Nigel Benn (11 page)

R
olex Ray could talk his way into anywhere. He’s blond, good looking and smooth as silk. He also happens to be rich. We met at the Berkeley Square ball and were introduced by Ambrose. I’d seen Ray around before then, however, because we liked the same music and clubs. Money was never an object with Ray. Like me, he was an Essex lad and since meeting, he’s become one of my best mates. We shared a lot in common and found that we’d been to the same clubs in Ilford, such as Lacy Ladies, the Mocca and Dagenham Town Hall.

We called him Rolex Ray because he dealt in jewellery and specialised in genuine, second-hand, gold Rolex and Cartier watches at reasonable prices. I bought my diamond-studded gold Cartier from him.

With my busy fight schedule and training, Ray was a little concerned that I had been working too hard and not having enough fun so he organised an outing for us. ‘I want to take you to a party, Nige,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be very special.’

We drove from Ilford to a huge detached house in the Surrey stockbroker belt, arriving early in the evening. It was a warm summer’s night. I didn’t know what to expect because Ray was keeping that a surprise. We hardly found space to park with all the expensive motors parked haphazardly in the grounds and on the roadside adjoining the property — Bentleys, Rolls-Royces, Jaguars and Daimlers littered the driveway. Some had chauffeurs who had made themselves comfortable on the back seats with books and thermos flasks and were prepared for a long night’s wait. Ray either knew somebody there or chatted up the doorman and we were whisked inside.

The sight that met my eyes was unbelievable. I had never ever seen anything like it before. A mass orgy had been staged with an invitation list that read like a page from
Who’s
Who
. There were bankers, doctors, actors, well-known personalities and members of the aristocracy. What they all seemed to have in common was wealth. Those women who still had their clothes on were beautifully and expensively dressed. One lady reminded me of the actress Lesley Ann Down, though she clearly wasn’t — she was exquisite. Among show business personalities were top TV actors whose faces I had seen on some of the most popular series.

This was dream time for me. I was an ordinary lad from east London — Essex boy from Ilford meets high society in deepest Surrey. It might as well have been outer Mongolia as far as I was
concerned. It was a total culture shock. So this was how the rich lived!

Ray had been to three or four orgies before so I looked to him for guidance. The owner of the house was in the porn movie business and 80 per cent of the guests were married couples. Everyone had to come as a couple, otherwise they would not be admitted. We were the exception. Ray had got us in on who I was. The house had six bedrooms and the host had locked every single window, bolted them and taken away the keys. All doors had been taken off their hinges on the top floor and, instead of beds, four-inch-thick foam covered the floors and became one giant mattress.

Despite the fact that it was midsummer, the central heating had been turned on full, making it unbearably hot to keep your clothes on. A lot of the women were outrageously dressed. Stockings, suspenders, chains attached to nipples, black Gestapo jack-boots and tiny maids’ outfits. There was a dress to fulfil every fantasy and a willingness by partygoers to make the fantasy a reality.

No pressure was put on anybody to join in. You could be a voyeur or participant, whatever you wanted. Downstairs, there was a bar and DJ and disco which looked just like a normal party. But upstairs — that was something else.

Ray said, ‘Come on, Nige, let’s get in there.’ That was his cue for stripping down to our
G-strings
and dancing in the disco. We were the first to strip off and then everybody joined in. Ray always takes the mick out of me when it comes to taking off my clothes. He says I can’t wait to show
myself off in my G-string and claims I’m a Chippendale at heart. That’s not true. However, with all the training I do, my body is in good shape. We were the catalyst the group was waiting for. Everybody began following our example by dressing down, some to their G-strings, others went totally nude.

I really think I’m much better in a one-to-one relationship, or in a threesome, than with so many people. It was too much. There were so many beautiful women, hair immaculate, bedecked in jewels, entirely naked and begging you — or their husbands begging you on their wives’ behalf — to make love to them. It blew my mind. I couldn’t believe it was so open. I watched, a little shocked, as one girl made love with three men who catered to her every fantasy. She was astride one man, another was leaping doggy-fashion on to her, and a third was kneeling in front of her while she performed oral sex on him.

I was a bit put off when I saw a man making oral love to a woman and a third party came with a bottle of champagne which he poured over her private parts saying, ‘That’s to improve the flavour.’ Wives were making love to each other watched by their husbands. It was a total, total shock. It’s not that I’m prudish but I was only about 24 and this was the first time I had seen it done in public. A couple of girls came to Ray and me and offered us oral sex and later the Lesley Ann Down lookalike asked me to make love to her.

‘Not here,’ I said. ‘No way.’

Had she been willing to come to our stretch
limousine, it might have been another matter but I wasn’t going to perform in front of all those people. I didn’t fancy 20 sets of eyes, moving like yo-yos, watching my bobbing backside in this public arena.

Some time during the evening, an old couple approached us. He was about 70 and his wife 60. Ray opened the lady’s blouse and asked, ‘What have you got in there, then?’ I was giggling and laughing and telling him not to do it. But it must have turned her husband on because he took hold of his wife’s hand and pushed it on to my nuts and asked her if she fancied a bit of black. I said,
‘
No
chance!
I ain’t doing that, and if that old bastard does that again I’ll break her finger and flatten her husband’s bald head!’

But it was all said with a laugh. In the meantime, I was followed around by another beautiful lady, watched in the background by her husband. I thought if my wife got up to this sort of thing, I would chin the guy and her as well.

One of Ray’s mates, who’d come there with a couple of girls, then played a joke on his chauffeur. The girls were sent out to chat up the driver and sneak him into the orgy. The chauffeur had been told to stay well clear of the house but the temptation offered by two mini-skirted, bra-less beauties with breasts hanging out of skimpy tops and the air thick with promise was too much.

Led by the giggling seductresses, he was taken into the house by the back door and brought to a small downstairs room which had a guest bed. The girls undressed him in no time at all and then
chained him naked to the bed. Then they left him there and, five minutes later, his boss walked in pretending he didn’t know anything about it and gave him a right bollocking for daring to come inside. Everyone witnessing the poor guy’s dilemma was in fits of laughter but the poor man was scared witless and totally helpless, unable even to cover up his nakedness which now embarrassed him.

Ray pointed out two famous TV actors to me: one from
Coronation
Street
,
and another who had been in the popular TV series
The
Avengers.

Ray was more used to these parties than me and had a good time with several ladies, one of them a publican’s wife. Her husband had approached him and said, ‘My wife really likes you,’ so Ray, ever the gentleman, obliged. However, he was a bit aghast when the husband invited him to their pub for Sunday lunch. Ray told him that would be too early in the day

The publican replied, ‘We have a football team. We all go and play football and then the whole team comes back to the pub and makes love to the missus. We do that every Sunday and you’re invited to join the team!’

I got home at about 6.30 the next morning, went straight to Mum and Dad’s and said, ‘Guess where I’ve been.’ I told them everything and they killed themselves laughing. I still hadn’t got over the shock of it all. Having said that, I was no novice to sexual adventure, providing, as I said, it wasn’t in front of an audience.

People tend to treat you differently if they think you are a celebrity. A lot of people thought that, as a boxer, I shouldn’t have as much fun as I did because I should concentrate on training. Well, they can think again. I like the attention from time to time, but I’ve given up trying to convince people that I am no different to them. So-called celebrities have just the same problems with wives, partners and mates as everybody else. I like to think that once outside the boxing ring, I’m Joe Bloggs, ordinary citizen.

Just because I train a lot doesn’t mean that I can’t have fun while I’m working. That’s a load of tosh. I spent my time mucking about and it didn’t seem to do me any harm in my career. As far as I’m concerned, it’s unhealthy to lock yourself away. Even when I was in the final six weeks of training for a fight and had stopped the partying, I still went out and had lots of fun. However, I was always mindful that there may be another young Nigel Benn lurking in the shadows ready to take over.

With the amount of press coverage I was getting, there were bound to be lots of ladies interested in meeting me, although I never had problems in that department before becoming a professional boxer. One of the nicest girls I met at the Ilford Palais was Mandy. She was tall and very thin with a lovely pair of breasts. I’ve always liked women dressing in sexy clothes and Mandy knew how to please. She wore tight fish-net stockings and a skimpy top.

The sexy garments sent out the right messages
but Mandy wasn’t going to be a push-over. I was about 24 and she was 18. I was dying to see what was underneath those alluring clothes but when, eventually, I persuaded her to return to a mate’s apartment she refused to let me make love to her. I tried for five hours and when, at last, she relented, it was all over in a few seconds. The tension and wait had taken their toll.

We kept seeing each other for the next two years and she was one of the sexiest girls I knew. Once we got to know each other properly, she’d be happy to make love anywhere. I’m fairly nocturnal in my habits and sometimes it would be too late to visit my friends, so one night Mandy and I made love on the bonnet of my Porsche in a wrecker’s yard at 5.00am!

The setting may not have been the most romantic but it was fun and exciting and sexy. We were always doing dares. Once we made love down an alleyway and also in the ladies’ toilets at Jacqueline’s, a West End club.

It was run by my agent, Dave Simones, who insists on stealing food off my plate or from my kitchen at home. Maybe he just gets a bit hungry but he won’t buy his own food. Once I chased him with a knife and threatened to kill him if he opened my refrigerator door once more. Dave thought it was all a joke but I was deadly serious. When he was running the club, we’d have some really fun times, although there was always an element of danger with the beautiful girls who’d go there. Like the one on my stag night with whom I ended up in bed.

I don’t know how that came about because I was out of it — drunk as a lord. On this particular evening, I could have rewritten the fairytale of the frog and the princess. The standard version goes like this. The princess kisses a frog which then turns into a prince and they live happily ever after. Well, I kissed a frog and she turned into a princess but the next day when I woke up and kissed her again she turned back into a frog. I was so drunk I didn’t know what I was doing.

I found myself in bed with this girl and woke with a dazed head to find that she had been giving me oral sex. The night before she was Marilyn Monroe. Now when I looked at her I saw Miss Piggy. That would have been almost acceptable were it not for the fact that I was panicking because my wife was due to pick me up at the hotel!

On another occasion I met a really tall girl. She was over 6ft tall but lovely with it. She had a great body, sparkling blue eyes and the figure of a model. We were discussing fantasies and I asked her about hers.

‘I’d like to fuck two men on a football pitch,’ she said.

That rather shocked me, coming from lips which I thought wouldn’t melt butter, let alone talk dirty. And two men! Women surprise me all the time. I told her that I could partially fulfil her fantasies.

‘I can get another man, I said, ‘but I’m sorry about the football pitch.’

With that, I telephoned Ray who came round and we shared the young lady’s favours. She was
particularly physical and whenever Ray was flagging a little, I had to encourage him by pressing his backside down a little more energetically than he was inclined.

After the love-making, though, it was back to serious training and my next fight. At 24, a body can put itself through a much heavier and demanding pace than at, say, 30.

Life was never dull when Ambrose was involved in my affairs. He and my promoter had another bust-up with television before my next Commonwealth middleweight title defence against Zambian Michael Chilambe. He was popularly known as the African Lion and was ranked 26th in the world.

However, it was said he would have to run like a cheetah to stay upright for more than two or three rounds with me. The BBC had offered a derisory sum to screen the bout and my promoter Frank Maloney rejected it out of hand. ITV later came up with a suitable offer.

Frank had gone to Africa to find an opponent after 15 top American and European middleweights refused the opportunity of fighting me. Chilambe was my third challenger and had fought more than 200 amateur bouts. He’d won 13 of his 14 professional fights with seven KOs.

Our fight was scheduled for 8 February at the Albert Hall and there was a real danger I would miss it as a result of a photofit picture, uncannily similar to me, of a wanted gunman and mugger who had blasted a cyclist at close range with a shotgun in Battersea Park.