EXTRACT FROM THE FOLLOW UP TO “THE LOOKED AFTER KID”

EXTRACT FROM THE FOLLOW UP TO “THE LOOKED AFTER KID”
By Paolo Hewitt.

In this as yet untitled book, due to be published in Spring of 2010, I tracked down four of the guys I was in a children’s home with. The home was called Burbank. This is an extract from my meeting with a guy called David Westbrook. Basically, at the home David felt neglected, felt that no one listened to him. In an effort to gain much needed attention, he started owning up to petty crimes he did not commit. The result was that the authorities felt he was uncontrollable and placed him in a borstal where he learnt more about crime in a year than you and I would do in a lifetime. After absconding from the borstal, David ended up in Liverpool where he became a full time criminal. The story starts here.

I WRITE THE SONGS

Fuck you. As a child, you deny me love, you deny me attention, you deny me security. Therefore, you must think me the lowest of the low. Fine. I’ll show you how low I can go. I’ll go to places you haven’t even dreamt about to prove how unhappy I am.
No one had listened to the child, so the man took over and he said, fuck you. David Westbrook became a full time criminal. He and his friend went into credit fraud.
How did that work? I asked him.

‘Easy, you open up accounts in 32 different banks under 32 different names. You put in a hundred pounds in the first account and keep moving the money around,’ he explains. ‘Keep that up for a couple of months and then you say to the bank I need a cheque guarantee card. They then send you one. So now you’ve got thirty two cheque books and thirty two cards. Every day we would go to bank and draw out money. That was our job. Going to the bank every day, opening up accounts, and drawing out money.

Nice work if you can get it, I remark.

‘It is until you get caught,’ he shoots back, laughing.

‘I went into the bank one day and I was collared. At the police station, I had never seen so many cheques in all my life. But I only owed up to two. I just went that one is mine, that one is mine, the rest I don’t know about. The police were so primitive in those days, they didn’t have a clue. These days if you wrote something out, they would send it to an expert and have you. In those days, it was quick arrest, quick conviction. I got a three month suspended sentence. I never gave them the guy I was doing it with. I told them I didn’t know his name.’

David and his partner in crime celebrated with champagne and women. Yet there was something else going on at this time, something very specific to orphans. David didn’t trust a living soul. He didn’t trust his partner, any of his lovers, any of his friends. As far as he was concerned, everyone was under suspicion.

‘If I met someone and had known him for years, I still wouldn’t trust the clothes on his back,’ he says. ‘That’s the way I was. Even the guy I was doing cheques with I didn’t trust him one bit. I used to sit down with him and we would have a laugh saying, this time next year we will be millionaires. But I never trusted him, never trusted anyone.’

In other words, fuck you. I knew that shout well. It took me years to trust anyone, be it friend or lover or caring adult. When I went into care aged ten, a block of ice rose up inside of me, there to keep everyone at bay. No way were you getting inside of me. No one was. I had trusted people all my life and everyone – everyone - had let me down.

I had held out my arms but was kicked in the chest.

David had experienced the same rejection except he now had a much bigger problem. The police had his name and number; they were on his trail

He had bought a motorbike with some of the proceeds of his cheque scam and one day had a bad crash. When he got out of hospital, he hi-tailed it back to Woking but the Liverpool police charged him with reckless driving anyway. To get to his Liverpool court appearance, David stole a car. Bad move. Worse, he parked it directly outside of the court.

At the trial, a miracle. Instead of imprisonment, the judge found David not guilty. He said the police had been harassing him and the case against him was unsound. David came out of court a free man and in a state of absolute bliss. Only to find two policemen standing by his stolen car.

’Is this your vehicle?’ one of them asked.

He was handcuffed and led away.

David pauses. 'I suppose there’s a moral in there somewhere,’ he says.

Yes, there is a moral, I told David, and it’s this - don’t go to court in a stolen motor car.
Both of us laugh and it feels good to be here with this man. Truth be told, I had worried about meeting David, worried the interview would go flat or horribly wrong. Just the opposite had occurred. I was really enjoying my time with David Westbrook.

For the stolen car, David was remanded to Walton Prison, Liverpool. I couldn’t imagine what that would be like. Prison scares me to my soul. In fact, my nightmares of late have all been about the threat of prison hanging over me. Yet I admire those who survive incarceration. It speaks of a strength I envy.

David despised prison, hated it in fact. But it would prove to be the turning point.
‘It was degrading,’ he says. ‘You’re nothing. It made me feel that if I ever got out of there, I would never get caught again.

‘I also felt that because of my past and because no one had ever given a shit about me, what I was doing was my way of getting back at society.’

David was released. With no job prospects in view and no one to guide him, David returned to crime and cheque frauds. Yet the criminal’s ability to know exactly when time is running out on you, now kicked into play. David faked a passport, went to St Tropez. There he sold doughnuts on the beach and at night found himself in casual amorous adventures. He loved the day-to-day nature of this life, the freedom of waking up with just the day to think about.

I too loved those kinds of days, I told him, that feeling of being free from worry, free from the past. I loved sunny days in the park or on a beach, with money in the bank, work on the table, love in my heart.

But there was a shadow hanging over David and that shadow was the police. The constant worry of capture, he explained, was in itself a prison sentence. There was only one way to set himself free.

‘I decided to give myself up, ‘he recalls. ‘I got back from France and I phoned my probation officer. He said, come round and have a cup of tea. Ten minutes later two CID blokes who I knew arrived. One of them said to me, we wondered where you had got to. I told him I had been in France but that enough was enough. I got remanded in custody.

A change had taken place. Prison had initiated it, forced David to see, as that great poet Graham Parker once noted, nobody hurts you harder than yourself. All of us who survive have this same realisation. I certainly did. I awoke one day and knew it was time to stop running away and face up to the past so as to gain a future. It’s a long hard process but it is worth every step.

David’s solicitor did not mince words. He told David he would be imprisoned for a very long time. David shrugged his shoulders. ‘I said, I know that,’ he recalled, ‘but at least I will have learnt my lesson.’

The court case came. Before sentencing, the magistrate asked David if he had anything to say.
‘I stood up and I said, yes,’ David recalls. ‘I said, I have had a shit life. I have had people taking the piss out of me since I can remember, from the council to welfare to the police, but it is now time to go straight. I know you are going to send me away but I am telling you the truth, you won’t see me again. I’m throwing the towel in.’

The magistrate retired to his room. When he returned he told David to stand. David stood. And then another miracle. The magistrate gave David a chance, a last chance but a chance all the same. He sentenced David to just twenty-eight days in prison. To David it was the most precious lifeline ever given him.

‘As we were leaving court,’ David recalls, ‘this CID bloke said to me, you step in shit and you come out smelling of roses. Perhaps, I said the right things, I told him. He said, You’ll be back again. I said, I won’t. You will never ever see me again.’

And they didn’t.

PAOLO HEWITT, JULY 2009

Sunday night arrives so I drop down to Bar Italia

Sunday night arrives so I drop down to Bar Italia to see Tony S., tell him the latest as per our agreement. Only when I get there il tri-colore man is nowhere to be seen. I ask around and am told he has returned to the old country, Italia, leaving a note saying he has done all he can for English football, now it’s up to them. What you going to do? Now I got to write my own blog.

Since last time around, lot has been happening. The suit my amici clubbed together for my 50th birthday and - God bless them all for doing so - has been named Solomon Grundy in that it was measured on a Monday, made on a Tuesday, picked up on Wednesday and worn at a photo shoot Friday. Phil the Photographer at Karma Creative took the snaps and glad he did, good man, quality work. He also snapped Mr Gary Crowley the DJ in some new Gabicci tops which Mr. Baxter had brought down. Gabicci are launching a new range next year and they are on the case. I got a couple of neat brown numbers, especially one with a white stitching down the front and matching buttons. Very good fellas. Tops go very well with my Napoli corduroy boots….

Music wise Consigliore Cenzo operating out of the Isle of Man sent over some material from a new band called Ivan Campo which I liked a lot, as I did a tune called A Northern Song by The Super Imposers that my very good friend Mr Wells put me onto, available on the net. When Saturday comes so do two of the best radio shows available – Brian Matthews on Radio 2 from eight to ten in the morning playing all kinds of great Sixties tunes and as Mr Crowley points out he still sounds exactly the same as when he was interviewing the likes of McCartney and Marriott back in the day. Early evening comes Craig Charles’s brilliant funk and soul show on BBC 6, a great mix of the old and the new. Heard Eli Reed on this show and plenty of other gems. Have also been re acquainting myself a great soul CD. The Eddie and Ernie compilation on Kent called Just Friends. These two singer songwriters are just brilliant - tracks such as In These Tender Moments, I Can’t Stop The Pain, the title track, I gotta say this…. It really doesn’t get much better.

Sport wise, saw the Spurs thrash Liverpool for the second time (,…) then went down to Fulham on Saturday which we lost which I predicted as we like to help out the lesser London teams…..In the same week also finished off the interviews for the Martin Chivers biog I am ghost-writing. I went to his house and we tidied up the end of his playing career. ‘That’s it,’ I told him, ‘we have done all the interviews about 30 hours worth.’

‘What happens next?’ the great man asked ‘We go and have a kick about,' I replied. ‘A kick about?’ ‘Yep, a kick about.’ I didn’t tell him this but you know when I go and meet the Great Cockerel in the sky, I have to have the phrase 'I passed the ball to Martin Chivers' on my lips.
‘Oh,’ he said looking a bit flummoxed, ‘okay when the weather gets better we can go down to the local park’.

I intend to keep him to that promise…. See as a kid I idolised Chivers and that’s why I turn into a ten year old every time I go to his house. I sit there holding a cup of coffee thinking Martin Chivers made me a cup of coffee, can you believe it...….Anyways his biog should be in the shops just under a year from now. That will be followed in Spring 2010 by my follow up book to The Looked After Kid, provisionally entitled Home but that will change, I know it. Once in a while I take five minutes and think of this book. I think of opening lines and phrases and images and paragraphs and suddenly I am chomping on the bit. Can’t wait to write it. But first got to get a couple of things out of the way which will put the De Niro in the account and cover the midfield while I write what will be the most important book of my career. Going to sell millions this book, millions.

Anyway got to go. The Sweeney is about to start on ITV 4. All that is left to say is this - Be young, be foolish, be Tottenham. That way you got all bases covered.

Ciao amici.

Okay, my name is Tony S .....

Okay, my name is Tony S. and most days and nights you can catch me down the Italia, checking the shoes, checking the news. One guy who frequents the joint is this writer guy Paolo and over the evenings watching the girls and the world go by we got to know each other. So the other night we are gassing when suddenly he comes with a proposition.

Turns out he has been re reading Joe Orton's Diaries and been greatly inspired by them. So you should be, I tell him. He was a great writer and a great man, he should inspire you. In fact, he should inspire everyone, end of story - even tho ones who call him a fanook. Anyway Paolo tells me he is so inspired he wants to start a diary of his own and put it on his website, his My Space, etc.

Only he has a favour to ask; given that he has a lot of cakes on his tray at the moment, could I take some time out to maybe write the blog for him. He will tell me what had been going on, I then put it down in my own inimitable style. What do I think? I think, get to fuck that’s what I think. I ask him - You think I am only here to write your stuff, that I haven't got a life on my own? Hey, no offence he says but he figures that with me wanting to get into the writing game this might be a good chance for me to get some target practice, so to speak. I am just about to tell him what part of the Thames he can drop his idea in when something makes me stop and think, Hey he might have a point. I tell him, okay, maybe I'll give it a shot see what happens.

Okay he says. Okay, I say. There is silence. So I ask him - what the f*** you been doing? Turns out he has been to Scotland only he won't tell me what for. He just said he went for two days, he met the people he had to see, had a great time with them and then came home with the goodies. That's all you need to know for now, he tells me. All will be revealed later. Guy is being real cagey about this project so I leave him to it.

Then he explains – a lot of the time he has ideas which he then tells people about and does so in an excited manner. Next thing you know someone else has copped the idea and used it for a book or a TV doc and left Paolo high and dry. Happened quiet a bit recently so now he is going to bite his tongue on a lot of things. Back to the story.

He gets back to London Wednesday, and Thursday and Friday he works with his friend Antonio Easton on a script called Notting Dale. Been writing this script for two years the boys and now they got to finish it. Producer's orders. Paolo don't want to say much except the film is set in 1958, time of the Notting Hill riots. It’s about change and love and jazz and clothes and sex. Sounds good to me, I tell him. Saturday he has off and he and his girl go to the Raindance Film Festival, which he has been sneaking in and out of all week. He says he saw some terrible stuff but also some good cinema. The ones that caught his eye were mainly documentaries. There was a great short on Jesse Hector, an original modernist who formed The Hammersmith Gorrillas in 1974 and also had all his ideas nicked.

Paolo also saw a great doc on the producer Joe Meek which Paolo said turned him around on this man. After all Paolo always has time for those who swim against the world. So this guy Meek is obssessed with sound. So he joins the majors as technician but soon his wayward ways get in the way. So he sets up his own studio. In a flat. On the Holloway Road. Number 304. Next thing you know he has sold millions of records, taken too many drugs, dabbled in the occult, bene caught importuning by the local police, and finally shot his landlady and himself in 1967. On the anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death, the musician who most fascinated Meek. That took place on February 3rd. In August of the very same year another Joe was killed, just up the road. His name was Orton. Whar are the odds? Anyhows, previous to this doc, Paolo couldn’t see the fuss about this guy. Everything he heard just sounded annoying. Yet it turns out this guy cut his own concept album about going to the moon round about the time Paolo arrived on this earth. Which was befor eman got to the moon let em tell you. You got tocheck a man who pulls of shit like that.

Paolo also liked this film The End, shot by the daughter of an East End chap. In it her dad and his associates spill the beans on their - shall we say - turbulent lives. Meanwhile the best film was One Day Removals a dark Scottish comedy that was both funny and very well acted. Sunday he popped down the Italia. What tunes you been playing? I asked him. Very little of late he told me although he has been reading a big biog of the great Sam Cooke and intends to be blasting out his tunes very soon. We take a coffee and a cannolli and then Paolo says ciao ciao, let’s cross cups next week.

So until then amici, best to you and yours and salut!

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