Born to Fight--The True Story of Richy 'Crazy Horse' Horsley (13 page)

Not long after this, I drove down to an estate with Maori and another lad to meet some guys who we had some ongoing trouble with. We got out of the Land Rover and walked over to them. Before we could say anything, they pulled out guns and started firing at us. I could hear bullets whooshing past my head as we charged back to the Land Rover. We jumped in and sped
away like Michael Schumacher. All the windows got shot out. We got away OK, but the lad with us took a shot to the shoulder. He was sat in the back, white as a ghost, and looked like he was going into shock. We sped off to the hospital and dropped him off in emergency. We must have looked a right sight pulling up with all the windows shot in. Maori and I were lucky to get away unscathed, but we did walk around with Don King-style hair for a few weeks after that.

I went with a few lads to see a bloke who owed a lot of money to someone. Sorry, I can’t go into details, but you know how it is. We found him alone. The lads gave him an unmerciful beating, thrashing him with big fuck-off sticks. I went out of the room, as I didn’t want to watch. The guy sounded like he was in terrible pain, so I thought I’d better put him out of his misery. As I went back in the room, he was unrecognisable; his arm was snapped in half and the bone was sticking out through the skin. My stomach turned over. I went over and hit him on the side of the jaw with a big right and he went out like a light – at least he was out of pain. I didn’t go on another one of those jobs again. Out of the few lads who were there, one is doing life for murder and another one is dead. It’s a short-term game to be in.

I was starting to think that if I stayed on the door, sooner or later I was going to end up in prison or dead, so I was thinking about chucking it. But then again, I was still finding trouble in pubs where I wasn’t working.
One time I went out to celebrate my birthday with a group of lads. Everyone was buying me double whisky chasers. I was reluctant, at first, to drink the whisky because I knew I’d be drunk in no time. But once it went down, I got the taste for it and washed every pint down with a straight double whisky. We were all getting into the swing of it, and by 9.30 I was mortal drunk. Now that’s as far as my memory of that night goes, so the rest of this story is reliant upon other sources. One of the lads with us was also called Richy; he had caused trouble with some lads who were on the dance floor enjoying themselves. He decided to get stuck into them. These lads were everywhere we went after this, and again and again Richy was always straight over fighting with them. Now I don’t know about you, but if I was out on somebody’s birthday, the last thing that I’d want to do is fight because it spoils the night. If I was sober, I guarantee there’d have been no trouble because I would have nipped it straight in the bud. After all, these lads were from out of town and were having a good time before he started chew with them. As the end of the night approached, I was propped up against the bar because I was just about legless. Everyone had gone home drunk or gone elsewhere because it was too quiet where we were, but I said I was staying put. There was only me and Darren left. In the meantime, all these lads that Richy had started trouble with came back to the club I was in to get revenge. At 1.45am, a crowd of
thirty geezers were outside the nightclub asking for ‘Richy’. The doormen wouldn’t let them in because they knew there was going to be trouble and they didn’t want the place smashed up. A bouncer came over and said, ‘Richy, there’s about thirty blokes outside want you and they’re looking for trouble.’ Well, of course, I was not the ‘Richy’ they were looking for. But I told the bouncer I was coming out and he went back downstairs.

I took no notice of the bouncer’s warning that I would get killed, and started down the stairs to the entrance and the angry mob. As I got out into the street, I was attacked with bottles over the head, punches, kicks and elbows. I was fighting on memory, as I fought tooth and nail and, as my punches were landing, they started hitting the deck like dominoes. The bouncers were stood watching the action open-mouthed from the bay window. I was taking a beating and getting attacked from behind with bottles being smashed over the back of my head. This time it was my turn to go down like a lead balloon; I got kicked unconscious. Later, I was told that my head was jumped on and kicked about like a football. I was told I put seven of them in the hospital, but the lad watching from the bay window said he counted nine, so I gave a good account of myself considering the situation.

After being examined, I was put into a ward in the hospital. I remember waking up and staring at the ceiling, thinking something wasn’t right. As my eyes
started to focus and my mind started to wake up, I realised where I was. What the fuck was I doing here? As I sat up, the pillow came with me because it was stuck to the back of my head with congealed blood. I shouted for the nurse. I asked her what I was doing in there. She said I was admitted with head injuries and that if I hadn’t been so drunk, I would have died. She asked if I wanted any breakfast and I said, ‘Yes.’ As she went to get me some, I quickly put my clothes on and left. I looked like the Elephant Man.

That was some fucking birthday present. The street had CCTV cameras on it so I knew the coppers would be studying it. I also knew that the nightclub had a camera on the door, so I made a phone call to get my hands on the tape. But the police beat me to it. People came to see me after to ask if I wanted to put bullets in these people, but I said, ‘No.’ I said I would fight any of them or all of them one at a time, but nothing came of it. Time is a great healer and I don’t bear grudges against any of them. Shit happens. If you live by the sword, you die by the sword and that’s the way it is. You’ve got to accept it. The police eventually turned up and asked about the fight, but I said I couldn’t remember anything. They asked if I wanted to press charges if they found them, but I said, ‘No chance,’ and told them to forget it. I would rather have died outside that club than grass anyone up. I bet the filth enjoyed themselves watching that tape over tea and biscuits. I bet they wore the fucker out.

A nice respite from all the fighting came when I trained for a driving test when I was 28. One day I just fancied learning, so I booked some lessons with a family friend called Tony, who ran his own driving school. The driving school had a good pass rate; I had about a dozen lessons with him, less than full price, which was cushty. When the day of my test arrived, I was nervous and had an hour’s lesson to calm my nerves before the real thing. I coped with it very well and stayed relaxed throughout. After we arrived back, the examiner said the magical words, ‘I’m pleased to tell you, you’ve passed.’

Trouble soon popped up again though when I went to a nightclub in Redcar with a couple of lesbians I knew through my mate Andy. One of them was so butch that she looked just like a man. While she was dancing, I
could see a lad starting to get clever with her. Something was bound to happen. I waited until it was going to kick off and went over. The lad squared up to me in a boxer’s stance. I tore straight into him and hit him with about four short, fast punches. He lay there unable to move, covered in claret. The bouncers were pals of Bri Cockerill, so they left me alone and chucked out the prick I had done. That was the end of that story, but a bit later on at New Year I got caught up in trouble because of the dykes yet again. I had taken some ecstasy drugs off a dealer in a pub, given him a good slap in the process, and decided to give them to the lesbians, as they were into that scene. Little did I know that they were also getting their gear off a father-and-son team who dealt to the dealer that I had slapped. Word got back to them and they ended up setting the lesbians up for a police raid, as they thought they had fucked them over. Unluckily for me, I wandered into their house to say hello just as they were getting raided. To top it off, I had a stun gun in my pocket, which I had confiscated off a guy in one of the pubs I was working the night before. The pigs stripsearched me, found the gun, and arrested me and took me to the station. It went to court, where on my solicitor’s advice I pleaded guilty. I got a fine, but the two lesbians ended up taking all the blame for the drugs, and each got 18 months inside.

I still blame my fine on the stupid father who set the lesbians up. Quite conveniently, I bumped into him one
morning outside some busy shops. I cuffed him with a right to the body and a left into his smarmy face. He never went down but staggered and ran over the road. He started mouthing off threats about what he was going to have done to me. I was told later that, as a consequence of our short and sweet reunion, he had a smashed rib and broken nose. The punk also put a figure on my head. My mate Maori made a few phone calls and found out there was an underworld hitman coming from Newcastle to put one in me, but he managed to get it stopped.

As soon as that little episode came to a close, I was rocketed into another situation one night when I bumped into an old acquaintance on a pub crawl. Ron K, as he was known, was a short and powerful man, who had just been released from prison. We were getting on OK to begin with but, as he got drunk, he started getting on people’s nerves shouting about how hard he was. Then he shouted to me, ‘Oi, you, outside.’ Now I thought the prick was just joking, but he wasn’t. ‘I’m the best fourteen stone you’ll come across,’ he screamed. So off comes my coat and we step outside.

The pub had a glass front so everyone could see us. I have to admit I loved the feeling of having a crowd. Without any hesitation, he came straight at me. BANG! I catch him with a short, powerful left hook. He folded like a ten-pound note and hit the ground with the finesse of a smashed egg. What an anti-climax. You have
to think of the crowd in these situations, so I bent over him and put about four face-bursting rights on his chin. He was whisked away to another planet. When the ambulance stretchered him away about 15 minutes later with an oxygen mask on, he was still sleeping soundly. His jaw was shattered in four places, so they had to put a fancy steel plate in with screws to fix it. I had no sympathy for him because he brought it all on himself with his big loud mouth.

Yet I was also realising that this intensity of fighting couldn’t go on. I went for a private sitting with a clairvoyant, who sensed that I was a fighter. He got hold of my hands and said, ‘I can’t tell you to stop fighting, but if you continue and you don’t start pulling your punches, I can see you killing someone, someday.’ I had already had a few lucky escapes with people hovering at death’s door and took that as a serious warning. I slowed down and took a back seat. Linda had filed for a divorce on the grounds of ‘unreasonable behaviour’. I had to have a sit down and have a think about what I was doing with my life.

The situation of one of my mates, H, really brought things home to me. He had got into some trouble in Lincoln, but his father wouldn’t stand as a guarantor for him over the deal. He’d been treated badly by his father all his life and had a stammer because of it. So when he wouldn’t stand guarantor he was pushed over the edge and went round his father’s house. A big argument
erupted and H pulled out a gun and shot him three times at point blank range: in the head, chest and kneecap. His father was lying in a pool of blood. H must have known he was going to get life, and thought, Fuck it, I’ve had enough. He put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. The father miraculously survived, but H died. It was a sad time for all concerned. The last time I had seen him alive, he had made us both bacon and toast and we’d had a chinwag. I think of it like the last supper and still have some fond memories of him.

It was all too much, so I packed the door work in to get away from all the trouble. But the faster I tried to get away from it, the faster trouble came after me. One time I was out in a pub with my mates Mick, Freddie, Peter and Johnny. I went to the toilet while they went to the bar, where there was a skinhead looking the worse for drink. He mumbled, ‘What’s your name?’ I told him and his chest plumed out another foot. He put his hand out for me to shake it. Peter had followed me in and was watching the proceedings. I went to shake the affable skinhead’s hand, but he pulled it away and slurred, ‘Dry your fucking hand, first.’ What a cheeky cunt! I planted a left hook on his chin and as he went down he cracked his head off one of the urinals. He was laid out with blood spewing from his head. ‘Dry your fucking head, first,’ I laughed at the floored skinhead. The slurring skinhead recovered but that was the moment when I thought I had better stop going out
drinking as well or, like the clairvoyant said, ‘someone would die’.

I started to turn my life around for the better and tried to instil a bit of stability and balance back. I wanted to leave that part of my life behind. The leopard wanted to ditch its spots! The divorce finally went through, although a few months later Linda and I ended up going out again, but only as boyfriend–girlfriend. It was a case of can’t live with her, can’t live without her. We were together for eight years. In the meantime I was beginning to realise how lucky I was when I started sponsoring a girl in Ecuador, South America, after seeing an advert on TV about the Third World. Every time the advert came on, I saw the pain and suffering in the children’s eyes. Jomayra’s life is much better these days and she is getting an education. If she becomes ill, a doctor will see her due to the sponsorship. I have been her sponsor since 1997 and it’s a very rewarding experience. We exchange letters and Jomayra always tells me how grateful she is and calls me her foster parent. I send her two presents a year, as well as cards and photos. She is now fourteen years old, and the difference in her over the seven years from the first photo to the present one is amazing. It’s great being a part of another family’s life that live on the other side of the world. It opens your eyes as to how people in other countries live.

I enjoyed being compassionate, which made a nice break from the fighting. One day I was looking through
the paper and saw a picture of a woman who had had her pet African Grey parrot stolen. Funnily enough, I then got a phone call from Brian Cockerill asking for my help in respect of this stolen parrot as he was good friends with the lady in the paper. My mate Ste had a pet shop and said he had just been offered such a parrot. The lad offering the parrot for sale was a friend of Mick’s, and so Mick and I went to see him. We soon discovered that he had sold the parrot on to a dealer for £200. Armed with the dealer’s address, we paid him little visit. On finding him, we told him the parrot was stolen and that we wanted it back for its owner. We asked him very kindly to go and get the bird and to bring it to my house … or to face the consequences! He looked as sick as a parrot. He came around the next day with the parrot, and we went around the real owner’s house. Her and the kids were over the moon. The bloke told her the story of how he came across it and she couldn’t thank me enough. I received a follow-up phone call from Brian Cockerill, who thanked me and said he owed me a favour. A few days later, the newspaper ran the story, along with a photo, of the woman being reunited with her parrot, but I told her to keep my name out of it, which she did. I do love happy endings.

If I was going to get a truly peaceful life, I had to get out of Hartlepool, so I got another job installing heavy electric cables around the country. The first job I took was at ICI, Wilton, which I was on for a few months. I
really wanted to make a go of it, and stuck at it, even though it was hard graft. The safety code was stringent, and at all times you had to wear a hard hat, safety boots, goggles, overalls and gloves. Even on hot days when your goggles were steaming up with sweat and you couldn’t see, you weren’t supposed to take them off. The cables I worked with aren’t the little piddling things for domestic use. The ones I’m on about are always on big round drums; once you got the drum in the exact place you wanted it, you put a jack either side with a steel bar running through the drum and then it would be jacked off the floor ready to pull the cable off. Sometimes, the cable would go in a trench or up a riser, but mainly it was tied on to giant racks and it all had to be held in place with cleats. It was proper hard work, as the big drums can weigh as much as nine tons. There were plenty of hazards in this line of work. Once, when I was working in Edinburgh, we were rolling a drum that weighed about six tons when it ran over my foot! My steel toe collapsed and came through the side of my boot. My toes came up like puddings. I was lucky because if it was another inch over I would have lost my toes. On another job, we were working under a canal and the tunnels went on for a couple of miles. After we renewed the cable we had to make a hasty retreat as there were always toxic gasses being released.

My job has taken me the length and breadth of the UK: Barnsley, Manchester, Widness, Newcastle, Reading,
London, Derby, Middlesex, Scotland, Portsmouth, Southampton, Bournemouth, Rhyl, Cardiff and plenty of other places. I even once had a piss on the roof of the Hilton Hotel, in Park Lane, London, when we were putting some cable in. I was bursting and the toilet was too far away. Sometimes, there’d only be half a dozen cables to pull in and once you’d done that, you were off somewhere else. One day you could be in Leeds and the next in London; I liked it better like that instead of being stuck in the same place. Once we went to a job at Derby for about six weeks. I had a look for the house me and the family stayed at back in 1975–1976. It was in Boyer Street but it had been pulled down and new houses had been built. Nothing stays the same. While I was at Derby, I got a phone call off Maori. It was bad news. His son Mark had just died of leukaemia, only four weeks past his 18th birthday. It was another heartbreak. Mark was a lovely lad. We – Wally, Dickie and me – all went home for the funeral. It was a very sad time.

One of the main benefits of moving around was that I could go drinking again without getting into trouble. One time we were staying above a pub in St Helens. We went downstairs for a drink, and I spotted a face I recognised. But it wasn’t an old opponent from Hartlepool. It was the well-known rugby player, Andy Gregory. I went over and said, ‘Hello, Andy. You don’t know me, but I’m working round here and would just
like to say hello.’ He shook my hand and asked where I was from. Then in another pub I heard, ‘Not you again.’ It was Andy. Later, in a nightclub, I spotted him at the bar so I went over and tapped him on the shoulder, When he turned round I said, ‘Are you fucking following me?’ He started laughing and repeated, ‘Not you again.’ He had a good sense of humour, and was a really nice bloke.

Even when there was a bit of trouble, I kept things as quiet as possible. On the job in Liverpool, there was a new mush that had started for us called Trevor. He thought he knew everything, so I called him ‘Know It All Trevor’. On the way down there on a Monday morning, he did everybody’s head in. As soon as we got on the job, he started running around like he was the boss and talking to people as if they were idiots. He was a cheeky cunt. I let him get away with a couple of remarks, but when he said another thing I thought I’d teach him a lesson. I later spotted Mr Know It All up in what is called a cherry picker. A cherry picker is simply a mobile gantry tower that is like being on the end of a giant moveable arm; you’ve probably seen them around when the local council use them for replacing streetlight bulbs and the like. Mr Know It All was up there with a lad called Varley. I shouted to Varley, ‘Bring that fucking cherry picker down here, now!’ I stood and watched as my prey was being moved in my direction. As he was getting closer and closer, his face became
whiter and whiter. As soon as he reached me, I dragged him out of his harness and nearly took his head off with a persuasive slap. It was so powerful that it spun him around so fast that, for a few seconds, he looked like Michael Jackson doing one of his routines. For a couple of days after that, he walked around with what looked like a big purple birthmark down half his face. He never talked to me out of turn again.

Another benefit of travelling was getting to know the history of various places. When we went to London I took a day off and spent a full day in the Tower of London. I love history, and the day passed really quickly. After that, we went to Scotland for six weeks to put the cable in on a place in the middle of the Firth of Forth. One of the local lads called Gregor started telling me a bit of Scottish history about William Wallace and the like. I enjoyed our chats. A couple of years later, he emigrated to Australia, from where he still sends a Christmas card every year, even if it does arrive in January. We stayed in Dunfermline, right opposite the abbey where Robert the Bruce is buried. There is a story that Robert the Bruce was born in Hartlepool, so I went to his grave to pay my respects to a fellow hard bastard from the North East.