Young Winstone

by Ray Winstone

  Before we met, Elaine had gone to college doing art and design and then got jobs window-dressing for a chain of department stores. But by the time we got together she was working as a Bunny Girl at the Playboy Club in Manchester, although she wasn’t wearing her costume when we first met. I soon put paid to that once we got together – I told that bunny costume to hop it.

  It’s not like Elaine was short of rivals for my attention in Torquay that summer – and the same applied the other way round. All of which made the strength of the instant bond between us even more obvious.

  I was certainly a bit of a handful in those days. It was my first time away from home working with a film crew, and it wasn’t so much the other actors who were the problem, it was the sparks. This mob were murder – their motto when they went away was ‘Drink, fight and fuck’ – although obviously they weren’t all like that, and I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, so if you’re still married to one of them, it wasn’t him. But the fact that when the film was finally finished I would drive back to London with the electricians rather than my fellow performers shows you who I felt most at home with.

  At the end of her holiday Elaine went home with her parents, but pretty much as soon as she got to Manchester I was asking her to come and see me again. She borrowed a car to drive back to Torquay, but she turned the wrong way onto the motorway and headed north instead of south. A psychologist might see this as evidence of her subconscious mind trying to protect her by taking her as far away from me as possible, but really it was the opposite. What made this mistake a good omen was the fact that she carried on driving until she got to Gretna Green, which was where couples used to run off to if they eloped.

  When she got there, she asked a policeman if she was ‘anywhere near Torquay’, and he told her (and feel free to read this in your worst Braveheart accent), ‘Sorry, love, you’re in Gretna Green.’ So she turned around and drove all the way back to Devon.

  Elaine made it down to Torquay eventually, but obviously her mum was worried as to why it had taken her a whole day. ‘Don’t you know where the sun goes down?’ I enquired respectfully when she finally turned up at my hotel. ‘It goes down in the west, babe. So all you’ve got to do is look at the sun and you might have some idea of where you are.’

  A sense of direction has never been my Elaine’s strongest suit, but she knows how to put people on the right road when it comes to the things that matter. She was showing this quality already in the first weeks we were together in Torquay. My parents had wanted to make peace for ages but my dad’s as stubborn as I am – we were like two rams butting their heads together (and we still are). He wouldn’t just say, ‘Come home,’ he wanted me to ask, but I wasn’t having it. So when the two of them made the gesture of bringing my granddad down to Torquay on holiday at the same time as I was working there, that was quite a major concession on their part. I don’t think my dad would have come up with that on his own – Mum probably nagged him.

  They stayed in a suite at the Imperial Hotel, so they must’ve been doing alright for money at the time. And Elaine was with me when I got the call to tell me that they were there, so she came along too to have dinner at the hotel. Things could still have gone either way at that stage, as I hadn’t seen much of them over the last eighteen months or so, and there were still issues that needed to be sorted out. But it was all kind of cool – Elaine met ’em and then she danced with my granddad, and by the time we parted company at the end of the night, we were all on friendly terms and she’d made a really good impression on them.

  It went so well that before That Summer! was even finished I’d hired a car to drive her back to London to see them all again. There’s a big street in Winchmore Hill near where our house was that all the rich people used to live on. It was sort of like a lower-key version of Bishop’s Avenue, just off the North Circular, where all the millionaires have mansions that are going to rack and ruin because they never get around to actually living in them.

  I turned down this road saying, ‘Nearly there, babe’, and I could see the pound-note signs lighting up in Elaine’s eyes. Once I’d taken it that far I thought, ‘I’ve got to follow through with this’, so I pulled into one of the driveways and went up and knocked on the door. An old boy came out who she probably thought was the butler, so I spun him a line about being lost or some other bollocks and went back to the car. She’d got out of the passenger seat by that time and was looking a bit confused. Luckily I was able to put her mind at rest by telling her, ‘I fucking had you there, didn’t I? You thought we were cake-o bake-o!’

  She still married me within about a year of seeing where I actually lived, though. So she can’t have been in it for the money, which subsequent events would confirm was definitely for the best.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE TATE & LYLE SUGAR FACTORY, SILVERTOWN

  There was one thing I came back from Torquay with that I could’ve done without, and that was a charge of marijuana possession for a bit of wacky baccy that wasn’t even mine. One night I had a party in my room in the Grand Hotel – just for a few of the boys in the crew. Unfortunately, there were two of the make-up women staying downstairs who were not very nice. I usually get on really well with the make-up girls, but I didn’t with these two – not in a nasty way, I just didn’t have ’em in the company because they were horrible gossips.

  Anyway, I had this party, and they complained about the noise. Maybe they were just pissed off that they hadn’t been invited, I don’t know. Either way, that was fair enough. The bad part was that they told the concierge I had drugs in the room – which I didn’t because that’s not my game. So I came back from the set the next day to be met by a police detective who had already been in there (which I thought was a fucking liberty, but obviously I don’t own the room, the hotel does).

  He told me they’d found a small quantity of marijuana. I said, ‘It ain’t mine – you can give me a drugs test if you like’, but that didn’t stop them taking me down the station. I knew who it belonged to – a mate of mine who did like a smoke – but just because he’d dropped me in it with some grass didn’t mean I had to become one. Maybe he should’ve come forward and held his hands up, but he didn’t. The whole thing was a bigger deal then legally than it would be now, but my main concern was that I didn’t want my dad thinking I was on drugs – especially when I wasn’t. Relations with my parents were just starting to get back on track, and this was the first time I’d been away working on a film, so I didn’t want them thinking I was on the slippery slope to reefer madness.

  When I went back to Torquay to appear in court in December of 1978 I decided to plead guilty. I’d been brought up never to do that, but in this case there was fuck all else I could do. I just wanted this one out of the way with nothing in the papers to upset the family.

  Not long before my court appearance, the producers Davina and Clive phoned me up and said, ‘Since you’re going back, anyway, could we do some pick-up shots?’ They’d been really good about sorting out the legal side of things, so I couldn’t say no. Next thing I knew I had to swim out into Torquay bay in the middle of winter, which was a bonus – especially when my ankle got snagged by a fishing hook that dragged me under the sea. I just about managed to pull the hook out of my leg and get home in one piece. Then I got found guilty and paid the fine without my Old Man finding out, so that was more good news.

  Fast-forward thirty-five years, and having this conviction on my record still causes me problems getting into America. Every time I go there, which I do a lot, I get pulled out of the line and have to sit in a room and be investigated (not intimately, but it’s still a pain in the arse). When you get off a plane after an eleven-hour flight the last thing you want to do is spend another four hours being asked pointless questions in a brightly lit room, especially when you’re a smoker like I am. And all because someone who was a mate of yours – bless him – smoked a joint in your hotel room and left a bit of gear there. The worst thing is that at the end of
the interrogation they always say, ‘You shouldn’t have to come here any more, this will clear off your record now’, but it never does. I always tell them, ‘You say that every time.’

  I often see Frank Roddam when I’m on those flights back and forth to LA, either that or hanging about in the Chateau Marmont. He’s the guy who got me to be a rocker in Quadrophenia between the two films for Belling and Parsons, and he’s still got those little-boy looks he always had – I suppose the millions he must’ve earned for inventing Masterchef can’t have done any harm in that area.

  I wish he’d let me have a haircut like his in Quadrophenia, instead of sending round Danny La Rue to give me Liberace’s old barnet. I was happy to pay tribute to my childhood memories of mods and rockers roaring through Plaistow, and I didn’t even mind sharing a bath with the lovely Phil Daniels, although I’d have rather not done it with hair that looked like it’d just got back from a three-month residency in Vegas.

  The funny thing about my performances in the two films I did with Phil at that time – Quadrophenia and Scum – is that I wasn’t either capable or interested enough to have a say in how I looked on the screen yet. I didn’t realise I could have a say in the development of the character – I just turned up, listened to what the director had to say and did the lines as best I could. If I’d played those parts a few years later I would have done them very differently, but they might not have turned out nearly so well, because how little I knew about what I was doing probably fed into the rawness of the characters.

  A lot of the Anna Scher boys were in both films too, and they knew the ropes a lot better than I did. They were winding me up a bit on Quadrophenia. One of them (not Phil) came up behind me in a dressing room and said, ‘’Ere, Ray, I’m doing your part in Scum.’ I just held his gaze in the mirror and said, ‘Oh, are you mate? Well, good luck to ya.’ I knew he was digging me out.You do get tested in those situations, especially when you’ve got a load of young fellas together.

  When the time came to do the scene in the alley at Shepherd’s Bush Market where they’re chasing me on the bikes, the guy who was needling me about Scum was meant to be the first one off and at me. Peter Brayham, who was the stuntman and a great mate of mine, told me what I had to do, which was basically crash into the boxes. I’m not that great on a bike, but all I had in my head was ‘he’s the first one off’.

  After I’d crashed the bike, I was supposed to stay there while they all piled into me. Instead, I jumped up and chinned him. All the stunties were going, ‘Stop! Stop!’ but they couldn’t get there in time to stop me giving him a good larrapping. The geezer didn’t bear a grudge afterwards. I think he respected me for it, because he knew he’d been out of order. Either way, we’re still mates a quarter of a century later.

  When you’re doing these films – the second Scum was the same – you don’t know whether they’re going to end up being any good or not. One of the things I was beginning to learn at this time was that the scenes which work the best tend to be the ones that are done in a very simple way. The billiard-balls scene in Scum was a good example.

  Phil Mayhew, who was on the camera, did hand-held all the way while I walked down the stairs, took a sock out of my pocket to put the billiard balls in and then hit poor old Phyllis over the head with ’em. Because subconsciously you know there’s not been a cut, even people watching with no interest in how films are made think, ‘How the fuck did he hit Phil over the head and not kill him?’ I think Phil was thinking that too.

  Here’s how we did it: there was a geezer lying on the floor by the door who swapped the sock with the balls for another one – containing ping pong balls in papier-mâché – as I walk in. We still have to have some weight in it so you can see I ain’t giving Phil a chance when he turns round and I go whack. It’s the shock of it that makes it effective.

  I’ve not said too much about the technical side of things in this book, because I’ve found that the more I’ve learnt about those aspects of film-making, the less I enjoy actually watching a movie. And I don’t want to put you lot through the same pain I’ve suffered. One thing I do think is that we don’t give audiences enough credit for being willing to be challenged by something real. I remember when Hollywood made a more commercial version of Scum called Bad Boys – with Sean Penn in it – they swapped the billiard balls in a sock for a pillow-case full of Coca-Cola cans. I suppose there might’ve been a bit of product placement going on there, but I don’t think it was very credible.

  By the time we got to the second Scum, Alan Clarke was manipulating us quite mercilessly to get the level of realism he wanted. When it came to the race riot in the borstal hall he went up to all the black kids and said, ‘Listen, all the white guys are going to have a go at you here.’ Then he told the rest of us to ‘watch the black kids – they might be gonna stick it on ya’. They were alright that lot – I think they’d come out of a youth club in Leytonstone – but they were definitely there to do a job, and there was never much doubt about what was going to happen as soon as someone said, ‘Action!’

  I remember saying to Francis – who played Baldy, the black guy I use the tool on in the film – ‘Are you with them or with us?’ When he said the latter I thought, ‘Thank God for that! He’s a second dan karate expert.’ It was actually Phil Daniels who saved me from getting a belting in that scene. One fella came at me and as I chinned him he grabbed my legs and pulled me down on the floor. They were all piling in on top when Phil pulled me up and got me out of there, laying about him all the while. That’s one of the things I love about Phil – he’s a game little fucker who takes no prisoners, especially when he’s got some red wine inside him.

  I’d had my last little go at the boxing by then. After a couple of years away I’d found that I missed it and wanted to get back in the ring. As comebacks go, mine went better than Ricky Hatton’s but not as well as George Foreman’s. Having left the Repton I trained at the Black Lion in West Ham, an excellent boxing gym with a blinding pub attached. My first fight was in the old Territorial Army place on the side of West Ham Park. I got off to a good start but I wasn’t fully fit yet, so I ran out of steam halfway through the second round. I tried to batten down the hatches as I was probably ahead at that stage, but it was too long to last and I lost on points.

  You think you’ll be a bit wiser two years on and your mind will be working better, but I found I’d lost some of that speed I’d had before. There’s a natural kind of fitness you have in your late teens – especially if you’re not drinking too much yet – which gets much harder to maintain by the time you’re in your early twenties, so I wasn’t in much better shape by the time I got to the second fight.

  That was in the old Tate & Lyle sugar factory, the big white building in Silvertown. I think they were renting it out for events to try and make a bit of money, because the docks had more or less gone by then. The night in question was a West Ham boxing club show and I fought a guy called Chris Christiansen – not Kris Kristofferson, he’d have been singing.

  Chris was a pretty solid performer who went on to win the Southern area title, but by now I was a bit less ring-rusty so I just about managed to pull through. I still wasn’t fully fit, so I had to hold him a lot in the last round – I needed something to lean on by then, anyway. I know Chris didn’t think I’d won it, but he had a head as big as Bournemouth and I couldn’t miss it. Either way, once I’d staggered out of the ring at the end of that fight I knew the game was up. As soon as I won, I retired.

  Stanley Kubrick used some of the old warehouses up that way to film his Vietnam movie Full Metal Jacket a few years later. The funny thing about that was that we always used to know Dagenham as ‘The ’Nam’, anyway, so a war story about a bad night down there – which there were plenty of, as that place was almost as bad as Beirut – was always a ’Nam flashback.

  That last fight was it for me as far as boxing was concerned. Although I still enjoyed socialising with people from the fight game, the only time I put m
y gloves on again was for a long boxing sequence in the ITV series Fox, which I’ll come back to a bit later on. Once I was with Elaine I didn’t need to get in the ring to take a bit of punishment any more, anyway. All I had to do was come home late. And when she’d come for me with those verbal volleys, there was no time to put my head-guard on.

  Not long after Scum was finished, I got a last-minute call from the producers saying the film was being shown in Cannes and they needed me and Alan out there quick. They couldn’t get us on a normal flight, so they’d chartered a little three-seater to get us from Gatwick to Nice.

  We must’ve looked a right odd couple on that runway. I know what I was wearing, because I recently found a photo taken just before I left. I was modelling a smart college-boy look with a crisp pair of cream Sta-Prest, brown brogues, a pale green linen shirt and a Pringle-type jumper, topped off with some nice blond highlights in my hair (well, it was nearly the eighties). By way of contrast, Alan was probably the unsmartest man in the world. I had a great time with him, but he wouldn’t know how to put a bit of clobber on if you paid him.

  On that occasion he was wearing cowboy boots and three-quarter-length flared jeans with a crusty roll-neck jumper, and a velvet jacket with a little tear at the back. His hair was all curly and it didn’t look like it’d seen a comb in a while, never mind a blond highlight. Factor in our very different accents – his Scouse and my London – and it was obvious we weren’t brothers.

  Alan never gave a fuck about money or success. After Scum he got offered six movies out in LA, including The Omen II. He was sitting in a shed down the bottom of someone’s garden out there, trying to work out what to do, then he just said, ‘I can’t have this’, and came home. He shunned Hollywood to make the documentary-type films that he really believed in back in the UK instead. All power to the man – he was another Ken Loach as far as I was concerned.