All I could think to say was: ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘Well, it’s true,’ Ronnie said. ‘That’s how I am and you’re not going to change it.’ He went on to say he’d always been that way and could not care less who knew. He could not understand why so many people took a pop at homosexuals. ‘They can’t help what they are,’ he would say.
In the main, though, the billiard hall was a place for hard, tough men. One such man was Bobby Ramsey, and he, more than anyone at that time, was to influence the course the twins’ lives would take.
Ramsey was an ex-boxer who could have made a good living from the sport. But he fell into bad company and had settled for being ‘minder’ for the notorious Jack ‘Spot’ Comer, one of London’s underworld kings of the fifties. Ramsey, several years older than the twins, had been around and the twins admired him; they listened in some sort of awe as he described the high life the likes of Comer enjoyed through controlling clubs and spielers.
I didn’t like Ramsey. I had a feeling he would cause the twins problems and I told him, ‘If you’ve got trouble, don’t take the twins with you.’ He promised he wouldn’t. I warned the twins about him, too, but they scoffed. They were quite capable of handling Ramsey, and half a dozen like him, they said. It hit home to me then that they were probably right. They were not my little kid brothers any more: they were men in a man’s world, and formidable men at that. They were identical twins, with identical thoughts and opinions – a language of their own. They had proved their strength, power and tenacity, both in the ring and against heavy odds outside it. They had taken on the police and the Army and had not been intimidated. They had survived a short spell in prison and a longer spell on the run. And now, at just twenty-one, they were running their own business – not an empire by any means, but it was their own and it was profitable. They ate, drank, and dressed well. And there always seemed to be enough money around to give to others who were not so well off. The East End may have been a small pool, but the twins were very big fish in it. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps they could handle the problems I feared Ramsey might create.
Over the next eighteen months the Regal billiard hall became more and more popular. The twins ensured there were no fights or disorders of any kind that might bother the police, and the business still made money. Inevitably, though, it became a meeting place for thieves where robberies were planned. The twins were never involved, I know; but if any of the pals they helped out had a good tickle, I’m sure the twins made sure their debts were repaid with interest.
All was going well. The twins – particularly Reggie – were becoming more ambitious and thinking of opening a more respectable club where decent East End families could go.
And then Bobby Ramsey turned up. He hadn’t been at the billiard hall for several weeks and when he arrived one hot August night in 1956, I learned why: he had been hit on the head with an iron bar during a fight with a gang from the Watney Street area, the other side of Commercial Road. Now that he had recovered, he wanted revenge. He’d come into the billiard hall with a pal, Billie Jones, and asked Ronnie to go with them to a local pub called the Britannia. A villain called Charlie Martin, who had wielded the iron bar, was drinking there with Jimmy Fullerton, a local tearaway who’d helped in the attack. Ramsey was in a dangerous mood: he said he had several weapons in his car, including a bayonet. He asked Ronnie to go with him. Before they left, Ronnie went behind the bar. He opened a drawer and took out a loaded revolver.
Martin and Fullerton were not at the Britannia, but Martin’s younger brother, Terry, was. On the principle that one of the Watney Street mob was better than none, he was dragged outside. Ramsey, his bayonet tucked in his trousers, laid into him, then pulled out the bayonet and stuck it up the young man’s backside.
At that time, East End gang feuds were commonplace. Normally, a victim was carted off to hospital, mouths were kept shut and the police never got involved. But that night Ramsey was a reckless fool: as he drove away from the Britannia, he got stopped for speeding. The officers in the patrol car couldn’t believe their luck when they found a blood-stained bayonet, a crowbar and an axe in the car. Ramsey, Jones and Ronnie were arrested.
At the station, the gun was found in Ronnie’s pocket. It had not been fired, but that made little difference.
While the three of them were being questioned, a report came in that a man had been taken to the London Hospital with serious stab wounds. The police put two and two together and spoke to Terry Martin, who confirmed he had been attacked. The case against Ramsey, Jones and Ronnie was cast-iron and on 5 November 1956 they appeared at the Old Bailey charged with causing grievous bodily harm. Reggie, too, was charged, even though he wasn’t aware of the attack until afterwards.
Ramsey was jailed for seven years; Jones and Ronnie got three each.
Reggie, thankfully, was justly acquitted. But the immediate future would be difficult for him, too. As identical twins, he and Ronnie had lived virtually in each other’s pockets all their lives. Now, for the first time, they were going to have to exist separately.
Dolly and I were still living at Vallance Road but were desperate to find a place of our own. Mum was kind and understanding, as usual, and treated Dolly like a daughter, and the old man, bless him, was a diamond. But a house – no matter how warm and friendly – is not the same unless it’s your own, and I was always on the lookout for a place where Dolly and I could live a proper and private family life.
In those early days Dolly was a good wife. She didn’t make friends easily and was extremely possessive and money-mad; but she seemed to care for me and Gary and was very neat and clean about the house. She was a highly strung woman with a vivid imagination, though, and when Gary needed surgery to correct a squint, she convinced herself he would be blind for the rest of his life.
I’d had a couple of insights into her strange behaviour when we were courting. Often Dolly would stay overnight at Vallance Road, sleeping with Mum upstairs while I shared the twins’ room downstairs. Once, at about three in the morning, there was an almighty crash and I found Dolly staggering around in the hall, covered in blood. She’d had a nightmare and thrown herself through a closed window on to the scullery roof. Amazingly, she escaped with just a badly cut face.
The other occasion was when I was boxing in a competition in Watford. Dolly was at the ringside, having seen me qualify for the semi-final. But when she saw the man I was to meet knock out his opponent in the first round, she fled. She came back after I’d won the competition, but I don’t know to this day whether it was the prospect of seeing me hammered that made her run – or the thought that I wouldn’t win the £15 prize money.
Life on the knocker did have its moments, and I’d get a terrific buzz coming home with a load of gear that would fetch ten times as much as I’d paid, but I was eager to better our standard of living. The chance came when Reggie and I became closer in Ronnie’s absence.
Reggie was a real go-getter and when he came across a dilapidated old house near Poplar Town Hall, only two hundred yards from Bow police station, he saw the potential immediately. He asked me to help him renovate it and, with the help of a few mates, we transformed that house into a sparkling club with a stage and dancing area – the East End had never seen anything like it before. We called it The Double R, after the twins.
The only clubs around at that time were ‘dives’: dark and dingy ‘Men only’ drinking places where pints were pulled but punches were not. We wanted The Double R to be different. We didn’t want the billiard-hall clientele – layabouts and villains who liked a bit of trouble. We wanted the club to have a family atmosphere, a club where respectable working men could enjoy a quiet drink and listen to a band with their wives and families.
It took us six months to make our point.
The local tearaways had never seen anything like The Double R and assumed it was a ‘dive’ like all the other places in the area. And they treated it as such.
Few