The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) (49 page)

How could a Home Secretary justifiably keep this man
incarcerated
? My comments were carried in the
Sunday People
where I was named as Reg’s surrogate son, which I found quite amusing. Pictures of Reg were all over the papers as the “exclusive” stories began to break. They were a far cry from the Reg Kray that the public
remembered
, which is why I thought that they would probably help his cause for support. I’d sent him a card, as had Ray, who was quite keen to visit him. I was not so sure. I had distanced myself so much from Reg in recent months I felt almost hypercritical, or like a ghoul wanting to see the last dying Kray on his deathbed. I decided against it. It would be good to catch up with Reg and see him one last time but I’d moved on since those early days. The last time I’d seen him was at Charlie’s funeral. I still thought of him as a good friend – it’s not that we had a falling out or decided not to speak; it’s just that we had drifted apart over the years. To rekindle the past just seemed false to me. We had the sort of relationship now where we both knew we supported each other regardless of whether we were in constant contact or not.

I sent him a letter wishing him well and expressing my hope that both he and Roberta could enjoy what little time they had together. I didn’t know what else to say. Have you ever tried writing a letter to someone who is dying? It’s not easy.

Jack Straw, the Labour government’s Home Secretary, bowed to public pressure and released Reg on compassionate grounds a few days later. But, although a free man, Reg was confined to a room in the hospital which was smaller than his prison cell in Wayland. Basically, the world knew he was dying and the government decided to let him die on the outside. The cruel irony is that he could never be free; he couldn’t go out and enjoy a walk or do something he’d been longing to do for thirty years. Nevertheless, Reg was delighted at his “release” and was said to be celebrating with a bottle of Moet and some Henry Winterman cigars. Good on him, he deserved it. I phoned the hospital and left a message for him … I left my number and hoped now that I could speak to him for the last time.

Not a day passed without a new Kray “exclusive” in the
newspapers
. The tabloids in particular seemed to love the fact that the last of the Krays was dying. It was sensational in their eyes … Reg was a ready-made story they couldn’t wait to exploit. It was sick fascination, which I found very disturbing. One particular paper carried its stories under a subheading “Death of a Gangster”. Where is the respect or the dignity in that, I ask you? I suppose a lot of people would say that Reg brought it upon himself by courting the press for years, but everyone should be entitled to privacy in their dying days. I had still not spoken to Reg by the time he was
considered
fit enough to leave his sickbed in Norwich hospital. He was moved to a honeymoon suite in the Town House Hotel in Norwich. The room, as you would expect, was beautifully decorated with a four-poster bed and an idyllic view of the river and the surrounding countryside. It had always been Reg’s wish to have a house in the country where he would be able to take long walks and enjoy the simple things in life. This hotel room would be as close as he would get to realizing this dream. It may have come at the wrong time for him but at least he was out of prison.

His condition had worsened, and as each day passed he was visited by many of his old gangland associates as well as old enemies to make their peace. Laurie O’Leary, his good friend and Kray
biographer
, Joe Pyle, Freddie Foreman and Frankie Fraser all paid him a visit. Reports that Reg had only six months to live were circulated, but they turned out to be wrong. I tried to contact Reg one last time by leaving a message and my telephone number with the girl on the reception at the hotel. She let me down. The message, I later learned, was not passed on, just like my other one at the hospital. Neither Reg nor Roberta was aware that I tried to contact them. The news the next day came as no great shock or surprise. On Sunday, 1 October 2000, Reg Kray, the last of the notorious Kray brothers, died aged sixty-six. Amongst those at his bedside were Freddie Foreman, Joe Pyle, Johnny Nash and Roberta. Over the next few days there were yet more rumours, this time surrounding the funeral arrangements.

The lead up to the funeral was not the set of circumstances Reg would have wanted. Some of the old chaps were adamant that Reg’s dying wish was that gangland figures should be pallbearers and that his send off was to be a mirror image to Ron’s. Roberta maintained a dignified silence throughout this period, refusing to be drawn into any dispute. Reg’s body was taken back to Bethnal Green in
preparation
for the funeral with Wednesday 11 October to be the day he’d be laid to rest.

The pallbearers were not to be old gangland chaps but people who Reg had grown close to through his years of imprisonment. Close friend and former cellmate Bradley Allardyce, music promoter Bill Curbishley, and Tony Mortimer, singer and songwriter from the former teen band, East 17. They had already been asked and had agreed to carry the coffin, with others to be confirmed. There would only be a handful of limos for very close friends and what was left of the family. Others would have to make their own arrangements. There was another direct snub to the old school who still maintained that it wasn’t what Reg wanted. It’s something I can’t comment on but from what I understand Roberta was steering him away from the gangland to have the normal life he’d wanted for so many years. In fairness to the chaps, Reg was part of gangland and he always would be. They wanted to give him the best send off possible. I honestly don’t know what Reg had wanted, but it would not have been for his friends and wife to start squabbling. It was appropriate that the wishes of his wife were respected.

I decided to travel down to London on the 6 a.m. train, and reached King’s Cross just after 9 a.m. I made my way to Bethnal Green via the Underground. It’s hard to describe my feelings as I travelled. I’d had three hours on the train to do my thinking and I’d done a lot more prior to that. It bothered me that it had to end like this; that I would be attending just like every other “civvy”. It bothered me that I was not part of it, not seeing friends and bothered by possible rumours that people may have heard that this was the case. Up and out of the station I strolled past the Bind Beggar. I stopped and paused to look at it for a second … the place where Ron had shot George Cornell. It felt strange. It was the first killing that led to their downfall … Ron had described it to me. It all seemed like a lifetime ago now.

I continued past it and reached Bethnal Green Road just after 10 a.m. I was dressed smart but casual, and had decided against a wreath. I simply wanted to pay my respects and be seen at the funeral to show any of the chaps that doubted my side of the story. I popped into a cafe for some much-needed breakfast and flicked through the
East London Advertiser
, which carried an eight-page pull-out on the East End’s most notorious family. From there it was on to English’s Funeral Parlour. It was unusually quiet. The faces that I was expecting to see were not there. Roberta seemed to have got her wish; the likes of Freddie Foreman and Tony Lambrianou were conspicuous by their absence. Frankie Fraser was there, as was former train-robber Bruce Reynolds with his son Nick. Billy Murray from the TV show
The Bill
was the only “celebrity” on show.

The service was at St Matthew’s as it had been for his brothers. I shook hands with a few of the chaps and watched as Reg’s coffin was loaded into the hearse. I had decided to walk alongside Reg to the church, quite an emotional journey as the coffin stopped at 178 Vallance Road for the last time. Although the crowds were nowhere near the same in numbers as when Ron and Charlie had been buried, they were still big enough to cause a lot of the mourners to be delayed and to miss the start of the service. It seemed to be a
different
affair than anyone was expecting. The church was still packed to the rafters as the vicar told of how Reg had turned to God, and the hymns which had been recited at the other two funerals were given an airing again. There was a feeling of déjà vu, maybe because it had only been a few months since Charlie had died. There were a lot of strangers in the church, which I put down to the fact that the security had failed miserably in getting the right people in. It was a lot different to how Dave had run things in 1995. Outside the church I bumped into Bruce and Nick Reynolds again. They were with Andy Jones, curator of the Crime Through Time Museum in Gloucester, and offered me a lift to the cemetery. The lift turned out to be in a beautiful red Bentley which had one previous owner; none other than Mr Terry “Eurovision” Wogan.

The journey to the cemetery was a long one. The police seemed intent in separating the cars and we ended up in a traffic jam and arrived at the cemetery just after the hearse. Outside the big gates there were people – friends of Reg – being held back by police officers. Obviously the police were only acting on instructions, but whose instructions remains a mystery to this day. To not let all his friends in seemed a bit harsh to me. I decided to go it alone and thanked Bruce, Nick and Andy for the lift and we promised to keep in touch. Both Bruce and Nick were keen to come to Newcastle when they released their books later in the year, and I told them I would only be too pleased to help them with any publicity.

As the gates finally opened, the crowd of mourners surged forward and I caught a glimpse of a bald head and cigar … there was only one person it could be. It was Dave Courtney with the boys; Ray, Ian, Seymour, Brendan, Christian, Wish, Welsh Bernie, Scouse John, Bulldog, Rob, Marcus, Piers and Big John. I shook hands and embraced all the lads. They were pleased to see I had not lost my bottle following the threats from my ex’s boyfriend. We made our way towards the Kray plot, and we waited on the hillside overlooking the grave. Reg was carried to his final resting place as we gathered. The vicar performed the last rites and the last of the Krays was lowered down into his grave. With that, Roberta and the other close family said their thanks to those around them and they were gone. It was all very different. I think the lack of “spectators” was down to the fact that there was not another Kray brother to look at. Reg was always a crowd-puller at the other funerals just because he was Reg Kray and people wanted to say they had seen him. As far as friends go, it was apparent that there had been a falling out of some sort. Some of them had decided to stay clear, which must have been a tough decision to make. Looking around, there were plenty of new faces on the scene, just like the last two.

The wake was to be held in the heart of the East End. I decided not to push my luck and decided to travel in style with Dave and the lads in a couple of hired vintage cars back to the boozer in south London to give the last of the Krays a good old send off. My mate Gary, who made cash as a lookalike of Jaws from the Bond films, made the journey back to Newcastle with me later that night. I finished my day with a couple of swift ones on Newcastle’s Quayside. I’d distanced myself purposefully to avoid a scene at my old friend’s funeral. The feud with the gangland figure passed and on a later trip to London we shook hands and left the past behind us.

My Kray connection has now died along with the last brother. We had our my ups and downs, just like any friendship, but I know they all died knowing they had me as a friend. That meant a lot to me. The friends I made along the way remain friends today and I am privileged to have good memories of all three of the Kray brothers. I was proud to be their Geordie connection.

O
NE THING IS
for sure, boxer “Raging Bull” Jake LaMotta was one seriously hard bastard. In this chapter, writer Robert MacGowan gives his personal impressions of a short period in Jake’s life.

Born 10 July 1921 in the Bronx, New York, Giacobbe LaMotta, better known as Jake LaMotta, is an Italian-American former boxing world middleweight champion and was the first man to beat Sugar Ray Robinson in his career, knocking him down in the first round.

LaMotta turned professional at the age of nineteen and at the end of his career compiled a record of eighty-three wins and four draws, with thirty wins by way of knockout. He won the world title in 1949 in Detroit against Frenchman Marcel Cerdan. LaMotta met two challengers, Tiberio Mitri and Laurent Dauthuille, and beat them, and then he was challenged again by Sugar Ray Robinson. The fight became known as boxing’s version of the St Valentine’s Day Massacre as it was held on 14 February 1951 and in the sixth round LaMotta suffered numerous sickening blows to the head. Commentators could be heard saying, “No man can take this kind of punishment!” But LaMotta did not go down. Robinson won by a technical knockout in the thirteenth round.

In the mid 1950s, LaMotta suffered from a boxing injury and took time off to recover. He was always interested in baseball and decided to form the Jake LaMotta All-Star team. After retirement from boxing LaMotta bought a few bars and became a stage actor. He appeared in over fifteen motion pictures, including
The Hustler
with Paul Newman.

On a stiflingly hot and humid day in the middle of July 1921, another little mouth to feed was born in Morris Park district of New York’s infamous Bronx.

Little Giacobbe’s first view of the world was a tenement
apartment
with no heating or air-conditioning and little else to make it a home. His life began in a tough area which was experiencing tough times and things were about to get a whole lot tougher. Within eight years the Great Depression would have all of America in its
merciless
grip and those that were poor before, like Giacobbe’s family and neighbours, were suddenly much poorer.

It was a time when many entrepreneurial spirits dreamt up ever more creative and diverse ways of bringing a little extra money into the home but, try as he might, Giacobbe’s father could never gather enough cash to feed, house or keep his family warm in winter, and so sank further into debt and desperation. He was a tough character though and did not give up on things easily, and this stubborn
resilience
certainly rubbed off on to his young son who, early in life, willingly accepted that he must do whatever he could to help support the family.

One particularly bleak day when mere survival fully occupied the thoughts of Giacobbe’s parents, the peeling kitchen door creaked slowly open on to the stark and shabby room where they sat counting dimes and cents. They both glanced round absently and there stood their son with a fresh black eye, blood trickling from his nose and a lopsided grin on his little face. His mother looked at the blood spots on her linoleum floor, saw the buttons ripped from his only decent school shirt and burst into tears. His father rose to reprimand with a stern expression spreading across his swarthy countenance. But as he did so, Giacobbe opened his scuffed, grubby hand to reveal a small tangle of dollar notes. His parents stopped and stared – confused and fearful.

“Where didja get dat?” asked his father with foreboding.

“Have you stolen it?” asked his mother in a whisper.

“No, I won it!” replied the boy cheerfully.

“You won it?” she gasped. “You’ve been gambling?”

“No, I won it at fightin’.”

“Fightin’?” demanded his astonished father.

“Fighting?” echoed his mother, her eyes drifting again to the pile of notes.

“Yeah, fightin’,” continued Giacobbe, placing the money on theplastic kitchen table with the coinage already there.

“Who give you money for fightin’?”

“Dere was two older kids fightin’ for money down under da bridge. It was all arranged and summa dere fadders were bettin’ on who would win out.”

His mother’s hands flew to her face. “Never in this world!”

“Yep, so I challenged da winner and won all da dough!”

“My God,” gasped his mother. “Madre mia.”

“Jeez,” added his father. “All da dough?”

After that Giacobbe’s father took an active role in the organized scraps and made sure that his son’s consistent winnings always went home in his own pocket to pay for food, rent and fuel.

“You know what?” he said to his son one day. “Giacobbe don’t sound like no fighter’s name. It’s too Italian!”

Giacobbe watched him silently.

“I tink you should have a fightin’ name. Tougher and moreAmerican soundin’.”

His son remained silent, listening intently.

“Yeah, we’ll shorten Giacobbe to, to…Jacob! No, Jake. Yeah, Jake. Your new fightin’ name’s gonna be Jake. Jake LaMotta.”

And so the legend was born.

Fighting older, bigger opponents with longer reaches made Jake quick and ruthless. He always knew that he would have to take a few punches before he got in close enough to unload his own, and that when they did connect, every one must count. He learned how to hit hard and continually hustle forward to keep his adversary off balance, so that most of the punches coming his way did not land with their full force. When he did catch a shot, he rolled and swayed from the waist with it to further absorb and reduce its power. To conserve energy he did not move around on his feet very much, he simply shuffled forward, bobbing and weaving and taking as few punches as possible until he could unleash his own, and developed the classic style of exactly what he was – a rough, tough
street-fighter.
His effectiveness rapidly earned him local notoriety and he was coaxed into the amateur ring, where he clubbed down and cut through his opponents routinely.

In 1941, at the age of nineteen, he became a professional boxer and embarked on a career that would rescue his family and himself from life’s doldrums, and make him world famous as he reached the very pinnacle of his chosen profession.

His “walk forward, take all and give more” style adapted well to the pro ranks and excited the fans, and soon earned him the ring name: Bronx Bull. Later, as his raw aggression carried him towards the world middleweight title, the weight division whose
protagonists
are known to be, at around 165 pounds, “light enough to move fast but heavy enough to hit hard”, he became Jake LaMotta, the Raging Bull.

Jake never claimed to be an exceptional boxer in the classic sense; he was simply very good at taking whatever anybody had to throw at him and then bludgeoning them to defeat. This approach put him on a steady course for a world title shot but in those days and that part of the world, things were never quite so simple. In November 1947 Jake was “knocked out” by Billy Fox in a fight which was later investigated by commissioners who concluded that Jake had thrown the fight to gain favour with the New York Mafia, who then controlled much of American boxing. The mob then allowed his natural progression to continue unimpeded and less than two years later he entered the ring against the classy French-North African champion, Marcel Cerdan. Jake took the title after his rumbustious tactics caused a dislocation of Cerdan’s shoulder during the contest and he was forced to retire. The ex-champion was well tipped to regain his crown but the rematch never took place, as Marcel was tragically killed in a plane crash.

LaMotta eventually admitted to “taking a dive” against Fox; it was the first and last time that Jake ever went down during a fight in his whole career. In subsequent writings he said that he lost the fight on purpose so the local Mafia could clean up on big betting odds against Fox, and he knew that he would never get an attempt at the world title without their compliance. He added, however, that losing to Fox was not as easy as he’d thought it would be and that at the start of the fight he moved around the ring pawing out a glove now and then, waiting for Billy to hit him with a punch that looked convincingly hard enough to knock him over. But that blow never came and Jake was worried that Billy was going to fall down first from one of his jabs. The resultant dive in the fourth round was not convincing, which led to the result being questioned both officially and unofficially for years afterwards.

Jake fought in the era when the middleweight ranks were ruled supremely and unquestioningly by the person who is still rated by most pugilistic aficionados as the best “pound-for-pound” boxer that has ever graced the roped square – the great “Sugar” Ray Robinson. Jake became the first man to defeat Robinson in a
professional
ring and disrupt his previously unbeaten string of over eighty fights, when he knocked him down and outpointed him over ten rounds in their second bout. Sugar Ray, however, was a seriously tough character as well as a brilliant boxer, and their subsequent rivalry and alternating quests for revenge took them into a total of six clashes with each other over several years. The other reason for the series was that Jake was one of very few opponents that could stretch Ray to a credible contest which would pull in the crowds. The sixth and final of their battles took place on 14 February 1951 and, considering the outcome, was perhaps unavoidably dubbed the “St Valentine’s Day Massacre”. After a tough struggle early in the fight it became obvious that Robinson was in better physical
condition.
Jake was always embroiled in some personal entanglement or other which distracted him from concentrating on giving his best in the ring, and Ray eventually took control. His lightning-fast punches thudded home into Jake’s head and body and although Jake
endeavoured
to press home his forward march behind a prodding lead, he was gradually beaten back into defence. Near the end of the fight, during which both fighters shipped considerable punishment, almost every punch that Sugar Ray threw connected as Jake slowed noticeably. He retreated to the ropes and leaned on them for support as Ray pursued with murderous intent his anxiety to finish the contest, knowing that Jake was still dangerous even when hurt.

It should be remembered that an average professional boxer hits 50 to 75 per cent harder than an untrained “civilian” and Sugar Ray Robinson was light-years above average. He started whipping combinations in from all angles and Jake’s head bobbed around on his shoulders as if it might detach at any moment and land in the time-keeper’s lap. Some of his blood actually did. When Ray switched to the body, the thuds could be heard six rows back from ringside where the audience gasped in horror at the savage beating Jake was being subjected to. But he stood firm and took it all. He knew by now that he could not win and was too weak to even fight back or defend himself, so he hung on to the top rope for support and when Ray took a breather from trying to maim him, taunted through swollen, bloody lips, “Come on, Ray, you ain’t tryin’ hard enough. You can’t put me down.”

Ray restarted his assault with renewed vigour and Jake’s legs twitched and trembled under the onslaught, but he did not go down. His immense strength and stubborn pride kept him on his feet until the referee mercifully, and not before time, ended the contest with Jake simply standing there like a human punchbag with his hands down by his sides. Jake’s seconds led him to his corner but his
still-intact
pride did not allow him to stay there. He strutted across the canvas and again taunted the champion, “You couldn’t put me down, Ray.”

Ray looked round as if Jake was a madman let loose into society unexpectedly.

Jake’s professional record shows 106 fights with eighty-three wins, only thirty of which were knockouts. It is the record of a long, hard and punishing career. He could never match the classy, athletic boxing skills of the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson, the man who even the great Muhammad Ali based his style upon. Very few, if any, could match him, but one thing is for certain and beyond all doubt – Jake LaMotta, the Raging Bull, was one seriously hard bastard.