Reggie asked him calmly to do him a favour and go away; he didn’t want a row. But PC Fisher said he couldn’t do that and lunged forward to grab him. Reggie ducked and threw a right hand. PC Fisher fell to the ground and Reggie hurried away in the snow.
It was only a matter of time. The police knew both twins were in the area and they were picked up a few hours later.
At Thames Street Court that morning the magistrate, Colonel W. E. Batt, jailed them for a month. It was the first time they had seen the inside of a prison as convicted persons.
After their sentence, a military escort took the twins to Wemyss Barracks at Canterbury, Kent, where they were court-martialled for desertion. They escaped yet again, but it was a short-lived freedom and on 12 May 1953 the twins found themselves serving nine months’ detention in the notorious military prison of Shepton Mallet in Somerset.
It was to be a tough nine months…for the Army! The prison staff at Shepton Mallet had never seen anyone like the twins before, and several sergeants were replaced because they couldn’t handle them. The twins were so uncontrollable that the Commanding Officer sought my help. He wondered why it was impossible to get through to the twins with words, why they resolved everything with violence. I tried to explain that life was like that in the East End; if anyone tried to threaten you, you hit them first. It was a world which that polite, charming CO would never understand, and he asked me to have a quiet word with the twins. I agreed to try.
The twins were unimpressed that I’d been having a cosy chat over a cup of tea with the CO; all the guards understood was a punch in the face, they said, and that was what they’d get. Nothing I tried to say cut any ice with them. They simply would not tolerate being ordered around. Tell them to do something and they’d rebel. Ask them, in a civil tone, and they would be fine. Ronnie, particularly, would rebel against a strong person, unless he had reason to respect him. There was one sergeant there they did like: he was firm but courteous, and they did what he told them.
The twins didn’t always use violence to make their point. One day a military policeman who had been giving Ronnie a hard time was standing outside the cobbler’s shop where Ronnie was working. Suddenly Ronnie rushed out, blood all over his face, screaming, ‘That’s it! I’ve done it now! It’s all over! Better get in there!’
The guard, convinced there had been a murder, dashed off to get reinforcements, but by the time they arrived everything was calm. Ronnie, who had smeared the blood over his face after cutting his hand slightly while working, was back at his bench.
‘What the hell happened here?’ demanded a senior officer.
Ronnie looked at him blankly. ‘Nothing,’ he replied. Then he looked at the embarrassed MP. ‘He must be going round the bend. Been working too hard or something.’
It is a pity that the NCO at the Tower of London rubbed the twins up the wrong way that March morning in 1952, because I’m sure they could have made something of themselves in the Army. They were fit and strong, and they would have loved the physical side; I’m sure they would have become physical training instructors in no time. They both had a lot of guts, too: once, on an assault course, Ronnie jumped from something and landed awkwardly, crashing his knee sickeningly into his chin. But he forced himself to carry on; he had unbelievable determination and hated quitting anything. They both had a gift for leadership, too, and had it been wartime I feel it would have been a very different story. They were the type who could so easily have distinguished themselves with courage in the face of extreme danger.
As it was, the twins spent what should have been the rest of their National Service giving the Shepton Mallet staff a very hard time. And when they were thrown out on to Civvy Street towards the end of 1953 each of their records bore that ugly scar: Dishonorable Discharge.
What, I wondered, were they going to do with the rest of their lives?
What they could have done was box for a living. They were both above average, particularly Reggie, and I’m sure they could have earned a few bob. I’d seen what boxing in the Forces had done for me and I’d urged them to give it a go in the Army. But, as usual, the twins felt they knew best. When they found themselves back in civvy street, Ronnie had lost interest in fighting and Reggie used the excuse that he would not get a licence because of his Army record. He did train with me, though, and the fitter he became, the more he felt he would like to box professionally.
Finally he did apply for his licence. However, the Christmas incident with PC Fisher was on his record and would have gone against him but for a lovely gesture by the policeman. He wrote to the boxing board explaining that Reggie’s punch that night was thrown under provocation. ‘Reggie told me to walk away, but I didn’t accept his advice,’ PC Fisher wrote. ‘I tried to grab him, thereby provoking him to hit me to evade arrest.’
That letter swayed the decision in Reggie’s favour and he was granted his licence. But within a few months he had lost all interest in the sport: he felt that all the managers and agents were too ruthless and only wanted to know those fighters who were going to become champions. The irony was that Reggie was good enough to become a champion; I didn’t doubt that for one moment. But he didn’t like the atmosphere and that was the end of that. Reggie never went in the ring again, although I believe he knew in his heart that he was good enough.
It quickly became clear that the twins were not cut out for a life on the knocker. I lent them some money and they did spend several weeks trying to generate some business, but they were always looking for something else. It came in the form of a filthy, neglected billiard hall in what had once been a small cinema in Eric Street, off the Mile End Road. The takings were low, mainly because the manager preferred playing snooker himself rather than encouraging business. But the twins saw the potential and put a proposition to the owner: they would take over the place, smarten it up and make it pay; in return, they would give him a weekly cut of the takings. Since the owner was receiving next to nothing; he accepted the deal. The manager was fired, the former ‘flea pit’ spruced up and, at just twenty-one, the twins were in the entertainment business.
They had the Midas touch. Word spread that the twins had taken over the billiard hall and business boomed. One aspect, however, I found disturbing: the clientele. No one expects an East End billiard hall to look like a church fête in Cheltenham, but I was shocked at the number of young tearaways and villains who gathered there, simply idling their time away. Some, who had been with the twins in Shepton Mallet glasshouse, should have been given a cool reception. But that wasn’t in the twins’ nature: it is a family characteristic that we accept people for what they are, not what they have done. Others who came to regard the billiard hall as a regular meeting place were hard people, who were not fussy how they earned a few bob.
I had no idea Ronnie was homosexual until he told me himself a few months after the billiard hall opened. As well as all the tough nuts, a lot of younger, very good-looking guys used to congregate there and I noticed they always stopped laughing and joking whenever I walked in.
After a while I got a bit paranoid. ‘Why have you suddenly gone quiet?’ I’d ask.
Someone would snigger. And I’d say, ‘I don’t find it funny.’
They would say they meant nothing by it. But it would happen again and I’d get really annoyed.
Finally, Ronnie said to me one day, ‘You don’t know, do you?’
‘Don’t know what?’
‘That I’m AC/DC,’ Ronnie said.
‘Leave me alone,’ I scoffed.
‘It’s true. That’s what I am, whether you like it or not.’
I didn’t know what to say. I just stared at him, shocked. I knew he had not had many relationships with women, but I certainly