I was on the streets from the age of about 12 or 13. I grew up on Acomb Street, about five minutes from the Manchester City football ground, which was why I became a City football fan. My very first means of collecting money was minding people’s cars. People used to park up on the street for the match, and we would ask if they wanted their car minded for 50p. If they said no, we would puncture the fucking tyres. We had our territory. Kids called the Ryans had another street and the Daltons another. We all kept to our own streets – no one stepped on anyone else’s territory. It was the way that I first made money on the street, really. I would make £15 or £20 a match – going back 25 or 30 years, that was a lot of money. When most kids were delivering papers, I was minding cars – and damaging cars if their owners didn’t pay the fee! In the end, everybody paid the fee.

Then I started to get involved in a bit of football violence. It was a great buzz, and I loved it. My first real fight was at Wigan football club. It was in the Doc Martens area, and I got knocked fucking out! This lad had banged me straight out. The police picked me up and asked me what I was doing in that area. Then they banged me in the stomach and told me to fuck off back to Manchester. That was my first-ever experience of football violence – getting knocked out and then battered by a copper! I was hoping to get my own back when City next played Wigan, but that never happened, as Wigan were always in a lower division than us.

I started off as a little soldier and worked my way up. I showed that I had a lot of bottle. I would go in first and could fight hard, and I became a leader at a very early age – about 15. I did it until I was about 28 years old. I liked the buzz of it all.

From about the age of 18, I arranged everything. Every Saturday for about 15 years, we would meet up at The Parkside pub. There used to be about a hundred of us all searching for violence. When I look back, I think, ‘What an idiot. What was the reason behind it all?’ But it was just one of those things: some people chose to be bikers or rockers; I chose to be a football hooligan. I know it wasn’t the right choice, but at that time I liked doing it.

We came on top at Millwall and West Ham and Middlesbrough, and afterwards all of us would get on the coach, bleeding and buzzing and telling our stories – adding a little bit onto them, as you do. It was great. I liked the fear and the buzz of it all. I never thought that people could get killed – they did, of course – it was just a bit of excitement. I got into football violence in a big way, and eventually I was the head man at City. Whenever there was trouble, I would be at the front of it.

The Manchester police eventually caught up with me. They set up an operation called Omega, infiltrated us and watched us for 12 months while they collected as much video evidence as they could. Looking back, I had an idea something was going on, but at the time I couldn’t tell who the coppers were. For almost 12 months, I got away with murder. I could do almost anything, and I didn’t get charged once, even though I was arrested 28 times that year for football-related violence. They were letting me get away with it because they were building a case on me.

Eventually, when I was 29 years old, and after dawn raids at my house, I was arrested. I was put on remand for six weeks and then let out on bail for about a year until the trial took place. I was sentenced to prison and banned from attending any football match in the UK or Europe for ten years.

I was a scaffolder by trade. However, before I got arrested, and because I had a reputation for football violence, I was asked to work the doors at a club called Fagan’s by a friend of mine called Mike Faux, who ran an event security company. I was training at a gym when Mike came over and asked if I fancied doing a bit of door work. At that time, I didn’t think it was really for me, but I had just bought a house in Prestwich with my girlfriend, and I needed the extra money. It paid £14 a night, and so a few days later I started working for him. I then went to work at Rotter’s nightclub on Oxford Street, Manchester. I think it was called Rotter’s because it was full of rotten people! It was where all the stag nights came for a night out, arriving in coaches from St Helens and Liverpool and from the outskirts of Manchester, and every single night there would be running battles outside the club between Manchester lads and those from outside town. It was mayhem, and we used to really fight for our money. The funny thing was that we all had to wear white blazers and dicky bows, which ended up covered in blood every night.

At that time, I did a bit of boxing and fancied myself as a bit of a boxer – although I admit I was never very good at it. One night, I was on the door at Rotter’s when I banged a kid and knocked him out clean. However, he swallowed his tongue, and I really thought I had killed him. I almost shit myself and rushed downstairs into the club, got changed and suddenly became a waiter, walking around the tables, trying to keep out of the way. Because I was the only black guy on the door at that time, one of his mates who was still inside immediately recognised me and rushed outside and told the rest of his pals, who then all tried to storm the door. It started to get a bit out of hand, but the kid came to and was all right in the end – it was a scary experience thinking that I had killed him, though. After that, I started to get a name for myself as a bit of a knockout merchant. I was then made second in command of the door.

One night at Rotter’s, I was working with a doorman called Jed. There was a pissed-up hen night at the club, and the girl who was getting married that weekend fancied a bit of sex with Jed. She and Jed went off to the staff changing-rooms, downstairs at the back of the club, and most of the rest of the door crew and I followed and started watching through a crack in the door. There were so many of us all trying to have a peek that the door gave way, and we all tumbled on top of each other into the room.

I worked on the door at Rotter’s for about two years – it was where I met my first wife Margaret. I have two children with Margaret, but I made a right fucking mess of that relationship, shagging around. I admit it was my fault; I just couldn’t keep my dick in my pants. I got arrested for the football violence while I was with her. That scared her, and, needless to say, the marriage didn’t last very long – it was over about two years after we got married.

At that point, I started to get asked to supply doormen to various clubs. I had been asked before but hadn’t really known anyone suitable. However, my contact list grew as I spent more time in the business and got to know other doormen. I also asked around at the gyms if anyone fancied doing a bit of door work and hand-picked guys who I knew or had heard were quite capable, and I started to get my own firm together. That’s how things started. Over a period of time, I started to get a few doors in and around Manchester, and it was then that I met Steve Brian, who was into the same sort of thing as me. He also had a few doors, so we decided to link up together and set up a joint company called Loc19.

The name Loc19 came from the Manchester canal. There was a bar on the canal called The Canal Bar and behind it was lock number 19. Steve and I sat in the bar one night, and I asked him what we could call the company? We were thinking of names when he saw the sign on the lock and said let’s call it Loc19. The rest is history.

We built the company on having bottle and balls, and the thing that made us strong was that we didn’t come from one particular area, unlike say the Gooch, who came from Moss Side. We were a central firm that didn’t have allegiance to any one area. We also dealt with situations as hard as we could, which rapidly built our reputation. But when we first started, we didn’t get any good venues, as the good venues didn’t need anyone like us. Also, most of them were controlled by firms outside town, so we only got the shit clubs. But over time we got a reputation for doing a good job and of keeping trouble out of clubs, and more and more venues therefore took us on. What we had back then was loyalty and friendship, which you don’t get now. Back then, we worked together, trained together, fought together. We all had a good bond. And we got involved in all sorts of things as well – lots of ‘behind the scenes’ stuff. People came to us wanting doormen to do this and that, and we kept things nice and tight and controlled things.

We got put to the test a couple of times by a couple of different firms. One night, we got tested by the Gooch. We were running a venue called The Limits in Manchester, and the Gooch were coming to the door in big teams and putting my doormen under pressure. I had had enough of it all, so I told the doormen to let them all in. Once they were in the venue, I made a few phone calls and got as many guys together as I could. There were about 50 of us in all. We shut all the entrances and exits and went into the venue tooled up, and we really hurt some people. But it caused a massive stink, as it was another firm. Their head guys came down, and we respectfully put them in the picture: they could do whatever they wanted, but we were standing firm – we were up for it and had made our stand. The Gooch knew we were not going to the police and that we would fight fire with fire. Because of that, our reputation developed even further.

We had guys from Salford who could sort the Salford side of things out and guys from Cheetham Hill who could sort the Cheetham Hill side of things out. As a result, there was a time in Manchester when most venues ended up using Loc19. We could control most clubs, especially raves and special events, which no one else could. We had allegiance to Loc19 from all quarters and areas of the city, even into Liverpool and Merseyside.

Although Steve and I ran Loc19 and we had over 200 guys working for us, I always worked the doors myself. I wanted to be on the front line. I liked the job. There would be trouble at some of Manchester’s late-night venues after 2.30 a.m. once all the main clubs had closed. People would want to come into certain of our venues, but we had to turn them away, which would cause us big problems. There were times when I worked the door every night wearing a bulletproof vest, tooled up with coshes and CS gas. And there were times when I would even wear a vest going to the corner shop for a pint of milk.

In actual fact, violence was rarely used, but it was the fear of who we were and what we could do that made us what we were. However, saying that, when violence was used, it was used in such a manner that you would never want it to be used on you again. Once you had had a taste of Loc19, you were a broken person, and that was well known.

One night, we had a major confrontation on the door with another firm. One of our doormen, wearing a Loc19 jacket and badge, pulled out a gun and shot one of their firm twice, once in the chest and once in the leg. All hell broke loose, and Loc19 soon crumbled. Once the police got wind that Loc19 were using guns, they wanted to destroy us, and we lost venue after venue as pubs and clubs were told not to use us – we were animals and obviously any licensee or venue owner definitely didn’t want doormen working their venue who went around shooting people! Licensees, managers, club owners – everyone became afraid of Loc19, but as a gang our reputation soared. We were fearless; we were people that didn’t fuck about, and as a firm we were left to our own devices. However, Loc19 was slowly pushed to the outskirts of Manchester, because neither the police nor the licensees wanted us running doors in the city centre.

The doorman who had shot someone really fucked our business, and club upon club let us go and found other companies to run their doors. Things really came to an end for Loc19 – as it was back then – at Applejacks nightclub. Applejacks brought in an outside firm called Platinum Security to run their door. One night, one of our lads tried to get into the club and got punched in the mouth by one of their doormen. He told me about it, so my brother Chris, Steve Brian, about 20 lads and I went down to sort things out. We were tooled up just in case, but I said to everyone not to resort to any violence unless I gave the nod. But when we arrived, the doormen wanted a confrontation – they wanted to make a statement. So, I gave the nod, and we annihilated them. It was a massacre that night, and we did some really serious injury, but we all walked away from it. As I turned to leave, I smashed the front door of the club with my fist.

The police didn’t get involved straight away, but everything was on camera, including me giving the nod, and the manager had given the CCTV footage to the cops. Two weeks later, a police armed-response unit conducted a dawn raid, and I was arrested and charged with, amongst other things, attempted murder for stabbing a doorman in the chest. On camera, you couldn’t see who or what I smashed. At the trial, a bulletproof vest turned up with three stab marks in it, but, unfortunately for the prosecution, I was only seen banging the door, so the charge of attempted murder was eventually dropped.

We were on remand for nine months, straight off the streets. We went to trial, and I was found guilty. Chris, Steve and I all got four and a half years. I was sent to Strangeways, which is another story . . .

Without me or Steve running things, Loc19 more or less fell apart. Once the company leadership had gone, it went to pieces – people helped themselves to our business, and venues found other door firms. We were left with just a couple of units and a handful of doormen.

When I came out of prison, we had to form again, and over time we got things going. Now Loc19 is not as big as it was back in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Because of the new Security Industry Authority (SIA) rules and regulations, we have taken a step back from the doors, and the business has diversified and now has other interests. It is a different industry to what it was back then. All the guys we used to work with who had street cred can’t get a badge – they can’t work the doors anymore.

When we were re-establishing ourselves, we looked at other places in the North West where we could run the doors, because we no longer ran as many venues in central Manchester. Chester was one city where Loc19 had a couple of doors but hadn’t yet developed a big presence.

The other doorman and I arranged to go to the meeting together. Apparently, he was a bit of a name in Chester, but once I told him about Loc19’s reputation he crumbled and was on his hands and knees, begging me not to leave him alone with Mickey. He genuinely thought that if Mickey pulled up in a van, he was going to get shot and dumped somewhere.

We met Mickey and one of his colleagues at the service station, where we discussed this doorman’s discourtesy to Mickey and Loc19. Because of what he had said and done, it was agreed that he could no longer operate in Chester from that day onwards, and he agreed to hand all his doors over to Mickey and Loc19 as a punishment.

I had been working the doors in the local area for many years and had a strong martial-arts background. I was quite well known, and Mickey asked if I would like to look after business for him in Chester – I agreed. The buzz quickly went round that Loc19 were fully in town. There were mixed emotions: a lot of people were happy that certain local characters would no longer rule the roost, whereas others were not so pleased. However, many of the local gangsters initially kept their heads down and remained out of sight.

Loc19 were like a ghost; people were aware of the name and feared them, but no one had actually seen them, so I thought I’d ask Mickey if he could come down with a few lads and show his face. One night, we were doing a bit of a collection for one of our guys who had cancer. We were collecting at the door and had various fundraising things arranged for that evening, and I asked Mickey if he could come down. I was hoping that he would turn up with a few lads from Manchester as a bit of a show for our boys in Chester. Halfway through the evening as I was inside patrolling the club, one of the doormen rushed up to me and said I had better come to the front door pretty quick. Mickey had come down with about 50 doormen in the biggest black coach I have ever seen. That was the start of Chester police’s interest in Loc19. Mickey’s presence that night kept the lads safe – they knew they were part of a decent firm.

Later that evening, we all decided to go to another club. I called the head doorman at a place about a mile up the road and told him we were coming – and that there would be a lot of us. I suppose ‘no’ wasn’t really an option, but he said no problem; we were all welcome as his guests. We didn’t think that there would be any trouble. We were all there as guests and were all behaving. A few of the lads, because they were new in town, had girls flocking around them. Mickey and I were in a raised area of the club keeping an eye on them all when all of a sudden a local lad from one of the estates smashed a champagne bottle over one of our lads’ heads. It immediately turned in on itself; it was like a feeding frenzy against the locals.

The fight was eventually quelled, and the troublemakers were either ejected or sent off to hospital. The head doorman had seen exactly what had happened and was very apologetic, but about ten minutes after everything had died down he came rushing over to me again and told me that the chief constable was outside and wanted to talk to me urgently. I went to the front door and was introduced to a uniformed officer with all the pips and decorations everywhere. He knew my name and told me we had a problem: he knew who we had in there, he wasn’t comfortable with what was happening in the venue and all of our lads had to leave immediately. I replied by saying to him that there weren’t enough of them to evict us all, and he replied by saying, ‘Believe me, there are enough of us.’

The copper told me that the general manager of the venue, who wasn’t working that night, had been told about what had just happened at his venue and wasn’t at all happy. He had also been told that the police were going to close his club. I couldn’t believe it and went over to Mickey and told him what was going on.

So we knew who was who that evening, we were all wearing black. We were like a drilled army. We all stuck together, and within just a few minutes everyone filed quietly out of the venue. As we left the club, there was a big camera pointing at us, filming us as though we were on stage. As we walked back to the coach, which was about a mile up the road, you couldn’t see any pavement – it was a mass of black. There were helicopters in the air and police everywhere, and van doors were opened as we marched past, revealing snarling, barking dogs. Later, we had heard that they had even closed all the roads in and out of Chester.

The chief constable and his entourage walked with me, and he told me to stay well away from Mickey and his firm, but I politely reminded him that they were not causing one jot of trouble. No one was being abusive to the police or causing problems. They were just filing out quietly and calmly.

Once we got onto the bus, we decided to go to another venue that we all knew in Ellesmere Port. I called the manager and asked if we could all come in. He said by all means and agreed to meet us at the gate. We drove off under police escort, like we were royalty! But the manager was then contacted by the police, who were obviously listening in to our calls, telling him we were on the way to his venue and he was to close up and turn all the lights out. He refused, telling the police that we were his security company and that he could have whomever he wanted in his venue, and he kept the club open for us. Most of the police convoy left us once we had turned off the motorway, apart from a few vehicles, which were placed strategically around the venue.

What really infuriated me were the headlines in the local papers the next day and for about two weeks thereafter. ‘Marauding gang of Manchester doormen wreck Chester after bursting through the doors of Rosie’s nightclub’ was one example. We were accused of attacking the doorstaff, turning tables and chairs over, and only being in town with the intention of causing mayhem. It was reported that the local police sorted us all out and removed us from the town under police escort. It was a complete fabrication, and it lost us a couple of doors. We were even accused of supplying drugs and being drug lords. When I told Mickey about the headlines, he just laughed and said, ‘Welcome to the real world.’

Chester is a tourist town and a place for entertainment; for example, we have the very famous Chester races, which are attended by people from all over the country. We have visitors from Manchester, Liverpool and London. Admittedly, they don’t always get on with one another, but when most serious players see the Loc19 badge that all our doormen and security staff wear they behave and show us respect. And that is how we have gained a lot of doors and venues, as the managers see this too. Loc19 is not afraid of taking anybody on.

There are a couple of big estates just outside Chester. Some of the lads who live there have held siege to our venue on a couple of occasions, surrounding us and throwing bricks through the windows. The police didn’t really want to know, so after the second time we had to sort things out ourselves and make sure that it didn’t happen again. We visited one particular estate, where we knew the main players were based, and spent an evening walking into pubs, asking around. We made sure people knew who we were, that we were in the area and exactly what we wanted – in other words, we made sure that the word got about. Later that night, I got a call from one of the head lads asking for a meeting. We arranged to meet in one of our bars in Chester on a Tuesday afternoon at 2 p.m. There were about six heads of the area plus a few of their soldiers. I arrived first and was just about to buy everyone a round of drinks before we got talking when the whole place was flooded with police. They had blocked the road at either end and took everyone outside and lined them up against the wall, apart from me and my driver. The police had heard that we had been looking around the estate, and they told the locals that we were very dangerous people. Anyway, we assured the police that we were just having a meeting and that nothing was going down. Things eventually died down (although one person got carted away for non-payment of a fine), and the police left. We had our meeting and told the heads of the estate that Loc19 wanted them to work with us; we wanted them behind us, not against us. By the end of the meeting, they were all beaming – they could go back to their communities proud.

When they went to pick up their lad who had got nicked, the police wanted to know what had been said and what was going down. They told the coppers that in those few hours Loc19 had done more for their community than the police had done in years. All the cops had done was to chase kids around and nick them for this and that, whereas Loc19 gave them respect.

Of course, we understand that because the police have their hands tied they can’t do what we can do. We can go and sort out these problems in our own way, but we have never been bullies. As a company, we have never taken a fight to anybody first; we have always responded. If the police could only work with us and other firms like us, there would be a lot less trouble.

Not long after, we took on a club on the outskirts of Chester in Ellesmere Port, a tough residential community with some tough people living there. No one wanted to run the bar. It was a really rough place, a bit like something from the Wild West. One particular family had a reputation as being one of the worst in the area, and within that family there were twins who for some reason thought that they were the Krays.

One night, these twins caused a bit of mischief at our venue. They were pissed up and having an argument with what seemed like another member of their family. A couple of my lads and I tried to settle things down, but the twins took the piss a bit. I really didn’t want the story getting back to Mickey, as the fight was eventually quelled and things were sorted out, but the manager was adamant that Mickey was told.

Mickey was in the area at that time, so he suggested we give the twins a visit. To be honest, I didn’t think it was a good idea – there was only me, Mickey and Mickey’s driver! Anyway, we went to the twins’ house and rang the doorbell. As soon as one of them answered the door, Mickey said, ‘All right, mate?’ and punched him straight in the face. Mickey then said, ‘Listen, you took the piss with the doormen at our venue. Because you disrespected Steve, you have to pay him £1,000 by next Friday for his discomforts, and if I have to come back to your fucking house, I won’t be talking to you.’ The guy looked nothing like the hard man he was supposed to be. On the Monday, he paid me, and we never heard from him again.

I have to say that Loc19 is one of the best firms I have ever worked for. The employees have huge respect for the company, something rarely seen in other door firms. The doormen covet their badges more than anything. For instance, one of our doormen had a £700 coat stolen that his wife had bought him one Christmas, and he was nearly crying because his badge was on it. Lads want to work for us because of the firm’s reputation. For most of them, working for Loc19 is a big honour.