Eric Bristow Read Free

the game Dad and I went outside, and as we were walking along he fancied a steak and kidney pie which he bought from a van and ate. There was litter everywhere, you couldn’t see the floor for aluminium pie cartons, and all the bins tied to lamp posts were full to overflowing. So Dad threw his on the floor, only for a copper to approach him and say: ‘Pick it up!’ All the bins were bursting and when Dad looked on the floor he couldn’t tell which one was his because it was just a sea of silver. This copper was just being stroppy and was probably itching to give my dad a belt. So Dad swallowed his pride and picked one up: it could’ve been his but probably wasn’t. He went over to an overflowing bin and perched it precariously on top of this mountain of silver. It was a joke. What was that all about? There was rubbish everywhere and a couple of hours later they would have sent in the vans to pick everything up. I felt like smacking this copper; I really wanted to punch his lights out for humiliating my dad like that. Give a man a uniform and he becomes a different person, and that applies to quite a few policemen.
    These were only minor setbacks to our overall enjoyment. Dad and I used to go everywhere together on the train to all the away games. I always used to see this young lad, he must have been about ten or eleven, and he went to every game home and away but he never had a ticket, and never had a railway ticket either. He’d just get on the train and dodge his way to the final destination. I’d always see him in the ground later. How he did it I will never know. He had no money. There’d be him and two of his pals in a train toilet and when the ticket collector came round one would come out, leaving the rest inside. I think they’re a bit wise to that one now, but back then it happened all the time.
    The big thing at that time was to nick somebody’s scarf and bring it back to the pub. So, for example, if Arsenal were playing Liverpool, all the hooligans would go fighting and bring Liverpool scarves back to the boozer as trophies. I just remember thinking how stupid it all was – they were hitting people they didn’t even know and the ones they were hitting could’ve been nice people but they didn’t know any better and if you’re brought up that way then that’s it, that’s the way you are. They were a product of their surroundings.
    When I started playing darts on a Saturday, that’s when the football stopped, but back home in Stoke Newington there was still the gang. There were still fights, we still went on the rob and things were no different. What changed everything for me came shortly after my sixteenth birthday. Me and the lads had a bit of trouble in a pub called the Queens. There were about seventeen of us, and we slaughtered this bloke and his mate inside the pub. The mate scarpered, but this guy simply refused to go down. We just couldn’t beat him, even after we’d hit him with chairs, bottles, pool cues, anything we could lay our hands on. It was a trouncing, but he just stood in this corner and took it, and while he took it he kept saying, ‘You’ve picked on the wrong bloke here, lads.’
    I’ll always remember that. They were like famous last words: ‘You’ve picked on the wrong bloke.’ His eyes were bloody, his head was ripped to pieces, his nose was shattered, and he was bleeding profusely, but he was a tough guy, and eventually he got out of the place. We just carried on enjoying ourselves in the pub and thought nothing more of it.
    Then, a week later, one of our gang, Dum Dum, who had helped beat him up, was walking along the street when a car came screaming up to him and knocked him flying. It was a classic hit and run. He was left with two broken legs and a broken arm and was in a wheelchair for months.
    Another week went by, and then another of the gang who was in the pub that night got jumped as he was walking along on his own. They put him in hospital; he was in a