The Guvnor
Lenny McLean was one of the hardest men ever to walk the streets of London. He came out of Hoxton, and by the 1970s he was minding pubs and building a name that travelled a long way past his own manor. They called him the King of the Bouncers. Most players in London's underworld respected him, and very few were foolish enough to take him on without a weapon.
His early life was brutal. His father died young, he was abused by his stepfather Jim Irwin, and his mum died in her early forties. According to his daughter Kelly's book, Lenny went off the rails for a long spell after that. In his twenties he was a nightmare on the drink, and a naturally aggressive man became a frightening one. Kelly writes that his wife Val took the children to a refuge more than once until he had sobered up. He gave up drinking not long afterwards, and she says a sober Lenny was a far better dad and husband.
In the ring and on the cobbles
In unlicensed boxing Lenny was a force, but he was never unbeatable. He lost to Roy Shaw once, to Cliff Fields and Johnny Waldron twice each, and to George Langley and Kevin Paddock on points. Every one of those men was a proper boxer who could soak up his onslaught and wear him down.
The street was a different story. It is widely claimed he never lost a fight on the cobbles, and his reputation as the hardest man in London was earned. His friend and doorman John "The Neck" Houchin describes the one night a huge rugby player overpowered him and put him down. Another story, from a source whose father was a respected face in London and Liverpool, puts Lenny in a pub near the Blind Beggar against a Scouse docker of over 20 stone. It ended with Lenny sinking his teeth into the man's face. The fight never made it into Lenny's own book, but Kelly describes him falling ill after biting a man's face around that time.
The fight most people know came in the mid eighties against "Mad Gypsy" Bradshaw. The bout was arranged by Lenny's associate Kenny Mac, and Bradshaw was neither mad nor a gypsy. He was Kenny's own minder, there to put on a show for a few rounds before a crowd-pleasing knockout. Then Bradshaw headbutted him, off script. The red mist came down, and it took several big men to drag Lenny off. The fight made the national news and still shocks people who watch it today. Bradshaw spent weeks in hospital. Lenny, riddled with guilt, visited him every day and paid for his care, and the two stayed friends for the rest of their lives.
A stone cold, sober, raving lunatic.
King of the Bouncers
Lenny's real trade was the door. In the early to mid eighties, by his own account, a friend brought him in to take back the Barbican Club by Smithfield meat market, where the doormen had lost control. He went in hitting first and asking questions later, for a hundred pounds a night.
One night eighteen men on a stag party turned nasty over a bill of 38 pounds for eighteen drinks. The club owner locked the door behind him, so Lenny went outside on his own, and nine of them ended up on the floor. At Snow Hill police station he pressed his face to the cell flap and screamed at the rest that he was like this all the time, a stone cold, sober, raving lunatic. The police talked about a Section 18 charge. Three weeks later it was dropped, because nobody thought it wise to spend public money arguing that one man had assaulted eighteen.
Hunted
Being dangerous with your hands only gets you so far in London's underworld, and for Lenny it nearly got him killed. According to his book, a man he left with a broken jaw and a broken arm at the Barbican belonged to a serious East London crime family. Weeks later two men on a motorbike blasted the front windows of the club with a pump-action shotgun, and Lenny was badly wounded. The owner paid him five thousand pounds to leave.
Then came "Mad" Barry Dalton, a Dubliner with a reputation for using weapons. Lenny gave him a hiding in what was meant to be a friendly spar at Freddie Hill's gym in Battersea, and Dalton later turned up at his front door with a gun. Lenny said Dalton missed and he chased him off with a bat. Later still, Lenny's friend Johnny Price borrowed his car and was shot in the legs in a case of mistaken identity. By then the drug trade had armed the gangs, and old-school hardmen who fought with their fists were giving way to men with the bottle to pull a trigger. Lenny moved his training to South London and kept well clear.
The Hippodrome
The biggest threat to Lenny's freedom came from his own door. As head doorman at the Hippodrome he slapped a drunken reveller who later died, and the police went for murder. Lenny spent 18 months on remand in Brixton before he was found not guilty. His bosses kept his wages coming the whole time, and with his pal Johnny Nash keeping an eye on things, his money-lending business kept turning over.
His book was crafted to show him in his best light, and the full story is rougher. In his twenties Lenny was often the aggressor, and plenty of what he did was out of order. None of that changes what he was in a fight. He remains the man London's hardest names are measured against.