Chapter Fourteen
"Deadend Yob"
Deadend yobs having football, boxing, or rock `n` roll (if they`re any good) to save `em from the dole.
That`s a fact of life.
They`ve also got crime, of course.
I was a bona-fide deadend yob from the mean streets of Hackney. I tried and failed at all four and now you can add marriage to that long list of failures.
Five losses, five defeats like a talentless punch drunk boxer but never knocked out.
Like the Chumbawumba song says "I get knocked down but get back up again, you ain`t ever gonna keep me down"
And to prove the point I suffered 5 heart attacks, `died` twice and spent 29 days in a coma and on a life support machine when my heart operation went wrong.
But I woke up and lived to fight another day.
As for crime?
Well I gave it my best shot, but I was no Al Capone. I was prolific as a kid and fearless as a teenager but wasn`t very good and kept getting caught.
I did time in various Remand Homes, Approved Schools, Borstal and Detention Centres. I did it standing on my head because I had allies to help me break the rules and mates to keep me company.
No hardship being locked-up apart from the boredom and no members of the opposite sex.
At Seventeen I developed a social conscience. I decided crime doesn`t pay for a reason: it is wrong.
It`s also a mug`s game, unless your a Face, a Mr Big a member of a crime family at the top of the food chain.
I know it`s not politically correct to admit such things, but I still have a soft spot and fascination for all things Reg and Ron, Ronnie Biggs and the Great Train Robbery.
I met Buster Edwards, Tony Lambrianou, celeb gangster Dave Courtney and Charlie Kray, but unlike Garry Bushell never got to meet the Twins.
My in-built love of rebels like Georgie Best, David Bowie, Johnny Rotten and showbiz means my all-time Underworld hero has to be Dave Courtney.
TO READ MORE ABOUT MY TRANSFORMATION FROM DEADEND YOB TO PUNK POET read my book.
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