Paul Sykes, from Wakefield, stood six foot three, weighed sixteen stone and had, in the film's words, a hair-trigger temper. Gary Spiers, a New Zealander of Maori heritage, was a karate man and doorman who had built a security business in the north-west of England. The film sets out to test a story that the two once met in the dark outside a Blackpool venue, when Spiers was locking up and two men came for him with an iron bar. It is a story no book tells. The film tells it, then shows its working.
Sykes
Sykes was a boxer, and a dangerous man on the street and in prison. In 1979 he fought the British champion, the Londoner John L. Gardner. According to news reports the film cites, he had bet his thousand-pound purse on himself to win, and lost it.
In 1981, after a short professional career, he was jailed for five years for two counts of grievous bodily harm and an attack on a police dog, an Alsatian left with a broken jaw and broken legs. In his summing up, the judge claimed Sykes was a hitman for hire, paid £1,000 by a Blackpool factory boss to seriously injure a union official who had organised strikes at the man's business. The film says Sykes and an accomplice waited at the official's house, and that Sykes struck him with an iron bar.
Blackpool was not new to him. He had lived there, worked as a lifeguard and minded shops, and it was there, the film says, that he earned his name as a hard man for hire. He was released in December 1984, short of money, drinking heavily and, in the film's words, far from a reformed character.
Spiers
Spiers was born around 1943 in New Zealand, one of only seven children of Maori heritage at his school, and learned to look after himself early. He went from wrestling to judo to karate. In the early 1960s he moved to Australia, trained in Okinawan karate and worked the doors of Melbourne's clubs. The film says he survived several stabbings and became a legend of the Australian door scene.
He trained further in Japan, then moved to England, where his friend Terry O'Neill helped him find door work in Liverpool. There he opened a dojo and developed what he called Applied Karate, traditional martial arts reworked for real fights. His students became his staff. By the mid-1980s his security firm covered venues in Liverpool, Southport, Blackpool and Wales, and he was collecting debts in London.
A spring night in Blackpool
The account the film gives comes from one source: a man whose father, a petty criminal from Lancashire, drank with Sykes. By that account, some heavy individuals in Blackpool were unhappy with the big man from overseas, whom they took to be Australian, because he was taking over lucrative contracts. Sykes and an associate, the source says, were paid to deal with him.
Late one spring night, as the resort got ready for the summer season, Spiers was locking up a venue. A small man with a Lancashire accent walked up, offered his hand and asked if Spiers ran the security. Spiers, tired, shook it. He sensed someone to his right, turned, and saw a metal bar coming down. He twisted and took the blow on his shoulder.
By the source's account, the man who had offered his hand ended up staggering in the street, screaming that he was blind, after Spiers drove two fingers into his eyes. The man with the bar lost his grip on it, threw a left hook, and took a headbutt that broke his nose. He tried to get Spiers in a headlock, and Spiers bit into his cheek. He broke free and ran. His partner had already gone.
Testing the story
Stories about Sykes and Spiers are often folklore, the narrator admits, so he set out to check this one. If Sykes had been in prison at the time, the story would fall. He found that Sykes had been released on Christmas Eve 1984 and, by Sykes' own words in an archive interview, was back inside in May 1985. That left a window, at the start of a Blackpool season, and a man known to use an iron bar.
Next he asked the karate champion Alfie Lewis, a close friend of Spiers, whether Spiers had venues in Blackpool then. Lewis confirmed that he did. Then he found a 1986 interview in which Terry O'Neill and Spiers discuss violent incidents. In it Spiers describes being attacked by two men while closing an arcade in Blackpool, one of whom tried to hit him with an iron bar, and calls it a fight in which he felt his life was on the line.
The caveats are the narrator's own. Nobody could independently verify the story. Jamie Boyle, who has written about Sykes at length, never mentions it, and nor does Sykes' own book, Sweet Agony. Sykes claimed on camera that he spent those months travelling the world, which the narrator finds fanciful.
His conclusion is careful. The timeline fits, the venue fits, Spiers described an attack of just this kind, and the source seemed genuine. It has merit, he says, but like every story about these two men, it should be taken with a healthy dose of scepticism.