Broadmoor Bob

I have mentioned in previous posts that in my younger days I was no stranger to violence. What I haven't said is that my fighting days ended in my late 20's, mostly due to taking up karate. The benefits of studying martial arts in my case were 1) I realised that I didn't have to prove my "manhood" by fighting - I gained enough confidence in myself and my abilities to be able to walk away from trouble, and 2) I realised that there were quite a lot of people out there who could seriously kick my butt! My sensei, Lee Costa was, I think, a 4th Dan black belt at the time, and although weighing no more than 150 lbs he could focus his chi to such an extent that when he punched me I swear it felt like his fist had drilled right through my body and come out the other side! So, like I say, karate had a great calming influence on me. Having said all that, it was meeting Broadmoor Bob that finally made me quit fighting.

I was playing in a band at PC's, on City Rd. in Cardiff, which was at the time one of the main live music venues in the city (it has now reverted to its previous name of Poets Corner). They didn't pay a lot, so it was the custom for one of the band's entourage to take a pint glass around for people to put money in to show their appreciation. That night we had no one with us, so we were pleased when one of the regulars, a chap called Bob, offered to do it for us. We had a good night and went down well, and when all the punters had left and we were packing the gear away Bob came over and asked how much had been in the glass. I told him the amount (can't remember how much it was now), and he replied that that was good considering he had taken his tenner out already. I asked him what he meant, and he replied that as he had worked hard taking the glass around it was only fair that he got paid for it. Now ten pounds in 1985 was quite a substantial proportion of what had been in the glass and my notoriously quick temper went into overdrive. I demanded that he put it back; he replied "or else what?" and I think I replied that I would cause him to fall to the floor, although not quite in such polite terms.

Now before I carry on I need to let you know what I later found out about Bob from talking to the landlord and other punters from the pub over the next few days. He was known to all and sundry as Broadmoor Bob because apparently he had served not just one but 2 terms of incarceration in Broadmoor, which is England's best know maximun security psychiatric hospital, formerly known as the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane. According to Wikipedia "Due to the potentially violent nature of some of the patients, the hospital has an alarm system to alert nearby institutions in the surrounding towns of Wokingham and Bracknell if any dangerous patient escapes. This alarm system is based on World War II air-raid sirens, and a two-tone alarm sounds across the whole area in the event of an escape." Apparently Bob had only recently started frequenting the pub, having been released only a little while earlier. Legend has it that he had once killed a police dog that was set on him with his bare hands. During the couple of weeks before our gig Bob had apparently beaten up all the hard guys in the pub and had struck fear into regulars by doing things like removing a light bulb, licking his fingers and sticking them into the sockets etc. And this was the guy I decided to pick a fight with!! Hmmm.......

So back to the action: Bob shouted "come on then" as he charged at me across the room. I should also point out that he was about 6' 4" and quite strongly built too! I had no time to think, my karate training wasn't deeply ingrained enough to kick in without conscious thought, but luckily my innate fighting instinct saved the day. Without thinking about what I was doing I managed to unleash a right uppercut that I am told started almost at ground level behind me, travelled up through the air, past my body and connected with the head of the charging Bob with all my considerable body weight behind it. It would have stopped a rhinocerous in its tracks and it certainly stopped Broadmoor Bob. He stopped dead, staggered a bit, then went backwards all the way to the wall, whereupon he slid down until his bottom hit the floor, then his head flopped onto his chest and there he sat, unconscious! The room erupted with cheers and I stood there feeling very proud of myself. Until, that is, Bob's eyes opened and, like a scene from a horror film, he got to his feet and squared up to me again. At that moment I started to worry, because after a punch like that he should have been out for a very long time. What I didn't know at the time was that he had just been to Whitchurch Hospital for his monthly booster treatment of calming drugs, and he was feeling no pain - indeed he was feeling no sensation of any kind; he was drugged up to the eyeballs!! it was one of the few moments in my life that I have been genuinely frightened - it was like facing the Terminator! I'll spare you the blow-by-blow details of the rest of the fight. Suffice it to say that he didn' t lay a finger on me and things soon got to a stage where everybody left in the bar intervened to pull me off him, fearing that I was going to kill him if I wasn't stopped. He left the bar threatening to come back with a knife and carve me up. He wasn't the first person to threaten that but he was the first I truly believed might actually do it.

Upon reflection over the next few days I realised that there ARE people out there who will seriously hurt you, even perhaps with weapons - they don't just exist on television and in newspapers. I decided that I didn't ever again want to get involved in an argument with someone like that in case the consequences went out of control. After all, who in their right mind wants to be seriously injured, maimed or even worse? More importantly I also realised that I have the capacity to really hurt, even perhaps kill, someone. This had turned from a stupid loss of temper confrontation into what could have been a matter of life or death. The reason I didn't stop fighting when I had him beaten was that I genuinely thought that if I let him get back up he might try to kill me. The knowledge that without the intervention of others I might have seriously injured or killed another person, especially over something so trivial, was enough to make me walk away from trouble for ever more. On the few occasions I have been involved in confrontations ever since that day I have either apologised, even if I thought I was in the right, or simply walked away and allowed myself to be thought a coward. I am not a coward, and if I absolutely HAD to defend myself or my family I would, but otherwise I choose to let it go. I am just grateful that I did eventually learn that lesson. I only wish I had done so when I was even younger.

As for Bob - I bumped into him an a pub a couple of weeks later and thought it would be a good idea to offer to buy him a drink, just in case he was still thinking about carving me up. I did, and we got along OK after that, after all - I now had his respect!