Against All Odds: The Most Amazing True Life Story You'll Ever Read (16 page)

In America, people like to be around success, so, if you are successful and you are their friend, they feel that some of it rubs off on them. In Britain, they just don’t want you getting too uppity.

I continued to travel quite widely for a time, and I believe that this was the best education I ever had, because it opened my eyes in a way nothing ever had before. I saw vast swathes of America. I saw the Caribbean. I saw most of Europe.

Experiencing other cultures, other people and other ways of doing things showed me how tiny and insignificant my part of the world was by comparison. This in turn made me realise that the people, places and things that had always intimidated me were not actually that scary at all. Who cared, outside East London, who was in and who wasn’t? Who cared who was able to take on whom and come out the best? Who cared where I had grown up? Outside Britain, nobody knew that I had grown up in a children’s home. Nobody knew that I had been thrown out with the rubbish as a baby or that nobody had ever wanted me. Also, outside the United Kingdom, few if any people could tell from my accent and the way I talked, walked and behaved that I was anything other than an educated, sophisticated individual like themselves. In fact, I was now good friends with people from all walks of life and all parts of the world – bankers, technology professionals and architects. If they didn’t look down on me, why should anyone, and why should I?

My life had gone crazy as I was launched into a glamorous world where I often felt I didn’t belong, although nobody else seemed to share that view. Following my success in the print media, I was contacted by a television production company to see if I would be interested in making some live appearances on television. Of course I would! Soon I was on Channel Four’s
Big Breakfast
show with Paula Yates every morning as fitness expert of the week.
The Big Breakfast
was enormous in those days, so this was a major coup for me. I had the experience of working with Paula out in front of the cameras and got to know her a little by spending time chatting with her both before and after my appearances. Paula was a lovely, sexy woman who was a lot of fun and not vain or standoffish in the slightest, but completely approachable and down-to-earth. Unlike a lot of television ‘personalities’ who think that being in the public eye means that the sun shines out of their arse, Paula had no vanity about her, but instead treated everyone the same.

Paula used to come in to work at five or six in the morning with her bleached platinum-blonde hair on end and bags under her eyes, looking as though she had been up clubbing all night – which, knowing Paula, was more than likely. Five minutes later, hair and make-up done, she was looking spunky and beautiful and ready for the cameras and whatever the day was going to throw at her. She was a natural in show business; her energy lit up the screen. Paula knew that I was nervous, so, to put me at ease, she flirted with me and pinched my bum until I was laughing too much to worry about what was going on. I had been anxious about doing live TV in the beginning, but Paula got me to relax with her high jinks and soon I felt very much at home under the bright lights of the television studio.

I met Pierce Brosnan, Julie Walters, Robin Williams and Michael Hutchence. But much more than any of them, I was bowled over by the puppet duo Zig and Zag. Zig and Zag, the brainchildren of a couple of Irish blokes, were hugely popular at the time, and it was hilarious watching the filming and seeing both the characters come to life and the puppeteers, lying on the floor out of view of the cameras. Having said that, Julie Walters was lovely too and I certainly don’t mean to put her in second place to a pair of puppets. We chatted in the Green Room for ages, and she was so far from putting on airs and graces that I didn’t even realise who I was talking to until later! Pierce Brosnan and Robin Williams were extremely personable and friendly in the brief time that we spent together.

I also worked with presenter Gaby Roslyn, but she was a lot more reserved than Paula, Chris Evans or any of the superstars, to put it mildly. The impression one got from the established stars was that they felt no need to be standoffish, because they were good at what they did, and very comfortable in their own skins.

Featuring on
The Big Breakfast
turned me into a recognisable face and a sellable proposition. Media types are lazy, so, if someone has been on one show and gone down well, they’re more likely to invite them on to the next show rather than look for someone else. This was good for me. The next thing I knew, I was on all the morning shows because all of a sudden everyone wanted a piece of the boxing mania. From initially feeling quite overwhelmed about the whole thing, I started to feel that I was operating in an environment in which I belonged. I featured on
Under the Moon
on Channel Four with Nigel Benn, a middleweight boxing champion, and Tom Binns, a sports presenter. I had to take my Boxerobics class, composed of men and women, into the studio and do a class for them.
Under the Moon
was a lads’ show, all boobs and sport with cheerleaders and sportsmen.

I was also invited to feature as an interviewee on
The Word
, a Friday-night show with Dani Behr, but that was a bit of a disappointment, as I should have realised from the show’s target demographic of late-night drunks. I thought that I was going to be given a serious interview, but, when I got to the studio, I was asked to strip down to the waist, run on to the set, pick up Dani and run off the set with her. In the end, I never made the cut because the show ran out of time. What a waste of energy!

I had to go to Birmingham to feature on the
Anne and Nick Show
. We had a boxing ring set up, and some of the girls I was working with did a boxing routine for the cameras – I also chatted with Jeremy Beadle who was another really nice bloke. A while after that, I was on the
Ross King Show
featuring Boxerobics
^TM
for the BBC.

I occasionally wondered if anyone from my old life had seen me on television, but I never tried to find out for sure.

Flushed with success, I applied for a trademark for Boxerobics
^TM
and set up a company that ran courses in the London boxing gyms aimed at the city trainers who would each pay me a hundred pounds a day to do a course. Using boxing techniques as part of an everyday fitness routine was the latest best thing and all the trainers wanted a piece of the action. Luckily for me, I was one of the very few people around with the proper qualifications to teach them what they needed to know. Suddenly, at a time when most trainers were getting twenty pounds a class, I was making a hundred and twenty and bringing in five or six grand a week. It was like a dream come true.

Another dividend of this success was that being on television and in so many magazines and newspapers meant that I could sleep with pretty much any woman who caught my eye, and usually did. I remember one girl who always wanted to have sex with me in the gym just before the rest of the class arrived, because she liked the thrill of nearly getting caught and was turned on by the characteristic smell of the rubber floor mats. I wasn’t going to argue; if that was her dream, who was I to stand in her way?

There were times when I would wake up in the morning and wonder if this was really me, the little shit from St Leonard’s whom nobody had ever loved. Had Starling or Coral seen me on television and wished that they had been a little bit nicer? The bastards!

If I’d had an agent back then, I am sure he could have kept the ball rolling. I am the first to admit that I had very little in the way of business know-how. Boxing as part of an everyday fitness routine continued to be popular, and I soon acquired competitors. Still, I made enough money to buy my first house, in cash. Getting the keys to my own home was a very important moment for me and it was wonderful to know that I had shown myself and the world that I could stand on my own two feet and make a success of myself.

I almost ran into trouble when one of the newspapers ran a story about me and one of the celebrities I worked for, implying that there was more going on between us than met the eye. The implication in the article that we had, in fact, slept together was very clear. Of course, nothing of the sort had happened, but the woman’s boyfriend was furious and my good relationship with my client suffered badly as, despite all my protestations to the contrary, there remained the lingering suspicion that I had made false claims. I was furious. The newspaper had to print a retraction and, although I had neither slept with the woman nor suggested that anything untoward had happened between us, I ended up losing that particular job. I have been very wary of journalists ever since, having seen for myself how words can be twisted to mean something completely different.

At this point in my life, I was happier, more relaxed and calmer than ever before, and I had even begun to respect myself a little, and not just because of my ability to hurt people with my fists, but because I was now able to use my skills and knowledge to help clients make their lives better.

But the old demons that had been haunting me all my life had not gone away completely; not at all. Now that I was making a good living doing what I loved, I no longer had to do very much door work, but I kept my hand in for when personal training work was slow and, even more, because I still enjoyed the opportunity to drop the people who deserved it and see them limp away, bruised and suitably chastened. A part of me needed to know that, when I felt the need to hurt someone, I would have both the opportunity and the means to give it to the sort of bloke who had it coming to him. Working on the doors gave me plenty of chances to vent the pent-up rage that I had never managed to purge, and I was reluctant to turn my back completely on those opportunities.

Now that I was moving in wider circles and also feeling more confident about myself, I started to make more friends outside the world of door work and the gym, including my mate, Ian, who I met when he was putting the computer system into a gym where I was working as a manager. Ian, who had also grown up in Essex, lived just around the corner from my new house, and, although we were very different in many ways, we soon became good friends. Neither of us had a wife and family at the time so we started enjoying the bachelor life together.

Having caught the travel bug through work, I now wanted to do more of it, and to do it on my own account. In 1996, Ian and I decided to go to Florida together for a break. Ian had a gold card with Virgin Airlines, so we had breakfast and a massage in the Upper Class Lounge. I was impressed by how all I had to do was look up the right way and a pretty girl came running with a delicious meal; this was a million miles from where I had grown up!

‘I could get used to this,’ I commented to Ian.

After the meal, we boarded the plane and started to relax into the idea of a couple of well-earned weeks off in the sun.

Just before we were due to take off, two South Londoners got on the plane. One was a huge, well-built man with long, blond hair and the other was a short, stocky guy with cropped hair. They both had idiotic expressions and seemed to be more than a few sandwiches short of a picnic. In short, they looked like trouble. They were. Ian knew me well, so he made sure that I sat on the inside seat, as far away from them as possible, using himself as a buffer.

These two morons started to behave like the dickheads they were as soon as they got on board, to the consternation of all the families on the way to Disneyworld sitting in their vicinity, who now contemplated the horror of having to spend the next eight or so hours in their company. Anyone with eyes in their head could see that they were trouble. Already stinking drunk, the men opened up the overhead compartment, took out Ian’s computer bags and threw them into the aisle so that there would be room for their own stuff. Ian didn’t say anything. He got out of his seat and quietly rearranged his things. We all looked at the cabin staff with the expectation that they would arrange to have the troublemakers removed before the plane took off, but nothing happened. The senior staff were distracted because they had some trainee hostesses on the flight. Undisturbed, the two geezers got into their seats and remained relatively well behaved during take-off but as soon as the plane was in the air they set about getting even drunker than they already were, which is saying quite a lot. And the drunker they got, the more obnoxious they became. Sitting in the middle of the plane, across from them, I started to fidget. I had to sit on my hands to stop myself from taking action. I was in a closed environment and couldn’t stand being around these idiots without doing anything about them. If anyone was asking for a hiding, they were. I had come across their sort – vain, bulked-up bullies with a lot more attitude than brain cells – a thousand times before, but I had usually been in a situation to do something about it. Now I hated not being able to give them what they had coming to them.

Ian looked at me. He knew how tense I was getting and what a temper I had.

‘Paul, mate,’ he said quietly. ‘Please don’t do anything you would regret. We’re off on our holidays. We’re supposed to be having a good time. Don’t let those idiots destroy it. They are not worth it. Just ignore them. Just relax!’

‘But those pricks threw your bags into the aisle! They took out your stuff and threw it about so that they could stow their own things away!’’

‘Yeah, and I’m not doing anything about it, am I? So why should you?’

‘Yeah, well…’

‘Paul. Please.’

I now literally had to sit on my hands to stop myself from throttling them. But I kept getting angrier and angrier as these two lowlifes kept calling the hostesses to bring them more and more free wine. Presumably because they were inexperienced or just intimidated by them, the hostesses continued to oblige and the booze kept on flowing. Their voices got louder and they started passing remarks about and intimidating the families sitting around them.