Still Breathing

by Donnelly, Anthony; Donnelly, Christopher; Spence, Simon

  I was into football … I just didn’t go to school. I left school at thirteen. The family would be sat in the front room and I would literally run through the front door with the police behind me. I would go out the back door, jump over the fence, run in to next door’s – Anne and Jimmy Heydon’s – and just stay in their house. They would make me a cup of tea. It was that normal. At quite an early age the police knew us.

  Christopher: I was doing the same sort of thing but at a much younger age because I’d seen Anthony doing it. I was out doing a lot of things and quite clever at keeping it away from my mum and dad. I very rarely got caught, and we were out thieving every day. They knew I was up to something because my best friend, Stephen [Yates], would always get caught (Stephen would freeze at the sight of a police dog) and we were inseparable. The police became an everyday occurrence. Whoever they would come for we’d all bail out. One time when they came for me, my mum kept them busy while I got out of the bedroom window and down the drainpipe. Of course it was down to the family name – they’d been coming for my dad for years and years. Now they were coming for Anthony and me.

  I used to hitch it to London when United were playing at Wembley. My dad would give me a fiver and a fork or a knife and say, ‘If anyone tries or says anything, stab them!’ I used to get the bus to Altrincham, go drinking, get a train to Knutsford, more drinking, go to Knutsford services and hitch it from there. I’ve been arrested for all sorts of things but I’ve not got a conviction.

  The first thing I ever got nicked for – I was ten – was for robbing a bike from the airport. We used to go to Manchester Airport, my pals and me, and get on the roof of the airport. We’d watch the planes and mess about. One day there were three or four bikes there but they weren’t locked up so we just took the bikes. We got back to Wythenshawe and the police pulled us, took us to the police station. My mum and dad had to come and get us out. My dad was taking the piss; it wasn’t exactly the Great Train Robbery. We had to go back and get a caution. If I’d gone out to steal the bikes I’d never have got caught. I wouldn’t have been peddling down the main road.

  Tracey: You’d get a phone call and you’d be told you’re going to get turned over. We’d all have to go for a walk, go to sit in our mum and dad’s friends’ houses, no questions asked. The police would come for my dad and he’d be eating his tea. He’d take his tea in the back of the van with him and he’d be like, ‘See you later,’ and we would just carry on with what we were doing.

  I got a Saturday job when I was twelve. I used to get my wages and buy my mum a box of chocolates and Chris something to wear. He was always crazy about his clothes. I loved buying him stuff. Mum tried her hardest to get me to school but I wasn’t interested. So what I used to do was sneak in school in the morning, get the register, put my mark in, and go off for the day. I used to wag it and go on to the Civic Centre, or the museums and galleries on Oxford Road … they were great places to hide and I figured I wasn’t completely wasting my time.

  Anthony: We went on holiday with my mum and dad to Corfu in 1978. My dad was running out of money because he was spending like mad. I was wearing a Sex Pistols T-shirt, and a pair of bang-on trainers. I left my mum and dad at the pool and headed for town. I’m an active criminal now. I took Tracey and Chris and made them keep dog outside the shop. True to form, I had a sneak around, found the money and took it. Tracey got a treat and then I went and bought a load of Lacoste from the Lacoste shop. I also loaned my dad some cash, as he was short of money, to pay for the remainder of the holiday. It was bizarre. Chris is looking at all this going on. I was never questioned about where the money came from.

  We were way beyond our years. The lads I had seen in the plastic sandals and the skinny jeans at the gigs were a lot older. The football hooligans I hung out with were twenty, twenty-odd, and I was thirteen. Chris and I were in the thick of everything. We were making our money – our ill-gotten gains. We would be out purchasing the clothes with the money from wherever we got it from.

  There used to be a shop called Paris Dix-Sept on Deansgate [in Manchester city centre] where Martini jumpers were eighty quid. The owner had a white Rolls-Royce. He was nice to us. But, again, we were fuckers, scratching his car on the way out. We were not nice people. I was driving a 1300 Morris with a flick haircut, and wearing the best gear – for instance, a pair of Marco Polo jeans, a Martini jumper, Lacoste polo, a pair of Kickers or Fiorucci, college shoes, FU jeans, Innega cords, Farah slacks, sheepskins and Sovereign rings. Going out to the youth club and robbing sportswear shops on the Civic Centre, every shop, anything and everything.

  Girls were now firmly on my mind, as well as football. ‘Teresa the Pleaser’ – it’s self-explanatory. I went round at midnight. She let me in her back bedroom. I was just getting on with doing the business when her dad shouted from the next room, ‘Teresa! What’s going on?’ I was that thin I got on the window ledge between the curtains and the window. I knew I fitted perfectly because every night I used to sneak out of my mum’s house. Her dad got out of bed and started walking to the room so I jumped out of the top window. There was a kid called Lunno nicking their double gates. I actually helped him pick up one of the gates and carried it to his house with him. They fitted perfectly. Lunno’s driveway looked miles better with his new gates.

  Our little gang was christened the ‘Benchill Boys’. Growing up on an estate, we all knew each other from the age of three. We knew everything about one another – whose parents had split up, who was getting beat up at home, whose brothers were in prison. That gang mentality – it was needing each other. I was fourteen [1979] when I saw my friend get killed. He was my mentor, Coxy [Anthony Cox], the person in the group I looked up to. He was tough as old boots and would fight with anyone. He was only seventeen but he could have been forty. Everywhere we went our crew were blacklisted. I was the worst out of the bunch. We gate crashed a party in Northenden and as I walked in a kid put a cig out on my chin. So we started fighting with him. We were heading back to our area and the police came into Wythenshawe Park and chased us all. Coxy went across the motorway and he got hit in lane two by a taxi. I was a minute behind him, I heard the bang and I got there and my mate Beano was sat with him on the road but he’d gone, he was dead. It said in the newspaper Coxy died on the way to hospital but we knew he was dead at the scene. There were some people in a van that were on their way to sing Gospel and they had to slow down. They saw the accident and they screamed, proper screamed. That was kind of a turning point for my pals and me.

  Tracey: At Benchill, we had what we called the parlour in our house that was always mine – where I had my music. Then my dad brought a pool table home, a proper pub pool table, so everybody from the estate was in our house every night playing pool. It was devastating when Coxy died. He had always been in the parlour with us playing pool, we missed him. He was the first of many of our friends who died young.

  Anthony: We’d have twenty or thirty of our little firm in the house, my mum cooking dinner for everybody. There were always people living with us, our pals. If there were any strays they lived with us. We had one pal living with us for five years; he’s a coach at United now. Another kid, Julian Bradshaw, lived with us for a time. We all loved him. It didn’t matter what he did away from the door, he never came back to our door and did it there. Julian was eventually shot dead on his eighteenth in Moss Side, blasted twice with a shotgun. It was a really early shooting in Manchester – one of the first [1987]. On another occasion a few kids we knew took Temazepam and broke into the butcher’s. The police found them chopping meat with white coats and the butcher’s hats on. They had thrown a bin through the window to get in. There was blood and guts everywhere and they were just chopping meat up, drooling on Mogadons and Tamazepam, barbiturates. Nothing shocked you.

  This was a hardcore council estate. There were a lot of lads having problems but they always knew there was a bed at our place. Anybody that absconded from Rose Hill [remand home for juvenile offenders in
Northenden] would ring our number as soon as they got out asking for me or Chris. Our number was posted on the wall at the home next to the phone – sort of like a helpline: need to escape, call the Donnellys. I was forever giving clothes away to them – kids were from Blackley, Collyhurst and Moss Side. That’s how we met a lot of friends from all over Manchester.

  Christopher: Everyone who ran away from Rose Hill came to our house. They knew they could get some bus fare. The Sunday dinner was in a pressure cooker, the kitchen full of steam, me mum squealing like a cat singing Frankie Valli all day and Anthony and me coming in and out with pals and getting extra dinner made for friends. There was always enough food. Our dad would come home from the meat market with meat by the tonne, or salmon, whatever was going in Manchester. That’s when we started meeting up with other little groups like our own – kids from Woodhouse Park or Sharston and north Manchester. They were into the same thing and we started interlinking and crossing over. Our gang got bigger and bigger. This is the time when we would rob absolutely anything – the clubman, the coal man, fucking anything. We’d all go to football and then to Brewster’s [club] in town. I was going to Brewster’s at thirteen. On the way home you’d go to the Reno, an after-hours club in Moss Side. Our cousins would come into town so our friends would be meeting with their friends. But our immediate thing was still us and based around Wythenshawe.

  Anthony: We were becoming more popular. They would come from all over to our house. It was becoming a place to go. Come round to ours and drink beer and play pool. Once the door was closed in that parlour we got up to all sorts. It was our club. You’d come home round the back garden and there’d be thirty or forty people sat there, and in the house the select few. The police were always at the house for someone. It was not uncommon to see the police coming down our path.

  Christopher: I sprayed on the wall as you entered the estate, ‘This Is Benchill, Enter At Your Own Risk’. That was on there for ten years. A bloke pulled over when we sprayed it. He opened his car window and said, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ We stuck the can of spray in his car and sprayed him in the face.

  I used to go to a pal’s house, usually after court, to get stoned and listen to Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa. When it got to that bit on the Pink Floyd album, ‘Would you like to see me fly,’ my pal used to jump out of the top window and come flying past the window downstairs to make us laugh. He did it one night and landed on the fence … busted his balls. Then his trick became showing you his giant, bruised bollocks for a month.

  I’d go to school, sign in and then go out causing mischief. DER, the shop, did rental TVs and videos for people to pay on the weekly. They used to park their vans up doing their deliveries. We’d be monitoring quite a lot of DER vans – looking inside to see if there were videos and tellies. Me and my best pal Stephen [Yates] nicked this video and we wanted to get rid of it – you could get £250 for a video then. Stephen said, ‘Sell it to your brother. He’s connected.’ We gave Anthony the video but as we passed it to him he shouted, ‘Police,’ and threw it in a bin and ran off with us. He doubled back and got the video, sold it and kept the money. He went and bought this white Martini racing jumper, thinking he was the bee’s knees with his flick haircut. So we all agreed, me and my pals, to leather him. I attacked him and they just stood there and he battered me up and down the road.

  After the football we’d come into town for the night out. We’d go into Woolworths first and they used to have ends of lines, proper old raw denim Levi’s and Wranglers, not flares – semi-flares. We’d change the labels and price tags and buy them all. I remember having a pair of jumbo cord Wrangler semi-flares. That was not robbing, that was just getting some jeans while we’re in town at a reduced rate – I mean, we all love a bargain.

  Anthony: Whatever the trend, we weren’t following the trend. We were starting the trend. We were getting the brands, the labels. The firm that was from Liverpool and the firm that was from Manchester were going away to Europe following football and stealing internationally, bringing back watches and clothes. There was nothing here. The boys from the council estates from Liverpool and Manchester were looking for greener grass. You had two different squads all chasing the best brands and it was all about who could outdo each other. I remember Chris going to Italy when he was twelve on holiday with my mum and dad and bringing me back a Marco Polo sweatshirt and a pair of Fruit of the Loom jeans and Fiorucci sandals. It was a very, very small amount of people involved. If Liverpool came up to Manchester for the football it would be like a fashion show. You would have the absolute nuts on – they would be able to spot you and you would be able to spot them. Then we would go to war with one another. They put it down as ‘Casuals’ but it seems to me that was only a term that’s come out with nostalgia years later. I never knew any other firms in football, not personally. They were all naming themselves like the ICF [West Ham’s Inter City Firm]; that was never for us, we were undercover.

  Christopher: I’d go to Old Trafford with my own pals. We’d be knocking around with the main hooligans but we were very young, just coming through, on the fringes. They started getting into doing the tickets [buying and selling] at the football. I did for a bit but I couldn’t get into it – it seemed like hard work to me, stood there asking people for spares all day so they could sell them on – although some of them made a lot of dough. My immediate friends and me would be out helping ourselves instead. It just seemed easier.

  Anthony: It was standard for all the boys from our estate to get to the football early on a Saturday afternoon and buy tickets at face value or less and sell them for more. Chris didn’t fancy it. I did. I’d do anything for a few quid. I was there. Then we moved up a gear and went to a pop show and started buying and selling tickets. I was queuing outside Piccadilly Records – buying 200 tickets. We’d take kids from our estate and make them queue up to get their full allowance. It was an industry. We’d be going overseas doing it. Then it was the merchandise – another revenue stream. I already did the badge board. It went to a poster, then to a T-shirt and a programme. Before you know it, you had an industry. We did the Royal Wedding [July 1981, Charles and Diana]. We worked a programme for that. This is when we were getting an indication of how big the merchandising is – filling in, working for someone else. You’d get to London and be given 500 books and have to return £1.50 per book but you’d be selling them for £4. As things progressed we’d be overseas stealing anyway, so let’s go and sell T-shirts at that gig and on the way home open a jeweller’s window and take the watches, take a diamond ring – then stay in a hotel, creep into the room where the safe is and rifle it. We were like the police force; we didn’t have any time off.

  In 1981 I went away stealing with my mates. They’d been to Turin for the football [1980 European Championships] and they were arrested for violence, but while they were there they had some money away. So they said to me let’s go away stealing and head for Italy. I was only sixteen. We were sort of aiming for a holiday and thieving throughout the holiday, as opposed to going on a working holiday to Austria or Switzerland that would be pure theft. We wanted to go and have break. We ended up at the port of Brindisi. We were not making any money in Italy so I said to the boys, ‘I know where there’s money in Corfu,’ because I’d robbed a shop in Corfu while I was on holiday with my mum and dad years earlier. For some strange reason in my mind I thought because I took the money from the middle of the pile it would have gone unnoticed, or maybe they thought it was a discrepancy. So we bagged up. I was always the one who used to do the villainy. I was very, very able, very confident and game. So if there was a tiny widow I could push through it. I would be sent in. We now head for Corfu to rob this place. The ferry ride was full of Italians and Greeks and it smelt of good food. On the top deck there were hippies playing guitars. We’d never seen anything like it. This is the life … it was a dreamscape. We were having all these new experiences – going abroad stealing broadened our horizons.

  We got of
f the boat, hired motorbikes, drove to the place in Corfu town, went to the store, the same box was there and I opened it, but this time I took every penny. Then we went to stay in Gouvia. We went there by coach with a load of partygoers. The coach driver left his takings on the dashboard of the coach. I nicked the wallet and the bag was full with all the ticket money. There was 500 quid in the wallet. I had to go back in to pull the older ones out and say, ‘Listen, I’ve just robbed the coach.’ I had to hand the wallet to the leader of our group. They bought me a spaghetti dinner for nicking it and the money paid for the rest of the trip. Eating spaghetti in the restaurant without my mum and dad, paying for the waiter to serve us, was bliss.

  Christopher: On another occasion Anthony and co went away and when they came back they got a taxi to Royals [a pub in Wythenshawe]. As they pulled up to Royals, which was a massive building, one of the lads went to Anthony, ‘There’s your Chris.’ Anthony’s looked up and I was coming down a drainpipe, four floors up, with a telly between my legs.

  Anthony: It was the done thing to travel to Europe, to sneak about and rifle safes. It was like being a professional criminal for a lot of people. There was a group of extremely talented lads doing it. My forte was being able to identify where there was money, being able to smell money. They used to call me The Count off Sesame Street as a kid, count the money. The elite wasn’t fighting at the matches. We were more advanced than that. We were not thugs; we were extremely well-dressed international entrepreneurs.

  3

  SWAG

  Anthony: For my sixteenth birthday [1981] I got weed and speed as a present from a family friend. Whether the objective was to sell it and return money I don’t know. I presumed it was, but it ended up getting consumed. My dad would try and get me to work. He left me to run the yard and I back chatted him one day. He told me to ‘fuck off’ so I told him to ‘fuck off’ and as I’m walking off up the road he hit me on the head, from about thirty yards, with a half brick. He knocked me out in front of his pals. It was a cracking shot, though.