From Lenny's pubs to Hollywood's
Michael Kelly, Mick to the men who worked for him, was one of the main players in security across London and Essex in the 1980s and 90s. He is a six foot two Irishman with a calm voice and a stubborn streak, and like most serious people in that trade he stayed under the radar of anyone outside it for years. When I wanted to understand the club scene of the nineties, he was the man I went to.
He learned the door the hard way. In the late seventies he worked tough London pubs under the eye of Lenny McLean, the King of the Bouncers, and he worked his way up to head doorman at Hollywood's in Romford, a busy and rough club in the heart of Essex. By the Essex Boys era he was running doors across Essex and in North London, and he was one of a handful of names, alongside his former colleague Tony Tucker, who controlled the main Essex nightspots.
Mick had seen most things by then. Football gangs had come through his doors, and so had Roy Shaw. Some years earlier Shaw took exception to being refused entry at Hollywood's, egged on by the drunken hangers-on around him, and it ended badly for him. The doormen saw off his entourage. Shaw was in his fifties by then, retired from crime and a wealthy man, and not the force he had once been. What came next was a different kind of danger.
The night at Club UN
In the mid nineties Mick was running the door at Club UN in Tottenham. One night a firm of around a hundred men pulled up outside in top of the range Mercedes, Range Rovers and BMWs. They were a young Brixton gang with a fearsome reputation, and they walked straight past the queue and demanded to be let in. The sheer numbers made them near impossible to stop.
Peace did not last. A man ran out of the club clutching a wound to his neck, and the doormen threw out four or five of the gang, their leader among them, and shut the door. On the street reputation was everything, and the gang were soon hammering at the door and making threats. Friends of theirs still inside forced it open, and Mick found himself face to face with the leader, who was holding a razor.
He was not coming back in under any circumstances.
As Mick tells it, he armed himself with the security chain and lock and told his Essex doormen to seal the passageway. The gang leader cut him down the face, and only his bulky jacket saved his chest. What followed was a fight on three fronts. The local door team held the front. Inside the entrance, Mick and the gang leader fought hand to hand, and the leader refused to go down. At the back, Mick's Essex doormen held a line against the rest of the gang while shots were fired, one man was hit in the leg and knives came out. A second team of Essex doormen who had been on a rare night off, Mick's brother-in-law among them, joined the defence and turned the tide. The gang were chased out of the club. Nobody died that night, which was a miracle.
Two teams on one door
Running doors in mixed areas had its own politics. Security bosses often ran two teams, one white and one black. It was never about segregation, because the clubbers all mixed as one. It was about respect. Doormen who knew the people from their own areas could strike a better rapport when it came to searches and the rules. Most of the local doormen at Club UN had stood strong on the front line, and they had more to fear from the fallout than anyone, because they and their families lived nearby.
The aftermath went on long after the cut on Mick's face healed. Rumours of retribution were everywhere, and he had to take precautions even at home in Essex. His first move was to let go of the local doormen he could no longer trust, in case anyone reported his movements back. He was a strong chess player and a strategic thinker, and he kept himself out of harm's way. Then life threw him a curve ball. Covering the door at another London pub, he was caught up in a brawl with a crowd of drunks who had nothing to do with Brixton, and a heavy glass ashtray cost him the sight in one eye. A break from the front line was long overdue.
The Russian wrecking machine
Mick came back in 1996 with a scarred face, blind in one eye, and a new door team of Eastern European men. Before they started he laid out the dangers ahead of them. One short, powerfully built man named Andre broke into a smile at the thought of it. One of the local doormen looked horrified, was called away for an emergency a few minutes later and never came back, not even for his wages. Mick described Andre to me as his Russian wrecking machine.
The trouble was at the Berwick Manor, a big old manor house with rooms everywhere. A villain from East London believed the venue was on his plot, and after Mick had a run-in with the villain's brother, a revenge attack was coming. Mick turned the place from a drinkers' pub into a rave venue with huge speakers to move the local mob on, and brought in his Club UN team to reinforce the door. When the gang sent lads down to test it, they found doormen who held no fear of them at all. Then a top tier North London crime boss with Irish heritage called to broker a deal. Mick refused. The door was his, and he was not letting the firm in. The gang backed off.
A clean door
Stubbornness was as much a part of Mick's success as anything he did with his hands. He could not live with backing down and letting another man intimidate him. It was not in his DNA.
In the nineties some security firms were fronts for criminal organisations, because whoever controlled a club door controlled what came in and out of it. Mick's firm was the exception, and he ran as clean a door as he could in those days. After the Essex Boys murders he won a big door contract in Basildon, with the job of clearing its pubs and clubs of thugs, hardmen and dealers. His career ran from Lenny McLean's pubs in the seventies to the superclub era of the nineties.