Latest
Fight night
In Binge Drink Britain,
bouncers are on the
front line. Owen
Amos spends a
Friday night on the door in
Stockton and discovers just
what doormen put up with.
MARK Kidd, bouncer, has suffered
a broken leg, a fractured skull and
a smashed wrist at work. He's
been stabbed in the arm, had a fingertip
sliced off and been
attacked by a madwoman with a
stiletto. At work. Tonight, I'm with him outside a
Stockton nightclub. At work. I pray for peace and
keep an eye on girls in heels.
The leg, smashed in three places, happened while
tackling a knifeman outside a Bournemouth nightclub.
"They jumped up and down on it," says Mark,
matter-of-factly. "It could have been amputated.
They spent nine hours putting it back together." His
right leg, packed with steel plates, is now a half-inch
shorter than the other.
The fractured skull happened at the end of a
night, after asking someone to leave. The guy responded
with an ashtray, whacked across Mark's
head. The stiletto woman, too drunk to stand, had
also been asked to leave. She wanted to stay. Jousting
with her Jimmy Choos, unsurprisingly, convinced
no one.
Mark has, I realise, lived through an episode of
Street Crime UK. That grey and green CCTV
footage, starring street-corner scrappers, is familiar.
He's been there. Does he not feel fear?
"Everybody will experience an adrenaline
dump," Mark says. "It's part of fight or flight. What
your body's doing is giving you extra speed, extra
power, making you unable to feel pain. People mistake
that for fear."
Easy mistake to make, I reckon. Does he get
threatened?
"It runs like this," he says, smiling. "They shout
You bald ****, I'm going to come back and get you,
going to come back and stab you'. I have been in
situations with rather large crime figures involved,
but mostly I ignore it. If I had a pound for every time
someone threatened to kill me, I'd be a rich man."
Tonight, thankfully, should be quiet. We're at Cellar
51, a nice bar with a band that plays Suspicious
Minds and Ruby Tuesday. The punters are mixed:
young lads wearing T-shirts, students wearing embroidered
hoodies, women wearing too much hair
spray and perfume.
I'M 6ft 2ins, so could pass, from distance, as a
bouncer. On closer inspection, my clothes betray
me. I wear a suit, black shirt and - for some reason
- a red tie. I look like I'm off to a disco. In the
1980s. Mind, the tie's not all that betrays me. There's
also my absolute absence of menace.
At 10pm, the punters stroll in, cheery and fairly
sober. Mark greets them all. Not just good manners,
I learn. "I'm gauging their reaction, their response,"
he says. "If they have attitude, or are drunk, they
don't come in."
It's not the only precaution.
"All the time, I'm clocking everyone who's walking
up and down the street," he says. "Are they fighting?
Are they p****** in the street? Are they throwing
traffic cones? It's the easiest job in the world
letting them in. It's the hardest getting them out."
Mark, 44, has worked doors for 19 years, mainly
in Bournemouth. He's seen the social scene shift
from terrace culture's tail-end, to raves, to the 1990s
cocaine epidemic. Now, he says, more people carry
knives. He could write a book.
On his first night, in Bournemouth, he stopped
known drug dealers entering his club. "We knew
who they are, and they weren't too happy," he says.
"We were in the firing line at that point."
But, Mark says, he immediately felt comfortable.
"You don't do this job on your own - you work as a
team. When you try to do things on your own, it
doesn't work. You end up in hospital. You don't see
police officers or prison warders working alone.
"If there are two, three, five guys fighting and you
go over to sort it out alone, what's going to happen?
They're going to end up leathering you."
Mark - whose colleague, Sean, takes the entry fee
- will win more arguments than he loses. He's 6ft,
a martial artist and sturdy. As well as working
doors, he trains other bouncers in everything from
calming conflict, to law and locks. A bouncers' licence
doesn't mean you can bounce, he says, like a
driving licence doesn't mean you can drive. Some
bouncers ruin others' reputations.
"It's like any job - you've either got talent or you
haven't," he says. "Not a lot of people have got what
it takes. You don't have to be a ninja, or Bruce Lee,
but you do have to stand up and be counted. You
have to have b*******.
"You're there to stop trouble, and if it happens,
you have to step up. You have to get violent people
off the premises. I can tell more or less straight
away if someone can do the job or not. It's not about
posing and chatting up women. It's about sensing
danger. A good doorman can stop trouble before it
happens."
By 12pm the atmosphere changes. Students stumble
up stairs, eyes in different directions, mouths
working overtime. Most want to befriend the
bouncer. He's the hard man, he's in charge. They
want to bask in his image. Problem is, when they're
speaking, he loses concentration. Or, as he puts it:
"When they're dribbling s*** in your ear, you take
your eye off the ball."
So, when they start conversation he, more often
that not, ignores them. "People think I'm ignorant,
but I'm not," says Mark, who hasn't drunk since he
was 22. "I just don't want to talk to them." Some, too
drunk to spot the journalist, talk to me. About the
town, or the tunes. Or, more frequently, the tie. It's
bad enough being sober round tanked-up mates,
when they're strangers, it's tedious. I think of times
when I've tried to befriend bouncers - we all have,
I think - and I feel ashamed.
Then, a young lad approaches sheepishly. "I'm really
sorry about last week," he tells Mark. "Sorry
about that mate. Really sorry. Am I all right to get
in?" Last week, the lad tried to speak to Mark. When
that approach was declined, the lad kicked off.
Mark, satisfied with the chastened drip, lets him in.
There is, though, no trouble. The punters harp
on, but are harmless. It's not like this everywhere.
In six months at a Darlington club, Mark saw more
trouble than in the past six years combined. In some
ways, he says, he prefers the rowdier spots.
"In high-pressure premises, you're on your toes
all the time," he says. "You're running the gauntlet
all evening."
By the early hours, I can barely grip my pen. My
fingers are icy after just three hours on the pavement.
Before I go, I ask Mark bouncing's best bit.
"When you make the world a better place," he
says, laughing. "But when you stop someone getting
hit, or stop someone getting glassed. That's
satisfying."
I head to my car, past a Street Crime UK scene.
Girls in short skirts bawling, lads in short sleeves
brawling. I sit in my car, heaters blasting, with two
thoughts. I'm glad I'm not a bouncer. I'm very glad
some people are.
9:02am Friday 28th March 2008
Print 
Email this 
Comment
What are these links for?
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
More on Digg
More on del.icio.us
More on Furl
More on reddit
More on NowPublic/
More on Yahoo!
