Free Wild Thing by Bernard O'Mahoney, Lew Yates Page A

doubled my meagre wage every night.
    One evening a man who regularly purchased my discounted tickets came into the reception area drunk and stuffed two or three pound notes into my top pocket in front of the assistant manager. Before I had a chance to ask the man what he was up to, the assistant manager pointed at me and said, ‘Come here, Lew.’
    I had always disliked this guy. In my opinion he spoke down to the door staff. ‘Who the fuck are you talking to?’ I replied.
    Without answering, he walked away in the direction of the manager Sid Stuart’s office. I did not wait to be summoned; I followed him and burst through the door just as he was grassing me to Sid. ‘Calm down, Lew,’ Sid pleaded. ‘We don’t want any trouble, but you have been caught fiddling. I am going to call the police.’
    ‘Really, Sid,’ I replied, ‘and how the fuck are you going to do that?’ I grabbed the two telephones that were on his desk, threw them on the floor, stamped repeatedly on them and then ripped the wires out of the wall.
    The assistant manager ran shouting from the office, ‘Help, help, Paul! Lew has gone mad!’
    Paul, a muscular young barman, entered the office. I told him to fuck off or he’d get it as well. He ran off without saying a word. I informed Sid that he could stick his job and walked out of the office. The assistant manager was in the corridor outside. I grabbed him by the lapels of the ridiculous-looking green velvet suit he was wearing and pulled his face close to mine. ‘If you ever dream of grassing me, I will pull your useless fucking head off. Do you understand?’ He wasn’t listening; he was trembling with fear and pleading with me to let him go. ‘Do you fucking understand?’ I shouted.
    ‘Yes, yes,’ he replied. ‘I understand.’ With a lapel in each hand I stretched my arms out. As the velvet cloth tore, he was lowered to the floor. When I walked away, he was on his knees clutching his shredded suit and sobbing uncontrollably.
    Jean was happy when I told her that I was no longer going to be employed on the door. I had been working six nights a week, which meant we rarely had an opportunity to go out together. The violence I encountered at the club and the endless stream of threats I received down the phone while at home worried Jean. ‘Get a normal job, Lew,’ she begged. ‘We have a young son to think about now. We don’t need all of the aggravation.’
    The trouble with women is they are usually bloody right, so, with a heavy heart, I agreed. I started work at the Lion Brewery in Coniston Road, Blackburn. I was employed in the keg room, stacking and cleaning out aluminium beer barrels. It was mundane work, but I enjoyed it – not only because the pay and working conditions were good, but also because I was able to train throughout the day using the full beer barrels as weights.
    My boxing career had undoubtedly been hampered by my marriage to Jean and the nomadic life we had led. Including junior and schoolboy bouts I had, to date, fought more than 40 opponents in the ring. I had been disqualified five or six times for head-butting, biting or some similar violation of the rules, been beaten on points approximately eight times and had won the remainder. Had I boxed at one gym with the same trainer, which would have helped me to focus exclusively on developing my craft, I am confident I could have fought and defeated any British heavyweight. Ifs, buts and maybes: I accept that everybody’s life is tainted by those phrases, but I know I had the ability, and a lot of respected people in boxing think I had it too.
    A month after I started work at the brewery, Jean announced that she was pregnant with our second child. Both of us were excited and extremely happy about the prospect of another addition to our family. Nine months later our daughter Joanne was born. After all of the numerous ups and downs we had endured since we first met, stability and normality appeared to have finally