Six foot four and seventeen stone, Nosher Powell was the picture of a hard man. Boxer, bouncer, minder and stuntman, he was never a villain, but his size and his hands made him a force in the clubs and pubs of the West End in the 1960s and 70s, the years of the Krays, the Richardsons, the Nashes, Freddie Foreman and Joey Pyle. He had sparred with Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali, and he trained Roy Shaw for his clash with Lenny McLean.
This film tells, largely in Nosher's own words from his book, the day he called on McLean to settle a debt, and what happened when the man who owed him turned up with gypsy enforcers.
Two grand and no receipt
Nosher was governor of his own pub then, doing well and generous with his mates. One regular, known in the book as Big Dave, was in the scrap metal business, a good spender with a strong pair of shoulders. One evening Dave told him he had a deal lined up and was two grand short. Nosher went to the safe and handed it over in cash. He did not ask for a receipt.
Dave then vanished for two years. Then the money troubles came, the taxman among them, and he had to sell his beloved Stingray and nearly lost his house.
Garratt Lane
One day, driving round Wandsworth in a battered old car, he saw a man pull up outside a newsagent in a brand new BMW. It was Big Dave. By Nosher's account he was sitting behind the wheel of the BMW before Dave came out of the shop, and he ordered him into the passenger seat and drove to his own pub car park.
There he asked for his money. Nosher slapped him twice, and Dave came at him head down. What followed lasted less than a minute. Nosher says all the frustration of the bad years came out, that he heard a rib go, and that he knew in that moment he could have killed him. He took Dave's gold necklace, Rolex, ring and cash, and gave him a week before the jewellery went to the pawn shop.
Three days later Dave phoned. He would bring the money to the pub car park that night. Nosher put him off until four the next afternoon. He could smell a set-up.
The one man he wanted in his corner
He rang around until he found Lenny McLean, who was minding the door at the Hippodrome. Nosher calls him probably the most frightening man he ever knew: as tall as Nosher but over twenty stone, a man who walked through doors rather than opened them. They had become friends in the gym above the Thomas a Becket on the Old Kent Road, while McLean was preparing for his return fight with Roy Shaw.
Nosher had been there for the first of those fights, at Sinatra's in Croydon, as timekeeper and master of ceremonies. He was a stuntman on the first Superman film, and Gene Hackman begged a ringside seat. Shaw won in the fourth. The next morning, Nosher says, Hackman turned up at Pinewood in the same bloodstained shirt and tie. McLean took his revenge a few months later, knocking Shaw out inside two minutes.
When Nosher rang, McLean did not ask why. He asked where and when.
Four o'clock, the Prince of Wales car park
At four the next day Big Dave was sitting on the bonnet of his BMW, his face still bruised. He signalled, and three big men climbed out of an old van and joined him. Four of them walked towards Nosher in a line.
Then McLean strolled over from the tyre yard across the road and leaned against Nosher's car with his arms folded. According to Nosher, the first of the three, a local gypsy lad called Eric, turned and hit Dave across the face for nearly getting them killed, apologised to McLean, and told him Dave had three grand in his pocket. As they made for the van, McLean stood in their way with one hand out and said one word: expenses. They paid him and left.
Nosher counted out his two grand, took another five hundred for the inconvenience, threw the rest at Dave and never saw him again. That night he and McLean ate steak at Jack's Place by Battersea heliport, and McLean went home with six hundred pounds. Any time you have a problem, he told Nosher, just phone me.
The Krays at the door
The presenter closes with stories from the book. Home from the army, Nosher went to the Krays' door in Vallance Road to collect for a friend's lorry-load of umbrellas they had taken and not paid for. It was tense, but he got the money. Years later he turned the twins away from a West End club because they were drunk. Charlie Kray came to ask why, and Nosher told him he bent the rules for no one.
That is the man the film leaves you with: not a gangster, but someone who would not back down from anyone. When McLean died of cancer in 1998, Nosher went to the funeral with flowers and said a prayer. Lenny, he says, never hurt anyone who did not deserve it.