I lived there back in the early 90’s and in 3 years nothing bad happened…….apart from being threatened with a knife twice, and shot at by some scroat with an air rifle!
Most depressing place I have EVER been.
Saw a drive by shooting with a shotgun. Only shot out somebody’s front windows though. The police repsonse was funny. A little panda car drove past then raced off again without stopping.
Stabbings, bottling, glassings, endless fights, quite a good gang battle in a nightclub (metal barstool is better than a broken glass by the way), the blood in the stairway was impressive. The bouncers had been lobbing fire extinguisher at people (Centrefolds if you remember it). A full on riot (or week of), cars being petrol bombed, cars being turned upside down (with people in them once). The younguns building a bonfire on top of a gas main was impressive. Then lobbing bricks at the fire brigade. An alsation trained to fetch bricks being lobbed through car windows was a comic highlight.
A mate was attacked. He got away but the lad he was with ended up in a coma. These were meathead boro bouncers set upon by a gang of kids so being a hardman didn’t help!
Lee Duffy was killed 100yds from my house.
I used to train in the same gym as Big Brian (Cockerill). Nice guy. Very big… blue all over. I saw him on Macintyre’s Underworld a couple of years ago.
The guy on the door of the gym was shot in the forehead with an airgun. Quite funny. Well, the bandage was.
I had a car and two motorbikes knicked (my next door neighbour’s brother nicked one of the bikes – she told me in a “he’s a bit of a character” kind of way).
There was rarely a dull day 😆