Young Winstone - Ray Winstone

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tended to do much before. He also had a lot of great stories about the games they used to play in the docks.

      For instance, there was one fella whose party piece was to bite the head off a rat. Everyone would bet on whether he could do it or not, then he’d get the rat and put his mouth all around its neck . . . apparently the secret was that you had to do it cleanly, just pull it by the tail and the backbone would come out. Now I’m not recommending anyone try that at home, but being a kid of six or seven and listening to a story like that is certainly going to have an impact on you. As I grew older I loved all the tales about ‘spillage’ – for some reason, the closer you got to Christmas, crates of whisky would get harder to keep a firm hold of – and the canniness of the docklands characters.

      There was one about a geezer who owned a pub that used to do lock-ins for the dockers. They’d stay in there all night and then when it got light the next morning they’d go out and go to work. Obviously he didn’t want them to leave, so first he took all the clocks out and then he painted the windows black. They’re all in there having a booze up and since it never gets light, he’s got them in there forever. Looking at that written down, it seems more like a fairy tale than something which actually happened, but I love the dividing line where something would be on the edge of being made up for the sake of the story.

      When I was a bit older and started going to Spitalfields Market with my dad, people used to tell me how all the bollards around Gun Street and through the old city of London were made from the old cannon that had helped us win the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo. Now I don’t know if that was true or not, but either way it gave me a sense of the history of the place. And if we had any reason to be down in the Shadwell or Wapping areas – where the Ratcliff Highway murders took place more than 200 years ago – I’d usually get told how if you’d gone down there at that time it was like some kind of zoo, because sailors would bring back baby giraffes or lions or monkeys as pets, and by the time they’d get them home they’d be fully grown.

      Even as a small boy, I was never averse to a bit of make-believe. I had two little girlfriends called Kim and Tracey who lived just up the road from me. They were twins, and we used to play doctors and nurses together (I think I peaked too soon as a ladies’ man). I was always the soldier who came back from the war injured and they had to kiss me better. That was where it all started for me as far as acting was concerned.

      Another place that helped incubate the bug was the Odeon, East Ham. There were a couple of local cinemas we used to go to, but this was the main one – it was just near the Boleyn Pub as you go around the West Ham football ground. Do a left onto the Barking road at the end of Green Street and you’re there, down by the pie and mash shop (which we never ate at, because my dad hated pie and mash almost as much as he hated the Salvation Army).

      It was a beautiful cinema which had opened just before the Second World War with a live show called Thank Evans starring Max Miller. You’d go in and the organ would come up from the floor and you’d all have a little sing-song. Then you’d get the B-movie before the main picture – you weren’t just in there for a couple of hours, it was the whole afternoon. The first film I ever went to there was 101 Dalmatians, which came out in 1961, so I must have been four.

      My mum took me, and by all accounts I got quite angry with Cruella de Vil, because she was bullying the doggies. Apparently I got out of my seat and ran down the aisle towards the screen waving my fists and shouting ‘Cruella de Vil, leave them puppies alone!’ I don’t actually remember doing this myself – the red mist must’ve really come down – but Mum told the story so many times I can’t forget that it happened.

      The slant she put on this incident was that I was so trappy as a kid that I ‘even wanted to have a fight with a cartoon’. With hindsight I suppose you could also take it as evidence of how willing I was to get caught up in a drama even then.

      Although my mum was the first person who ever took me to the cinema, my dad soon took over the reins. Obviously he had to rise very early to work on the markets. The upside of that was that he tended to be free in the afternoons, and every Wednesday from the age of five onwards he’d pick first me and later me and Laura up from Portway and take us to the pictures. There’s a few stories later on that’ll show Ray Winstone Senior’s harder side, but he was a great dad to us, and I might not be doing what I am now if he’d decided to go down the pub instead of taking his kids to the cinema every week.

      Of course, part of his motivation was that he fancied an afternoon kip, but if it was a good film – like 633 Squadron – he’d stay awake to watch it. I remember him falling asleep in Jason and the Argonauts, though, and by the time he’d woken up I’d watched it all the way through twice. We used to see some pretty adult films given how young I was, but the only one I ever remember us being turned away from was a war film called Hell is for Heroes with Steve McQueen and James Coburn in it. I think it was an X, which at the time meant sixteen and over, and I remember the ticket-seller (who knew us) very politely telling my dad, ‘Sorry, Ray, your boy can’t come in.’ With hindsight, I can’t really fault the guy from the Odeon for that. It is quite a violent film – especially the bit where the guy gets shot and you see his glasses crack – and I was only five years old.

      Going to the movies wasn’t just a local thing. About once a month, usually on a Sunday afternoon, we’d go up the West End. Cinerama was a big draw then, and we’d go and see big, grown-up films like Lawrence of Arabia or Becket with O’Toole and Burton – which I loved, even though I was only seven when I first saw it.

      My nan and granddad took me to see How the West was Won in 70mm, and I had the poster up on my wall with a big map of America and pictures of Annie Oakley on it. Even though grand historical epics were the films I felt most strongly drawn to, I liked stuff that was meant for kids as well. Probably my favourite film of all when I was a youngster was Mary Poppins. Where else do you think I got the accent from?

      The Sound of Music was good as well – that was definitely one for the West End.

      The only small dampener on going to the cinema with the whole family was Laura saying, ‘I wanna go toilet.’ Sometimes she wouldn’t even last till halfway through, and because Mum would have to take her, we’d all have to stand up so they could make their way out into the aisle.

      Even though we went up West regularly, sometimes it felt like people there would dig us out a bit. The first time we saw Zulu was one of those occasions. It’s probably the best film ever, and I know it more or less off by heart now, but the day we went up to Leicester Square to see it has stuck in my mind for a different reason. It’s one of the earliest memories I have of people trying to make us feel like we weren’t good enough to be somewhere.

      We’re all sat down, we’ve got our popcorn, sweets and drinks, and the music’s playing. The film hasn’t started – I don’t think the trailers have even started – and obviously there are a few crackling noises as the bags are opening. But this woman sitting behind us with her Old Man almost barks at us, ‘Could you keep the noise down, please?’ My mum twists round with a polite half-shrug and explains, ‘The film hasn’t started yet, darlin’ – we’re just opening the popcorn and some sweets for the kids.’

      Obviously a few more sweet-wrappers get rustled over the next couple of minutes, but no one’s making a noise deliberately, and it’s still a while before the film’s due to start. But the woman can’t help herself – she decides to have another go. This time she practically hisses, ‘Keep the noise down’, and the ‘please’ is nowhere to be heard. Now my mum’s had enough. She stands up, turns round to look the woman straight in the eye and says, ‘Do yourself a favour, love, or you’ll be wearing it.’

      At that point, the pair of them got up and moved. My dad hadn’t even said anything – because it was a woman causing the trouble and he would never have a go at a woman. He was probably waiting for the bloke to start and then it would really have gone off. I clearly remember the feeling of ‘Oh, sorry, are we not allowed to be here?’ Just because we’re off our manor, suddenly everyone’s going to have something to say about it. This was a feeling I would grow quite familiar with over the years, not just in

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