Gang Wars of the North - The Inside Story of the Deadly Battle Between Viv Graham and Lee Duffy. Stephen Richards
didn’t want to pick it up because he didn’t want to ruin the night, but he knew in the back of his mind he had to pick the phone up because he had to make sure people were all right wherever they were ringing from.
‘He’d say, “Two minutes, two minutes. I’ll be back in two minutes!”
‘He’d run and jump into the car and he would be quick. Maybe he’d be 10 minutes or maybe 15 minutes and he’d be back and sit down and say, “Right, sorted, let’s …” and then we’d start watching the film again and the phone would ring again and this is how the night constantly went on.
‘As for getting videos and sitting in with Anna, that was all he really wanted at that time. I’m talking about two years before his death, but prior to that they had their good nights out. Being out late, maybe clubbing, and that sort of thing, but the last two years he didn’t even want to go out. He was happy with his videos.
‘I think that Anna did him a lot of good because he must have felt happy. His relationship was steady and he was happy with everything that was there. Probably the pressure was a little bit too much at the time and he was glad to just stay in and not be anywhere where things were happening.
‘There was still the likes of Rob Armstrong and all of them still placed in all the clubs wherever Viv would work. Even then, he didn’t really work in them, but he knew that if anything was ever said it was always said in his name: “It’s Viv Graham you’ve got to face.”
‘So, although Viv was sitting in the house, this news always reached him.
‘Maybe Viv would get a phone call the next morning saying that two kids were in the previous night acting themselves and stirring up trouble, saying they were going to do this and so on. Viv would know it would be put down to him, type of thing. Even though Viv wasn’t personally in attendance he still had his finger on the pulse.
‘Viv used to get splitting bad heads; he suffered them on a near-permanent basis in the end. Viv and I used to laugh because we were like two hypochondriacs, both suffering headaches and thinking the worst.
‘He used to take me training with him and his headache would come back and we used to say, “Here we go.” We did suffer the same things. I had an abscess and had to have it cut out, then he had an abscess and had to have it cut out.
‘I used to complain and say, “I’m sure I’ve got a tumour!”
‘Viv would reply, “So have I.”
‘He was always complaining about bad heads. When you get an abscess you’re run down – it’s one of the signs of being run down – so it was getting to him, but you would only know it by him saying he had a bad head.
‘Near the end, he was getting phone calls saying they were going to take his life, but he just used to laugh because he had heard it that many times before. Maybe the first four or five times he’d maybe have been frightened, but after a while he’d heard all what they were going to do to him.
‘Viv didn’t care about his money. Whatever money he had he spent! David, my husband, would try to get Viv to do something with it. He’d say, “Howway, Viv, do something with it because at the end of the day you’re going to get older and somebody’s going to come along and knock you out.”
‘We used to laugh about it.
‘He wasn’t cared because he lived for the day and he’d say, “I’m not bothered.”
‘David would say, “I’m going to get you a lovely diamond ring because you should be wearing a nice ring. You should have a nice watch and a nice house because your job isn’t easy, so you should have something that you can say is yours because of what you’re doing!”
‘David went and got him a nice ring and he loved it. Viv was over the moon. He didn’t ever get himself a watch, but at the time Viv had said he wanted somewhere nice for Anna to live because Daisy Hill [in Wallsend] was a bit rough. They loved it there, the people loved them and they loved the people, but David wanted him to do something because he knew Viv was a waster with his money.
‘He said to Viv, “You’ve got to get something under your hat because you’re getting on.”
‘This is when they started looking around at little places. David was behind him, pushing him into things like that. Nobody else really thought about these things, everybody was only seeing the other side of him. Having a drink, having a bet, doing this, just squandering. David wanted him to make something to put behind, but Viv always said, “I’ll never see 40, man. Live for the day. I’ll never see 40.”
‘And now, when he hasn’t reached 40, you wonder what was going on in his mind. He said to us all the time, “I’ll be finished, me. I’ll have my leg blown off; something’ll happen to me before I’m 40. I’ll not see 40.”
‘So obviously something was ticking around in his head telling him that.
‘He used to talk about what he should have and what he’d got and I’d say, “Look at the life you’ve got to live, what have you got for it?”
‘He didn’t confide in us about any trouble. You would never hear him. He knew he could handle it, but it was only his bad heads that he would complain about.
‘It used to gut me. I felt like seething because people didn’t even know him. Rumours about Viv would get out of hand. It would go from one week into the other and the next minute he’d done this and done that, and it used to hurt me because I used to think, if they only knew him, if they knew the type of lad he was, they would think the world of him, they would have loved him. Because he was genuine and he was a gentleman in every way, even in the way he sorted his trouble. I respected him for the job that he was in because it wasn’t an easy job. The way he did it, he made it look easy.
‘I remember we were in a nightclub, it was pitch black and we were right at the back. Anna and me were there and Viv was leaning on the bar talking to us, then he just shot from out of our sight. Then I just saw him: he had this man held right up in the air by his neck.
‘I was saying, “Eeeeh! He’s taking liberties, look at the size of that little man.” I said to Anna, “What’s he doing that to him for? He’s never done a thing. I’m going to tell him.”
‘I went across towards where Viv had this man. I saw this lass screaming; Anna was saying to the lass, “What’s happened, what’s happened?”
‘One minute Viv’s leaning on the bar talking to us and then the next minute he’s got this lad up by the neck. Anna thought the lass was screaming because Viv had her lad up by the throat. It turned out that the lad had a knife up to the lass’s throat. Viv had seen it from where he was in the pitch black!
‘That’s how unbelievably quick he was. He grabbed the lad and took him to the door, where the doorman was, and he says, “Look at this? He was in here and he’s had that knife. He got past you with this.”
‘He took the knife off the lad and kicked him up the arse, kicked the lad out and said to the doormen, “I’m warning you that you’d better make sure that people are searched properly!”
‘Some time before this, when Viv was approaching the end of his three-year sentence for an attack on fellow club doorman Stuart Watson, an incident happened in a nightclub. A sex pest in the Studio nightclub glassed a young woman after she had slapped him. The young lady died from the result of being glassed in the throat. Viv had this on his mind when he spotted the same potential fatality that could have happened here, the same nightclub where the glassing incident had taken place. Doormen were supposed to be searching people for weapons and had obviously slipped up. Viv was none too pleased with them.
‘The lass said to Anna that the lad had a knife held to her throat. The lad was her boyfriend, but she’d chased him off and he wanted her back, so he was threatening her. The lass was in the toilet with Anna and had been telling her that the lad had been threatening her and he would do this,