em. There were a few verbals on the door, the usual old thing with the main bloke mouthing off, ‘I’ll be back to shoot ya’, and all that old bollocks. I’ve heard it a hundred times. To most of ’em, I just say, ‘Don’t jump the queue!’ As far as I was concerned that was the end of the incident and they were barred for life. But there was a surprise in store.

At the end of the night, we emptied the place and I told the other lads I was off down the road to get meself a kebab and I’d be back. So I’m walking down the road and I see four or five blokes over on the opposite side but don’t think anything of it. Then I twig it’s the scum I threw out of the pub an hour or so earlier, but I figure they ain’t gonna do anything because here we were in the middle of Bellegrove Road in Welling, a major bloody road … How wrong can you get?

First, I hear the screaming as they charge towards me. I couldn’t run back to the Station so I decided to run towards ’em. That’s when the first one clobbered me with the pick-axe handle or whatever it was. That made me mad. Another one tried to have a go but I was too close in by then and I blocked it.

I grabbed that one and pulled him down to the floor; he was gonna be the first one I was putting out the way. I’d got my hand on his face and was twisting it when – squelch! – I realised I’d got my fingers in one eye so I decided to push ’em right into the sockets. He was screaming, squealing like a pig as I pushed harder trying to flip his fucking eyeball out.

With that, the others surrounded me and started clubbing me over the back with planks of wood and then smashing me over the head with the pick-axe handles. I was thinking, I don’t give two shits … I’m gonna do this one I’ve got on the floor before they do me. If I was gonna go unconscious, I wanted at least one of ’em out of the way so I’d got some sort of revenge.

The blows continued raining down on me but I didn’t give a shit; I was flattening the guy on the floor mercilessly. He wasn’t gonna look a pretty sight – if he survived at all. Then, all of a sudden, I hear this sound of a car horn and look up to recognise one of the other bouncers, Dave Kilroy, racing down the road full tilt. And I thought, Fuck, he ain’t gonna stop! So I managed to stand up and grab the bloke I’d been pounding off the floor and, with barely a second to spare, I jumped out of the way of Dave’s car. But the other guy wasn’t so lucky and Dave hit him and sprayed him across the bonnet. He went straight over the car and rolled back down into the road. He was out cold. One down, three to go. I still thank Dave regularly for saving my life.

By this time, the other doormen were on their way and I knew we’d be squaring up for a good one. I’d taken a lot of blows but this was the job I’d trained for. I could take a few hits and, anyway, you don’t feel any pain ’cos the adrenalin has kicked in and by then I was fucking mad. So I grab one of the bastards with the sticks and just then one of the other doormen hits him as hard as he can. Even I felt it. He went down like a building being demolished. Even in the middle of all this, I had to give my mate a wink as if to say, ‘Where the fuck did you pull that one from?’ So I started kicking the bloke who was on the floor while the other two scum ran off into the bushes.

Remember, these blokes had been trying to kill me and I was gonna teach ’em the biggest fuckin’ lesson of their lives. This wasn’t half-hearted – blood was streaming from my head, I was covered in lumps, they weren’t playing with me and I wasn’t playing with them either. I looked a complete mess, my dinner jacket ripped to shreds, bow-tie torn off. But I had one little surprise for the guy on the floor. I said to him, ‘Are you all right, mate?’ And he must of thought the ruckus had come to an end, so he dropped his guard and, as he pulled his hands away from his face, I stamped on his head.

‘My name’s Stilks,’ I said. And then I stamped again. ‘Stilks.’ Another stamp. ‘Stilks.’ Another. ‘And don’t you ever fucking forget it!’