Friends, Customers, Clubbers, Lend Me Your Ears!

I was a bouncer for more than thirty years. In 1998, I worked in a rough nightclub in Leeds. We had so many fights that we actually had to pay extra for West Yorkshire Police to deploy officers outside on Fridays and Saturdays, in the same way that football clubs and concerts had to pay for extra policing.

One night, a young male got into an argument on the dancefloor and smashed a beer bottle over another young man’s head, knocking him out. One of my colleagues saw it and called us on the radio for backup.

We got there, and this guy was threatening everyone with the jagged remnants of the bottle, and he had about seven or eight friends with him who looked like they were up for it. My colleagues and I were outnumbered, but we were good. There was a moment of tense stand-off because this was going to be bloody.

Suddenly, the guy dropped his bottle, raised his hands to his head, and screamed in pain. An older woman had come up behind him and was twisting his ear viciously. The song that was playing finished, and the DJ was so busy watching that he forgot to play the next track, so the whole club could hear what happened next.

Older Woman: “YOU YELLOW LITTLE B*****D! I DIDN’T BRING YOU UP TO USE WEAPONS! THAT’S NOT HOW WE FIGHT IN OUR FAMILY! JUST WAIT ‘TIL I GET YOU OUTSIDE!”

And she dragged him the whole way out of the club by his ear whilst he screamed:

Guy: “OW, MUM! OWWWW! LET GO, MUM!”

And yes, a lot of people clapped and cheered.

The lad who got bottled knew the guy who’d assaulted him and did not want to press charges, either because it was just a drunken argument between friends or he intended to deal with it himself.