King's Cross Kid (24 page)

Our local policeman looked just like this. Nicknamed ‘the Bear’, he kept a fatherly eye on all us kids.

The home was run along military lines. I think the idea was to prepare us for the Royal Navy.

Like the boys in this picture, we had an enlightened headmaster at Cromer Street School, Mr Thornton, who made sure that we learned more than the Three ‘R’s.

A lot of lads saw boxing as a way out of poverty.

This is where I knocked a lad out defending my sister’s honour. The flats were once a slum, but the kids I met there recently live in a different world to the one I grew up in.

King’s Cross Station, where we used to steal coal and get chased off by the police.

Covent Garden Market, where as kids we scrounged veg, and where later I worked and did a lot of growing up.

Within two years of this picture, John Cobb, driver of this car, the mighty Naipier Railton, would be in the RAF fighting the Luftewaffe. When I was fifteen I used to get taken round the track in it, squeezed into the cockpit.

The very same car, with its twenty four litre engine, is still going strong today.

Charles Laughton, the famous actor, used to hire me to wash up at his parties.

Musicians looking for work gather in Archer Street. When I was a teenager it was part of my Soho stomping ground.

The two guitarists in the centre are Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, my musical heroes.

Then, as now, Soho was known for ladies of the night. Their pimps hired us to watch out for the law.