The Guv'nor (33 page)

I've always kept fit but if I was puffing and gasping just going upstairs, then it meant I had to stretch myself even further. So I'd get up about six o'clock, be over Danson Park by half-past and go straight into a five mile boxer's run. Usually three was enough to get the heart pounding, but I thought no, an extra two would sweat that flu right out of my system. But that wasn't all, something else was happening to me that was throwing me right off balance. I'd be sitting talking to people and I'd be there, but at the same time I wasn't, and bells would be going off in my head. I don't think it was too obvious, but for a man who's always been one step ahead in the thinking game, it was getting me down. In the end I worked out this bug has knocked me right down and on top of that I stressed myself out trying to get some business deals moving. Trouble is everybody's so long winded – next week; next month; next year – I want to bang their heads together and shout ‘For fuck's sake, do it now,' but it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference. Perhaps their way is right, I dunno, but it's frustrating for a man like me who likes to make himself busy.

In the end I came to the conclusion that a nice break away from all the pressures would set me up so I could come back raring to go. I said to my Val, ‘Go on, babe, book us in somewhere warm and we'll
forget all about it for two weeks.' So off we went to Spain and instead of being just the break we needed it turned out a disaster and we both wished we'd stayed at home. One little incident brought home to me more than anything else just how out of shape I was. I was having a bit of trouble getting our suitcases from the taxi into the hotel when some old fella said ‘Don't struggle with that mate, let me do it,' and he did. Big Lenny, who at one time was bench pressing 500lb or ripping the door off a car, couldn't lift a poxy suitcase.

Back home I said to Val, ‘Sweetheart, I'm tired. There's bells going off in my head and I'm bollocking you and my pals over nothing and that's not like me, so let's get down to that doctors and sort this out.'

The doctor checked me over and told me I had a persistent chest infection, but that he'd make me an appointment for the hospital. No problem, be sorted in no time.

I won't go into all the details but I got myself down to the hospital and was told that they wanted to do a load of X-rays and tests. I said, ‘Lively then, I've got things to do.' And away they went. A few hours after they tell me I've got a shadow on my lung. No wonder I couldn't breathe. Seemed like I'd got a touch of pleurisy, which if you aren't too careful can be a killer, so it gave me a bit of a knock back.

Still, no fags for a bit and a suitcase full of antibiotics and I'd be on the mend. Thank you very much. Where's the door? ‘No,' they said, ‘you'll have to stay in for a couple of days while we do a few more tests, then you can go home'. OK. I'm surrounded by pretty nurses, I'll suffer that for a bit.

Some days get imprinted on your mind more than others. Meeting my Val that night in the Standard. The births of my Jamie and Kelly. Beating Roy Shaw. A ‘Not Guilty' at the Bailey – fresh in my mind as though they were yesterday. So the Monday after my tests was set to be one of them. I'd had one of those scan things and I was sitting in my room flicking through the
Sun
, when in came the doctor looking after my case. I shook her hand and she sat down beside me. ‘Mr McLean – Lenny, there's no easy way to put this. We have found cancer in your lungs and secondaries in your brain.'

Two thoughts came one on top of the other. I want Val beside me now and how will she and the kids accept something like this. I never really thought about myself – never considered that having just written the final chapter on my life so far, now I was living it as well.

If they couldn't have given me any worse news, it came a bit later. Six to twelve months was all the time I had left. This is the one thing everybody dreads and never wants to hear. Yet strangely enough it
made me calmer, understanding that there has been a reason for why I felt so bad.

I can't and won't describe the tears and fears of our private grief, but I can say how I feel. Of course I don't want to die, but I've accepted that that's the hand I've been dealt and I'll deal with it in the same way as I've faced every challenge in my life – head on. At the moment I feel physically on top of the world, and the only pain I've got is when I look at my Val. She's carrying everything and it tears my heart out. I've always been strong for her and my family – now she's being strong for all of us.

I'm not afraid of dying. I don't remember coming into this world and I'll go out of it in the same way. I won't give up and I'll fight this thing inside me right up to the end. But unlike all the other fights in my life, this is the one and only that I know I can't win – I'll give it my best though.

Lenny McLean died on Tuesday 28 July 1998