If you guessed I’ve always been a bit of a scallywag, then you’d have guessed right. In fact, I was acting up when I first met a beautiful girl called Tanya Lamont.
We both grew up in Watford: me, on the edge of a council estate, Tanya right bang in the middle of one – 75 Gaddesden Crescent.
Tanya Lamont’s childhood was secure and happy.
She was born on Thursday 14 April 1966 into an evening blanketed with a late-season, thick snow. The flakes fell all day across southern England, and by the time Tanya was born – 10.15 p.m. – 15 centimetres of the white stuff had settled across Watford.
In those days, first children were delivered in hospital, an honour bestowed on Tans’ elder brother, Shane, but when a second child was ready to appear, you had it at home, no questions asked. Her mum, Maureen, had been to the doctor that morning before the snow had gotten heavy and he’d told her she was in labour; the midwife arrived at their house on Ganders Ash in Watford that evening at 9.30.
Lou, Tans’ dad, was watching football on Sportsview on the telly in the living room. Forty-five minutes later his daughter was born in the adjoining dining room, was wrapped in a blanket and handed to him. She was a big baby, 8 pounds 12 ounces. Maureen and Lou hadn’t known what the gender would be, but quickly landed on Tanya for a name. The footie over, Lou watched the boxing with his newborn in his arms.
In June that year, the growing family moved to Gaddesden Crescent and by the start of 1967 Tanya Lamont was already walking. Shane, three years older, adored his sister, and she adored him right back. Lou and Maureen and Shane and Tanya were an unusually close family and they’d stay that way for the rest of Tanya’s life.
It quickly became apparent that Tanya was a special and very interesting child. Shane remembers her sitting in the coal bunker out the back of their house with just her nappy on, merrily chewing on hunks of anthracite. When the coalman arrived, someone in the family would have to run out to check Tanya wasn’t in there before he dumped the coal. Sometimes her mum would find her covered in soot, black all over, happy as Larry.
Little Tanya Lamont had about her a kind of magic; she was kind and inquisitive, and fearless, and strikingly beautiful; she wore a leotard non-stop so that she could practise her gymnastics at a moment’s notice. She’d do backward somersaults in the living room and, as they grew older, she and her friends would use the low walls on the Gaddesden estate as a balance beam.
Gaddesden was one of those places where everyone knew everyone else and everyone looked out for everyone else. All the houses had three bedrooms, and everyone had a bunch of kids. To her dying day, Tanya stayed friends with many members of her group of friends from the Gaddesden estate – the Gadd Gang, as it was known. The Gadd Gang would do plays and skits and pantomimes, and make Shane be the stagehand. Tanya would dress up in her mother’s clothes (Shane is adamant he wasn’t made to do the same!).
Gaddesden Crescent was filled with kind people who would look out for each other’s kids; in fact, it was a fine place to be born, in the middle of Britain, in the middle of the Swinging Sixties, and just ten weeks before England won the World Cup.
At five years old, Tanya happily toddled off to Lea Farm Infant School – Maureen and Lou waved her off and she barely looked back. She loved school; the place really was built on an old farm (back when it was a farm Maureen and her friends used to hop the fence and nick the eggs) and was a lovely place to go every day. Tanya was a good student and was such a talented young actress that she was picked to be in all the plays – she was Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, and, somehow, Cleopatra.
But what really stood out about Tans from a very early age was her ability to love and to love unconditionally. If Tanya loved you – and I was lucky enough to experience this for nearly three decades – then she held back nothing. Her mum describes her as having some sort of ‘flair’, too, a specialness that everyone noticed. She wasn’t a spiritual person, but she was certainly different from the other girls. She was very perceptive – maybe it was her Irish background, sprinkling some faerie dust on her. Whatever it was, that fierceness of love never left her.
The first person outside of Lou, Maureen, and Shane on whom she bestowed this love was Lou’s dad, Grandad Tommy. By all reports, Tommy was a very wise man, very steady. A veteran of the Second World War, Tommy Lamont had survived everything Hitler had thrown at him before returning to his hometown of Ballymoney, Northern Ireland. In the late forties, Tommy, his wife Ella and their only child, Lou, had relocated to Ganders Ash in Watford to work at the nearby De Havilland factory (which is now the Warner Bros. studios in Leavesden) and by the time Tanya came along, Lou’s Irish accent was fading.
Tanya got a lot of her character from her Grandad Tommy. He was a very genuine man, and they adored each other. But tragedy was to strike. One day in 1978, Ella had waved Tommy off to work from their house on Ganders Ash, but before he’d even reached High Road, the next street over, Tommy Lamont had fallen face first into the pavement; he’d had a massive and fatal heart attack at the age of 69. Tanya was 12 and inconsolable. The heart of someone so close to her had failed; before another decade had passed, her own was to fail, too.
But before tragedy struck, a happy 1960s had quietly turned into a happy 1970s. Like so many families in the 1970s, the Lamonts looked forward to their week (and later their fortnight) by the sea each summer. They’d picked a town called St Osyth, a few miles west of Clacton-on-Sea. There, in a caravan on the Bel Air Chalet Estate, Maureen and her sister and the kids played on the beach by day, and at night they’d all go to the clubhouse where 50 pence would get the ladies a half pint of lager and the kids a bottle of pop. One year, a lovely hippy-dippy family showed up next door to the Lamonts and Tans, ever the seeker, became very close to them, holding deep conversations about spiritual things. They taught her to meditate and chant and gave her a copy of the New Age classic, Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
But Tans was also obsessed, like so many other teens and pre-teens, by matters less spiritual, like David Cassidy, and like so many young girls, horses.
At the time, there were TV shows on like White Horses and Black Beauty, and Tans never missed them. Tanya had this dream of having her own horse and riding it through Montana, as free as could be – although through Garston Park and up the hill into the long grass would have to do. She always thought she was in an episode of Little House on the Prairie. The sun was her thing; a sunny, spring day was her idea of heaven.
And then her dad became her superhero when he brought Persephone home on her twelfth birthday.
Persephone was a big horse for a 12-year-old – at least 15 hands. Tanya’s dad had done a bit of this and a bit of that and had gotten the money together to make his daughter’s greatest dream come true. Tans couldn’t believe her eyes; she didn’t sleep for days after the horse showed up, and from that day on her family barely saw her – she was always off with Persephone, grooming, feeding, mucking out, and riding riding riding.
Her dad had organized a spot up the road in a field to graze the beast, but that didn’t stop Tanya riding it down Gaddesden Crescent whenever she could. The neighbours would go potty – Mr Kimba across the road from number 75, who was known locally as a right case – or, as Maureen once described him, ‘a miserable old bugger’ – was particularly unhappy about this massive beast wandering down the centre of his street and once chased her with his walking stick right across Garston Park. But nothing, not even an angry old dodderer, stopped Tanya riding Persephone wherever she wanted.
She’d even ride it along the A405; I can’t imagine what car drivers thought when they saw this young girl on top of this big horse on the North Orbital, going past the Three Horseshoes and into Garston Park. It can’t have been legal, but then, I knew Tanya – when she had something in her mind, she did it, and that was that.
After about six months of riding, the summer of 1978 arrived, and Tanya and Persephone were inseparable. While most people were lining up to see Grease, Satu
rday Night Fever or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Tanya was astride Persephone in the narrow streets of Watford. Except for one afternoon, when Tanya briefly went missing and Persephone got stuck in Maureen’s kitchen.
Tanya had, yet again, and in the face of the neighbours’ complaints, ridden Persephone like a Commanche to 75 Gaddesden Crescent so her friends could coo and stroke and maybe get a ride on the huge brute. Tanya had parked Persephone in the back garden, where the sweet thing decided to do its bit and nibble the long grass down to an acceptable length, as horses will (she may or may not have also eaten some roses from the next door’s garden). Tanya went off to fetch her friends, at which point Maureen thought it would be a good idea to offer the animal a carrot to distract her from the roses. There was a big bag of them just inside the kitchen, so Tanya’s mum reached in and got her the veg – but Persephone, clearly with an eye for the main chance, swallowed the carrot sharpish and decided to head up the two big concrete steps and into the kitchen for the rest of the bag.
At which point, Mrs Maureen Lamont had a 15-hand Arabian horse in her kitchen. And no daughter in sight.
Horses do what horses want, especially when they’re stuck in a kitchen in Watford. The poor thing’s head pretty much reached the ceiling, and Maureen, and Shane, who had now appeared from the living room, had no idea how to get the horse back out into the garden. There was no turning the thing around – horses don’t like reverse gear all that much – and the two big concrete steps were two steps too far for the nag. And, even without that impediment, there was still the little matter of neither Shane nor his mum knowing the correct clucks to make reverse happen. Tanya might have known, but Tanya was nowhere to be found.
It was then Shane had the brilliant idea that instead of trying to reverse the horse, maybe it made sense to lead it through the house by the nose and out the front door. The horse, now filled with a bag of carrots, didn’t seem to mind – but to repeat, with the horse now filled with carrots, time was of the essence, because any moment Persephone might be donating a heap of something to grouchy Mrs Nicell next door for what was left of her roses.
There was no time to waste – Shane held a carrot and his mum pushed the horse’s arse. At first, Persephone seemed perfectly comfortable in the kitchen and refused to budge. Shane swung the carrot to and fro and Maureen heaved from the rear. Eventually, the horse reluctantly started to move, slowly and heavily through the tight hallway towards the closed front door. Shane got it open just as the animal was about to get stuck near the stairs. There, lo and behold, on the other side of the now-opened front door, stood Roger, the milkman, who was at that moment delivering two pints and a bottle of pop.
Being a British milkman, Roger must have seen everything at least once, and probably prided himself, as all British milkmen do, on not being impressed by anything. Without so much as a raised eyebrow, Roger took in the scene – a pimply 16-year old boy waving a carrot, behind which a 15-hand Arabian loomed, behind which a red-faced woman was pushing and clucking fit to burst – and merely said ‘Alright there, Mrs.’ (Referring, presumably, to Maureen Lamont, not Persephone.) With that, Roger put down the pints, turned on his heel, and sauntered back to his electric milk truck, without another word or even a look back.
With the milkman out of the way, Shane and his mum managed to squeeze the horse out through the door and onto the path, where it knocked over the pints before it resumed grazing, this time on the front lawn. Eventually, Tanya arrived back with her friends, none the wiser, and ready to continue the most magical summer of her young life.
Later that magical summer, Persephone made another visit to Maureen’s kitchen – because once you invite a horse into a kitchen, it’s pretty much going to believe the invitation is an open one. Again, carrots, but this time, a heaping pile of leavings, too, right by the fridge. And again, no reverse gear available, so off down the hallway towards the front door, pausing only to stick its head into the living room in case there were carrots in there, too. There were no carrots, only a visiting TV repair man, who had heard the clatter of hooves and had looked up just in time to see Persephone’s head appear in the doorway.
‘Fucking hell!’ he shouted in abject fear, proving, if further proof was needed, that if you ever find yourself in a tight spot and you need someone to stay calm and back you up, pick the milkman, not the TV repairman.
Summer 1978 was also when I met Tanya Lamont for the first time.
I went to a school that’s no longer there – Langleybury, a big old comprehensive which used to be in the north-west corner of Watford; she went to the Francis Combe Academy, about three miles east of Langleybury. But it could have been a million miles away to be honest: ours was known as the ‘prison on the hill’. It was so unlikely that the two of us would ever have met – literal worlds apart – that is, until fate threw us together in Watford’s Whippendell Woods.
On weekends I’d sometimes go to a rec centre called Sun Postal Sports and Social Club. Right on the edge of Whippendell Woods, Sun Sports, as we called it, had a cricket pitch and a football field and a bar and a meeting hall and all that – the kind of place people go to have their weddings. We kids would hang out there and run around sometimes, climb trees, all the usual things kids do while their parents are busy playing cricket or having a drink.
One weekend, when I was about 13, I’d gone to Sun Sports with my mate Russell and a few other friends and, unbeknownst to me, Tans – who was about 12 – was there with a couple of her friends, as one of their dads was in the cricket team. The two groups were messing around together, climbing trees and all that, and I can remember her so vividly, still, to this very day: long hair, beautiful thick eyebrows, kind smile, reserved but confident. But even then, I knew she was so far out my league that it was like she was from a different planet.
So, faced with a girl who I knew would never waste an ounce of interest on me, I did what any self-respecting 13-year-old boy thinking about girls for pretty much the first time would do – I started showing off. Behind the clubhouse at Sun Sports there was a fenced-off area filled with crates of beer and pop and at some point Tanya Lamont must have said she wanted a drink because, before anyone could stop me, I’d climbed over the fence and nicked her a can of Tizer, and that was it.
(On the Keith Barret Show in 2005, Tans told Rob Brydon a bit of a different story: ‘Vin had just broken into the bar,’ she said, ‘climbed over a fence; all the bottles of beer had tar on, so he was smashing the beers and trying to drink them … Then he walked round the corner and I said to my friend, “Oh, who’s that boy?”’
This is just another of the reasons my heart is broken – I can’t compare stories with her any more. I either stole her a can of pop, or I was breaking the tops off beer bottles. I guess I’ll never know.)
I didn’t know it then – how could I? – but that was the start of the most important thing that ever happened to me. Forget playing for Wimbledon or Lock Stock or Dave Bassett or Guy Ritchie. Yes, those things have given me an amazing life, and I’m grateful for all of them – but I owe the most crucial relationship of my life to Sun Sports and the makers of Tizer (or perhaps bottles of beer).
I don’t remember a single thing we said to each other, but I still remember trying to be all cocky. I wonder what she saw back then … I’ve thought since that in my worst moments, Tans has always been able to see past the fights and the bullshit and the bad publicity and the stupid things I’ve done, to the 13-year-old in me, the kid before the hurt and the fame and the drink kicked in.
Because I may have half-inched a Tizer, but that was as bad as it ever got back then. I honestly wouldn’t even nick someone’s apple off a tree. I knew it was wrong. To my mind, there are ‘rogues’ – lads that’ll have a fight and things like that – and then there are slippery fuckers who are thieves and deceitful. I was never that. That just wasn’t my game. If the football went on the school roof, ten lads might go up there to get the ball, no problem, but the one time I w
ent, I’d get caught. That was me.
But other than the Tizer incident, to impress Tans, I was never a thief. Well, except once, and it was another crucial moment in my young life.
When I was about seven years old, I found out that my dad kept a stash of cash in his office, in a drawer. For days I fought the urge to take some, but in the end my desire to be popular with my mates took over and I started to pinch a few tenners here and there to buy sweets for everyone. Eventually, my parents noticed the loss and called the police; it didn’t take long for two and two to be put together, as both my teacher at primary school and the local sweetshop owner had noticed I was suddenly awash with moolah.
My dad’s reaction still haunts me; his disappointment was matched by a hiding he gave me that I can still feel. I was also grounded for the entire summer; it was 1972, and while everyone else was out playing footy, I was locked in like a skinhead Rapunzel watching the Munich Olympics (I still hate the javelin).
What happened that summer stuck with me; I knew what I’d done was all wrong, and I was never tempted to thieve again. Instead, I got up to other kinds of mischief. This, for example: both of the school buses – the one for Langleybury and the one for Francis Combe – used to park behind each other up in Bedmond where we lived. Some mornings, just for a change, I’d get on the Francis Combe bus instead of the Langleybury one and go into the wrong school. I had two good mates, Mark and Paul, who went to Francis Combe, and I’d pretend I was their cousin from Devon, even though I had a Watford accent. I’d spend the day there, going to class with them and playing football.
I don’t remember if I saw Tans at Francis Combe or not, or if she saw me.
I can’t ask her now. I can’t ask her anything.
Despite me stealing money from him, in my early years my dad and I were really good – we’d go fishing and shooting together, and we were actually a close family. When I was about seven, we moved from Newhouse Crescent, north of Watford, to Lower Paddock Road in Oxhey, south of Watford centre. At around that time, my younger sister, Ann, had had a bone marrow transplant, and the experience had drawn us all together … or so I thought.
Lost Without You: Loving and Losing Tanya Page 2
