What sparked off the Wickers World incident was that Duffy spilled some lager over a man on the landing below. Doorman Peter Wilson came over and ‘started being funny with Lee’, who punched him once. A third party was asked to see if Wilson would take a few thousand pounds to drop the charges. Instead he went straight to the police.
(In a similar scenario, Newcastle club doorman Howard Mills was offered money to drop charges against a man who had stabbed him in Bentleys nightclub in 1987. The stabbing occurred after Mills intervened when someone threw an empty beer can at a fellow doorman. Mills turned down an offer of financial compensation from the person who stabbed him, and it has been suggested that this refusal was the reason why he later had his leg blown off in a shotgun attack.)
As a result of Duffy’s attack on Wilson, further charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice were fired off at him when he attempted to bribe his victim with £2,500. In all, Duffy had nine court convictions to his credit, varying from burglary and motorbike theft to GBH.
In April 1991 Duffy appeared in court for a bail application in relation to the Wickers World incident. Lisa went to lend him her support, but while she was walking up the stairs of the court building she was confronted by the men charged with conspiring to commit grievous bodily harm to Duffy, who were apparently either attending or leaving court in connection with a pre-trial hearing. They mimicked being shot in the foot and sang a hurtful song to her. Lisa was so distressed that the police let her see Duffy while he was in the holding cells.
And, while the trial of the seven men was waiting to go ahead, some of them were held on remand in the same prison as Duffy was held in for his attack on Peter Wilson. Duffy was put into solitary confinement while his alleged attackers were free to wander about the prison. It was in the interests of safety for all concerned, but for a man already imprisoned, isolation was a further punishment.
No one disputes the fact that Duffy taxed drug dealers and frightened the living daylights out of them, but, if you had the misfortune to have drug dealers living in your street and the police weren’t doing anything about it, wouldn’t you want an enforcer like him taxing them and keeping an eye on them?
You don’t really know someone until you see him unwind, and here we need an insider’s perspective to help us understand a bit more about Viv Graham. Sharon Tate, the sister of Viv’s fiancée, Anna Connelly, gives an insight into the man’s domestic life. She also lets us into Viv’s working life – a brutal world, just like Lee Duffy’s. Yet it would be wrong to assume that those closest to Viv, like Sharon, would reveal any skeletons hidden in his cupboard.
‘I knew of Viv,’ Sharon recalls, ‘when he was a doorman at the bottom of Shields Road. There was trouble there at that time and he just seemed to come on the scene from nowhere. At that time he wasn’t very well known and the people knew he wasn’t from this area. I think because of that he wasn’t liked; he was from out the area … Rowlands Gill. People were saying things like, “Who’s this?” and, “Who does he think he is coming across here telling us what to do? He’s not from this place.” So they didn’t like him!
‘He wasn’t from the town, he was from the countryside, he just came in and started telling people they couldn’t get in the bar because they were “worky tickets” [troublemakers] and they weren’t getting in to cause trouble … the town changed for the better when he was around.
‘I knew him before Anna was seeing him in 1986. We would be having a drink in the bar and things like that, when he would come up and buy us drinks, so I got to know him a little bit. As time got on, Anna started seeing him and that was it.
‘When it came to spotting trouble, Viv could definitely see where the trouble was and if he was there that was the end of it. One word from him and that was it!
‘He wasn’t a townie, but you wouldn’t say he was a fish out of water, although I would … because I knew deep down that he was green as grass through the way he would treat people and the kind of person that he was.
‘He was really soft; he really wasn’t what they were making him out to be. But he ended up exactly what they made him. But I don’t think he was the kind of person that everybody thought he was.
‘They built him up, they came and said, “You can do it.” He could use his fists and he could do it, but that wasn’t what he was there for. He was only there doing a job and just maybe seeing that they would drink up. “Drink your drink up, lads, howway!” There’s loads of people who do that sort of job, and then he just seemed to get bigger and bigger and bigger.
‘Obviously, if something did start and he had to fettle them, they could see what he was capable of and how quick he moved. He could handle ten people at once if need be, if it come that way. There’s not a doorman in the town that could do that. He could do that because he was a boxer and was like a proper fighting man with his hands in that kind of a way.
‘Whatever Viv’s dad said, he did. If his dad said, “Don’t go there, son. They’re just enticing you there as their backup” or “They want to use your name”, then Viv would take it all in. This would be voiced over many a thing.
‘People wanted Viv to go to Spain as their backup in timeshare scams. His father, Jack, would say, “Don’t you get involved, son. You keep away from that.”
‘Viv would go there for his breakfast and he would talk to his father while his mother made the breakfast and they’d ask what had been happening and they’d [Viv and maybe a friend] just have the normal crack. There was never fighting talk; his father would never encourage him by saying, “Go on, you do this.”
‘He would just say, “Keep away, son, nowt to do with you, they’re just using you.”
‘Viv would listen and say, “Aye, Father, you’re right.”
‘And he would come back and say, “My father’s told me to keep away.”
‘He was quite green, if you would say that was green. I liked what he did because you respected the way he did it. He never, never took liberties with people. I’ve seen doormen do things and I’ve looked and thought, Because there’s two or three, look how they treat people.
‘You never got that from him because he would come and he would say, “Howway, lads, howway!” and do it in a nice way or whatever. Even if he was approaching them, if there was trouble he would say, “Howway, lads, there’s no need for this,” and do it in a nice way. He wouldn’t run in knowing what he could do with them in two seconds. He wouldn’t run in and do it; he’d give them the benefit of the doubt. I liked the way he did it. He impressed me because I thought he was a gentleman and in the job he was in he did it in a nice way.
‘From when I first met Viv up until his death, I saw changes in him. In the end, he would hardly ever go out. He would watch videos and ring us up and say, “Anna’s making something, do you fancy coming across at teatime?”
‘They always had their tea on time because Viv trained twice a day. His last training would be around about, maybe, seven, so Anna would have the tea on for him coming back. They would maybe ring here and say, there’s chicken or whatever – do you fancy coming across, we’ve got a good video.
‘We would