Hard Road to Glory - How I Became Champion of the World. Johnny Nelson
different from most of the other guys. I remember phoning to persuade him to go to a nightclub with me but he said, ‘I don’t go to clubs. I train, I go to work and I come home. On Sundays I go to church.’ That surprised me because we’d reached the age when we didn’t have to go to church any more but I still liked him and gradually it got to the point where, if you saw one of us, you saw the other too. Together we discovered the things young men discover, like girls and mischief. We brought out the best and the worst in each other.
Strangely, although we were so tight, we were in different gangs. He was with the Reggae Boys while my other mates and I were the Funky Boys. Both groups would hang out on Saturday in a precinct in Sheffield called Fargate, much to the annoyance of the local shopkeepers who hated all these black teenagers milling around outside their shop scaring off their nice white customers. We Funky Boys wanted to be the last word in cool but in our hearts we knew we were not a patch on the Reggae Boys, who were more streetwise than we were. While we were skinny and had little or no fashion sense, they were older than us and always in the latest gear. It was men against boys. Willie was their main man. He always bought clothes one size too small for him, so all those muscles looked as though they were straining to burst through the material. The Reggae Boys looked down on us and mocked us in public but he and I remained close.
Even if I had wanted to match the Reggae Boys’ dress sense, I had no money to spend on clothes. I needed to get a job. I’d twice been to sign on the dole and never felt so humiliated in my life. It was such a depressing, hopeless place. You were treated as if you were sponging off the state, yet there was so much unemployment in Sheffield, they had no work to offer you. As I stood there in the queue for my hand-out, I felt worthless. I went home and told Mum I would never sign on again. I didn’t care if I starved, I would never feel that inadequate again.
Finding work wasn’t easy because training was already starting to dominate my life. While I still didn’t enjoy the boxing, I loved the business of getting fit and I didn’t want anything to interfere with that, so I got a series of part-time jobs that I could fit round the gym. I worked in a shoe shop, selling trainers, a Next clothes shop and in a Wimpy burger bar.
I had the job with Wimpy for two or three years and, if Willie or my other friends came in, they would just order a few chips and I would slip them a burger ‘on the house’. That stopped the guys from teasing me too much but I never felt comfortable when people I knew came in and would try and stay round the back. You can imagine my horror, therefore, when I was told I had to dress up as ‘Mr Wimpy’ and go out into Fargate to hand out leaflets. Fortunately, the costume was all enveloping and, by making sure I stayed in doorways as much as possible, I managed to get away without any of the Reggae Boys or Funky Boys realising it was me.
Another of Mr Wimpy’s jobs was to entertain the children at birthday parties, which were held in a room above the restaurant. On one occasion, I had managed to hand out the ice creams without mishap but as we were playing Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses one of the kids pulled off my glove. She yelled, ‘Mr Wimpy’s black!’ and all the other kids started to scream as though the Devil himself had invaded their party. The boss hustled me into the back room, told me to get changed and go back downstairs behind the counter while he tried to quieten down the children. To my horror, some of my mates were in the restaurant and, when the children came down and started pointing at me, saying, ‘That’s Mr Wimpy,’ they sat up and took notice.
Willie eyed me suspiciously. ‘Was that you in Fargate, handing out leaflets?’ he asked.
I tried to laugh it off, saying the kids had been messing about but none of the lads was convinced.
There was another occasion when I would have been delighted to have Mr Wimpy’s disguise. It was over a girl I’d got to know at school. We went out a few times but I was so naive the relationship never got beyond third base. We dated a few times after school when things progressed a bit further but I quickly realised there was a reason she was so popular with all the boys and dropped her.
At about the same time, a gang of guys from London started to come to the clubs where my mates and I hung out. They were hardcore and certainly not coming to Sheffield for the air. Suddenly, the Funky Boys and Reggae Boys became the best of mates, realising there was strength in numbers against this new threat but we were also aware we were no longer in control of the local scene and certainly not the local girls.
One day, my former girlfriend came into the Wimpy Bar with a big guy in his mid-twenties who I recognised as one of the leaders of the London gang. She looked across at me, then turned to him and said something. He came up to the counter and said, ‘Give us some food.’
I was trembling, but I wasn’t going to be intimidated and said he’d have to pay like everyone else.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘we’ll wait for you outside.’
I knew the Funky and Reggae Boys had deserted Fargate since the Londoners had arrived, so there would be no back-up there. I was in for a beating just to satisfy an ex-girlfriend and as a reminder to others that we were no longer top dogs in Sheffield. Not if I could help it. I persuaded my boss to let me leave by the fire exit. As I came out at the top end of Fargate, one of the gang spotted me and they all started to chase after me. This was no time for diplomacy. I ran. My knowledge of the area, my fitness and pure fear helped me get away but I was sick that I’d been chased off my own patch and for the next few days it was shame that made me work even harder in the gym.
As I was only in part-time jobs, I had a lot of time to hang out with my newfound mates. They were all older than me but they put up with me because, even though I was stick thin, I was tall and looked the part. Some of them came from Kelvin Flats, the lads my mum had always warned me against when I was at school, and most were out of work. We were bored and restless and these days would probably be prime targets for ASBOs. Back then we would hang about the East Star café, playing pool, rough-housing and being noisy.
One of my mates wanted me to go to Sheffield Wednesday with him. ‘You’ll enjoy it – it’s great,’ he assured me.
Although I’d been quite good at athletics at school, I’d never developed much interest in other sports – I thought rugby was too rough and was so useless at football that I never got picked for teams. Still, it might be OK, so I agreed to go to a game.
It was a freezing cold day and, even though everyone else was jumping up and down and obviously into the match in a big way, I just didn’t get it. I was also conscious there weren’t many black people in the crowd apart from me, while the few on the pitch were the subject of abusive chants. It was very intimidating. I was thoroughly miserable, freezing my rocks off and wishing I was at home or in the gym. Before half-time, I said I was going to the gents but had made up my mind to go home only to find all the gates were locked. I had to climb over in order to escape. As I made my way home, I decided football was probably not a sport for black people. Even though there are many more black players these days, I’ve noticed on the few occasions I’ve been to watch matches that the crowds are still largely white and, when a black player from the visiting team gets the ball, you can still hear the old verbal ignorance. It’s still not really the sport for me.
But I did have a real passion for music. I’ve always envied people who can sing well and think it must be terrific to stand on stage and have an audience in the palm of your hand, able to make them happy, sad, romantic or excited just by your choice of song and how you voice its emotion. My inability to carry a tune meant I was never going to be on Top of the Pops as a singer, but I did have ambitions as a dancer and could visualise taking over where Pan’s People had left off, stealing the show with some smooth moves.
There was a big punk scene in Sheffield and later New Wave was enormous there, but I was into R&B. Allan and Brenton would go to the northern soul all-nighters and I longed to tag along but Mum wouldn’t allow it until I told her there were dance competitions where I might win some cash. That swung it for me. Once we got inside, the others would go off and leave me but, while I loved the buzz and throb of the place and enjoyed joining in the action, I couldn’t cope with the pace and by two in the morning I’d be curled up on some chairs in a corner, fast asleep despite the noise going on around me.