Nightclub
As a callow youth I collected glasses in a nightclub. Think late eighties, all expensive imported bottled beers, Miami-Vice style pastel colours and neon lights in the shape of saxophones on the walls, very swish. Oh, and in Wigan. Yeah.

The door staff looked like clones, stamped out of a mould labelled "six four, nineteen stone, none of it fat, mid-twenties, buzz cut, big grin". They all wore white tuxedos to stand out in the crowd and were all jovial rugby playing lads.

Now, rather tragically, there was a bloke who used to turn up to the club dressed in a white tuxedo too. He was about five foot eight, probably about nine stone when he was damp, in his forties with thinning hair and Mike Read-style glasses. He'd stand by the dancefloor with a tonic water but never chat anyone up or dance, and the poor fella didn't seem to have any friends.

One night a punter was leaning over the bar harassing one of the barmaids, pointing and shouting obscenities about didn't she know who he was and he WOULD get what he wanted, etc. etc. Tragic little fella was standing behind him, and tapped him on the shoulder to attract his attention. The punter glanced round, spun on the spot and delivered a punch that would have taken tragic fella's head off... if it had connected. As it was, he just kind of leaned back slightly and swatted it on its way like it was an irritating mosquito, and then in the space of no more than a second hit the guy in the face AT LEAST a dozen times. It was almost funny - he looked like he'd been speeded up like the end of a Benny Hill show. I could hear the sound of the impacts over the music and it sounded like a drum roll. Mouthy punter literaly had absolutely no idea what had hit him and crumpled to the ground. I have literally never seen anyone move that fast. If the Matrix had come out in 1986 I'd have been able to use it as a reference - as it was I'd just never seen anything like it.

Two of the clones came over, one took the shoulders and the other took the legs and they got him out of there. Tragic fella got himself another tonic water and went back to the edge of the dancefloor.

In conversation with one of the clones later I learned that tragic fella was not, in fact tragic at all, and was, in fact, also one of the door staff, hence the outfit. Bearing in mind that the man I was talking to spent his free time carrying a rugby ball at a sprint into oncoming mountains of muscle intent on doing him injury, I was impressed when he described the little bloke as the hardest man he'd ever met. Vegetarian teetotal non-smoking Buddhist, apparently. Quite the conflict resolver, as well - apparently I'd witnessed something very very rare, as he hardly ever had to actually hit anyone.
(SonofRojBlake, Fri 1 Jun 2012, 13:15, 6 replies)

I like this.
I like it a lot. Good work. Click.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 1 Jun 2012, 15:02, closed)

Which is why
you don't really need to worry about massive Neanderthal-looking doormen, they've probably got the job because of how they look*. The one to be wary of is the guy who looks like your "tragic fella", he'll be lightning fast and Accord-drivingly hard.

*It would be a mistake to assume they are ALL employed because of size and build. You may just come up against the ones who are also lightning fast and rock-hard. Eeeh, that was some 90th birthday party, Aunty "Razors" Alice.
(Rsoles, Fri 1 Jun 2012, 19:45, closed)

" Accord-drivingly hard"
Hahahahaha
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 5 Jun 2012, 13:46, closed)

Wouldn't happen to be somewhere near Farnham would it?
The guy who taught the kung fu class I used to go to pretty much matches the description, and I know he did door work.
( Tedium Alduce me to interlow myself., Fri 1 Jun 2012, 22:26, closed)

No, when I said "in Wigan" it wasn't a metaphor for some shitty nowhere town, it was literally in Wigan.
(SonofRojBlake, Sat 2 Jun 2012, 1:01, closed)

Was it Maximes night club?

(soupdragon, Sat 2 Jun 2012, 13:28, closed)