by Lee Evans
Their ranks contained kids of all different sizes, large, small, young and old. They’d even brought a few girls along as spectators. They stood at the back or out on the edges, chewing down on gum like cows grazing. Others were puffing away on smokes, cheer-leading and egging on some of the hard nuts to get stuck in.
‘Go on, Darr, hit that one there! Go on, Darren!’ When the boys in the group started edging forward, it prompted more goading. Various voices here and there in the crowd began picking out targets amongst us. ‘Hit that little bastard over there, Kev,’ said a voice. ‘Let’s ’ave ’em,’ shouted another.
One of the girls pointed at me: ‘You!’ I looked at her. ‘What you staring at, eh?’
I tried to answer. ‘You just said “you”. I thought you meant me.’
But she jumped back at me. ‘He’s staring at me again. Stop staring at me. Get that weirdo, Barry, get him!’
‘But you keep talking to me …’
Then hammer-head-flat-face fella stepped out in front of the crowd and bowled over to my mate Colin, a short, stocky kid with lively fuzzy hair combed into submission down each side of his head. His boyish face had a lovely button nose. Colin wasn’t considered much of a fighter at school, but this night would propel him into folklore because he was just about to launch himself at claw-hammer kid. It was hammer time.
It was a ridiculous conversation that started the whole thing off.
‘You ’it mow brovver last week, dincha, mate?’ the Hammer Head – the boy with the brain of a tool – ground out menacingly through his teeth. After listening intently, Colin breathed a huge sigh of relief – we all did. It was obvious this was just a simple misunderstanding.
Colin turned to look back at us. He smiled and flapped his hands around as if to assure us we had all worried unnecessarily and he would explain everything. So he turned confidently back to the hammer-head fella. I have to admit, I thought Colin did a pretty good job explaining: ‘I wasn’t ’ere last week, mate, none of us were.’
We all thought that might do it, but then Colin was asked a question that probably the top negotiators at the UN would have struggled to answer. Hammer Guy stared Colin right in the eye and growled: ‘Yeah, bu’ if you was ’ere, you wood-a-itt-im, wun’t cha, eh?’ There was simply no way out of that one. How can you guarantee something that never even happened?
It was inevitable. Colin looked briefly over his shoulder again at us and raised both hands in disbelief. ‘I don’t believe this,’ he whispered to himself. He looked terrified but was resigned, as we all were, to the impending pummelling. So Colin simply shrugged his shoulders and did something I’d never seen him do before. Without warning, he shouted, probably to rally his strength, then lashed out. Before you could cry ‘Bundle!’, Colin was flinging punches everywhere. Oblivious to his own safety, he sank into the heaving mass of flying fists, the kicks just swallowing him in. And then he was gone.
This was it. The inevitable had happened. FIGHT!
As Colin was enveloped in the ocean of aggro, I was unable to rally anything. My arse had got in first, already rallying everything in my body to the back door. It all turned to slow motion. Just like that, a giant wave of kids rose up and swept over my head, accompanied by shouts of ‘Let’s ’ave ’em!’
The immense tide of bodies cut out the street light in an instant. Suddenly, I couldn’t see anything at all.
Just darkness.
22. The Running Man
After the Basildon Brigade had route-marched all over me, I staggered to my feet. There seemed no point in lying in the middle of the road waiting for them all to come back. Now I was up, I was able to gather my thoughts, my equilibrium. I looked around and realized that this had merely been the first wave of attackers. We were still completely surrounded. An unbelievable number of people were sucked into the fever of it all, joining in the beating and being urged on by the roar and excitement of the massed crowd.
It had very quickly descended into unrestrained anger. No one was in control of their feelings – it was clear someone was going to get badly hurt here and, knowing my luck, it was going to be me. No two ways about it, this was a really awful situation. I straightened up and felt a sudden excruciating pain in my back and the top of my legs. I looked up and saw one of my best mates, Pete. He was indefatigable, Pete, and was still going strong. Then the heaving mass of fighting kids parted slightly and out stepped the still-battling Colin, as if from an opening in some curtains made of humans. He was doing well and looked like a bull surrounded by clowns, such was his strength. Colin was still flinging punches and kicks, even though there were boys hanging off his wrists like pompoms. He stumbled around, his legs wide apart, unable to close them as there were kids wrapped around his shins like bells on a Morris dancer’s legs.
I looked around and, most worryingly, I was unable to spot any of my other friends. I panicked: where were they? Everything seemed to have happened so fast. All my mates had disappeared from view. Most likely, they had been flattened by the Basildon mob.
I clambered to my feet in the high street. Once the mob noticed I was up, they turned like a giant monster back towards me. That was when I heard the desperate cry: ‘Run!’ That was it, the fateful moment.
The baying Basildon lads started charging towards me at speed. I was dazed from my earlier beating, so it was taking me a while to work out was going to happen. Surely, I thought, I’ve had enough, haven’t I? From nowhere, one of my other friends, Paul, appeared. Thank God, I’d thought he was lost. He flashed past me, clothes torn, sweat pouring, eyes wild: ‘Lee, run!’
That was all I needed to spark my brain into life again. A big red warning sign flashed across the screen in the control room inside my head, an emergency lever was shunted and I was off faster than a whippet on a Kawasaki 425 strapped to the front of the space shuttle on re-entry. Or so I thought …
My legs wouldn’t move. They were numb, useless. I watched, frustrated, as Paul sprinted off in front of me. I wanted desperately to catch up with him and began to get angry with myself at not being able to move my legs. ‘What’s the matter with them? Why won’t they move?’ The problem was, they had taken such a kicking, it was just too painful – shit, it hurt!
Thwack! I felt a sudden kick to my right thigh. The shock of the blow was excruciating. It was too late. Like a pack of wolves, they were on me. They saw me get up, and I was about to go down again. That must have injected a shot of whatever it is that first made us humans discover we could run really frigging fast when a dinosaur turned up wearing a bib, and carrying a knife and fork and a dinner voucher. I was off faster than that bloke Ben Johnson at the mere mention of a drug test.
I never gave my brain time to even think about the pain. I was cured – thank you, Lord, Hallelujah, it was a miracle! I was so hyped up on adrenaline, I thought, if my legs don’t want to come, then sod them, they can stay here and take another thumping. Me, I’m off.
As I ran, I felt no pain. I was running fast, bang, bang, bang, one foot in front of the other. I never even looked back. Lungs burning with a fire hotter than a furnace, I was sucking air in, then out, in, out, like a piston. Wind rushing through my hair, I felt the refreshing relief of night air cooling the sweat on my skin. It whipped like air con around the inside of my shirt and trapped it like a sail through the gaping hole at the front, the buttons having been popped off during the violent kicking and tugging. My brand new Ben Sherman was now a dirty rag, torn open to the waist. I was the Incredible Hulk, but in reverse.
After I’d been sprinting for so long I felt like I was leaving the Earth’s atmosphere, I began to slow down. I was so tired, I could have dropped right there on the ground and slept the whole night. My body had let go now. It knew, without even looking back. It could sense they had given up the chase. Exhausted and breathing like a steam train, I took a quick glance back over my shoulder and saw Peter and Colin surrounded but still fighting like lions. It
was like General Custer’s Last Stand all over again.
A wave of guilt swept through my battered body. I began to get angry at myself, calling myself names. I had left Pete and Colin behind. They were my friends, I had to go back. But then I thought about how I would certainly get a good kicking. I bent over, resting my hands on my knees, desperately trying to force some oxygen into my lungs. I just didn’t know what to do. Everything that Dad, my brother, my friends had rammed into me was to stand and fight, not to run.
I shouted to Paul up ahead. I’m sure he was feeling the same as me, as he was staring like a madman, his eyes wide open like a couple of portholes. I could see he was in hyper mode; his body wreathed in sweat, he was rocking from one foot to the other.
‘Paul? We got to go back, mate.’ I dropped to my knees in the road.
‘Lee, for God’s sake, there ain’t nothing we can do. I mean, did you see that big bugger at the front?’ He began ranting. I think he must have been in shock because he wasn’t making any sense. He paced from one side of the road to the other, slapping his head, shouting and pointing back at the fighting going on in the distance. ‘What the hell did we do to deserve that? Colin wasn’t ’ere last week, was he?’ Next to Paul was a road sign that read ‘Billericay 5 miles’. ‘We can’t go back there,’ Paul continued. ‘Look at it! We’re just going to get beaten up again.’
I lifted my head, took a look back at Basildon and the illuminated bus stop in the distance, the massive crowd of boys. You could still hear the shouts and cries that always seem to echo through the night air but never the day. I climbed to my feet and looked at Paul. I gazed up and down the road. I didn’t know. That’s the thing with life; whenever there’s a real, proper decision to be made, there’s never anybody around but you. All these people give you loads of bullshit advice about how you should do this and ‘If it was me, I would do that.’ But at the end of the day, it always ends up with just you.
I couldn’t think straight. My head was racing. I was mumbling, ‘I think we’ll have to go back, Paul. We got to go back, mate. Where’s everybody else gone? There’s only Pete and Colin left.’ I started to cry. ‘They ain’t going to make it, if we don’t go back.’
We looked at each other for a moment. I wiped my torn sleeve across my face and sniffed. We both stood up straight, raised our heads and began walking slowly back towards the fight.
But, unfortunately, our heroism wasn’t going to be recognized that evening. After only a few steps, we were spotted by the Basildon Massive. A shout went out across the swirling mass – ‘Get ’em!’ It stopped us in our tracks. We watched as another crowd of boys peeled off and formed a shape like the one you see under a microscope of a cell duplicating itself. Then a separate mass of lads, a few at first but then all of them, was running like a giant tank full pelt up the road towards Paul and me.
That was it.
That was all that was needed to trigger our self-doubt. ‘Run!’ Up went the shout. Again.
We whipped round and ran for home. As we legged it, I looked across at Paul. His face was all creased up, not from the pain of running so hard, but from guilt. I’m sure I had exactly the same look. We knew we had failed, not just our friends, but ourselves. We had run away, I had run away, I had run away when it counted. My head went down and I ran for home.
That incident, that night, is something that will haunt me for the rest of my life, not just because I had to live with the disgrace of it when I faced my friends, but also at home. Even to this day, the guilt from that night sits smugly at the back of my mind, always ready to remind me whenever I feel fear or doubt.
Just recently, I was standing backstage at the Wembley Arena. The crowd were in, the lights were down, the music already playing my intro. It had been billed as a record-breaking show, 10,000 people, the biggest-ever comedy gig by one person. No one in history had ever done it before, they said.
As I stood silently in the middle of the dressing room, as I do before every show, having a quiet little word with the man upstairs, the door was flung open and a member of the stage crew popped his head in. ‘’Ere, you sure you want to do this?’ he asked. ‘It’s massive out there and there’s a heck of a lot of people.’
A tear formed in my eye as I was reminded of that evening when I ran away. I lifted my head and said firmly: ‘Well, I ain’t running away, that’s for sure …’ I passed the confused crew member in the doorway and walked out on to the stage.
There’s no doubt about it, you should always face your fear. Running away is much, much worse, not just for other people, but for you too. And as for poor old Pete and Colin, they ended up tasting nothing but hospital food for the next few weeks.
Not too long after the Battle of Basildon, I did get the chance to redeem myself at the now-notorious Battle of Brighton. We were attacked by a gang of crazed skinheads on the seafront. It was like Quadrophenia all over again. But, I’m very proud to say, this time I stood my ground. I took an absolute pasting, but I didn’t run. I’d learned my lesson.
In the aftermath of the Battle of Brighton, on the way home, I started to think about where I was. I wondered whether I indeed had a contribution to make, not just in my group of mates, but in this life at all. Did I have a role to play, apart from being a fool whom people laughed at?
There was no doubt about it: I was changing. It had altered my perception of what was significant and, most importantly, what wasn’t. I wasn’t interested in the macho campaign to determine who might become the next dominant leader of our group. That wasn’t going to be me, that’s not what I wanted. No, I now knew where I stood all right. I looked around the car at my friends; in the gang, they were all such heroes and I was such a fool. Despite my newfound, street-fighting bravery, I felt I just didn’t fit in with the group any longer. I wondered where I would end up.
I discovered the answer sooner than I’d expected.
23. The Girl on the Bus
Just a week later, I met someone who would change my life forever. But our first meeting did not go well, to be honest.
As a gang, we had gate-crashed a party at the flat of two girls we barely knew. What I did to their new apartment summed up what an aimless cretin I was. Oh, everyone laughed at my antics, yes, it got great laughs, went down a storm, but it made the person I most wanted to impress really angry at me. I did what I did because I liked playing to the crowd, and I was too embarrassed to tell her what I thought of her. What an idiot you are, Lee Evans.
Why wasn’t I able to sit there peacefully and at ease with myself? Why did I find it necessary to disrupt a conventional event? It seemed that the more orthodox a situation was, the more – for some ridiculous, exasperating reason – I’d screw it up. Maybe I have a deep-seated desire to do something daft because of my insecurities, to cover up my lack of confidence. Freud might explain it in that way, although scientifically I may just be a pea brain. I still play the fool – it’s just that they pay me for it these days.
Anyway, back to this girl. She was so beautiful. As soon as she entered the room, I was awestruck, immediately frozen to the spot, unable to move even a muscle. It was as if Cupid himself had struck me with a right-hander across my spot-festooned chops.
She stood in front of me, waving her arms wildly, shouting something. What she was shouting, I couldn’t say; my mind was a complete blank, my whole body numb. I stared as her huge red lips opened and closed. Everything was in slow motion. There was no doubt she was furious with me, and yet her face looked even more beautiful all scrunched up like that. Her perfect eyebrows were crumpled in the middle of her forehead like two caterpillars making love. Her massive brown eyes, the size of saucepan lids, raged at me – it was as if someone had thrown a stone into a calm, dark pond and instantly agitated it. She had a gorgeous figure, easily the match of any of the girls in Mum’s Green Shield Stamp catalogue – well, that was my only reference point at that age.
She stood in the bedroom
doorway, insisting that I would not leave. It was nothing to do with her being attracted to me, of course – quite the reverse. ‘You ain’t going nowhere!’ she shrieked. ‘You are not leaving this friggin’ flat until you clear up all this mess, you utter, utter berk!’
Those were the first words she ever spoke to me. It was not the most auspicious first exchange with the girl who was to become my partner for life. Yes, this adorable, insanely attractive young woman standing there yelling was none other than my beloved future wife, Heather.
Somewhat teary-eyed and shaking with rage, she carried on screaming at me. I can’t tell you here all the other stuff that she shouted at me, in case our daughter reads this book. She thinks her mum never swears. But I know she does – big time – especially when we’re in bed at night, but our daughter doesn’t know about that, either …
Heather didn’t know me at that stage. I was certainly creating an impression in her mind – not a good one, I confess – but at least she wouldn’t forget me in a hurry. I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she stamped her feet in protest at my behaviour.
I couldn’t blame her.
I had, as always, been an absolute wally. Let me explain. Heather’s flatmate earned extra money by curtain-making from home, but she was also a dab hand at making cushions. She had in the corner of her bedroom a big polythene bag of feathers which she used to stuff her cushions. At the party we had gate-crashed, that was simply an irresistible invitation for me to display my little-known skill of aerial diving into piles of feathers. In my humble opinion, this should be an Olympic event, but no one knows about it yet. It’s a simple concept and wouldn’t cost much to set up. It’s something Seb Coe might want to look into for the forthcoming 2012s.
