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The Krays. Like the police, they came mob-handed. But they never came back.
    One evening Reggie walked into the house at just after ten at night. I told him Ronnie had left a message sayinghe was in the Coach and Horses with his friend, Pat Butler. It was nearly closing time and I said it was a bit late to go, but Reggie had a strange feeling he ought to. He left quickly. What happened when he got there became the talk of the East End for months.
    Ronnie was in the saloon bar with Pat. As Reggie walked in, Ronnie said, ‘Just in time.’ He nodded to nine youths at the other end of the bar. ‘That little firm are looking for us.’
    A few minutes later, the twins told Pat to make sure he stayed out of the way, then dashed out of the door, as though they were scared. But it was only a ploy to reduce the odds a little. As four of the rival gang followed them into the street, the twins doubled back into the saloon, through the public bar, taking the remaining five by surprise.
    It was an almighty battle. Fists flew, chairs were thrown, tables overturned. Although the twins were outnumbered by more than two to one, they floored the whole lot. And when the other four ran back in, they knocked them out too. Amazingly, the twins came out of that scrap virtually unscathed. But one of the kids, Bill Donovan, who Ronnie had hit with a chair, was taken to hospital with a badly damaged eye.
    The twins were very concerned about Bill and asked me to ring the hospital. I pretended to be a relation and asked how he was. A nurse said he was stable, but nobody knew if the eye was going to be permanently damaged. It was a worrying few days. The twins kept telling me to ring and eventually, to the twins’ relief, we learned Donovan was going to be all right.
    Pat Butler told me later that he was in the street after the fight had ended and an old man had asked him who the twins were. He’d never seen anything like it; it was like a scene from a Western.
    One night a few weeks later the twins were spotted going into a cafe in Commercial Road. When they came out, they found themselves facing ten members of the so-called Watney Street Gang who, it seemed, were intent on teaching them to stay in Bethnal Green. The twins did not want to risk waiting for the usual preliminaries to a punch-up; they waded into the mob, laying six of them out on the pavement. The rest, not fancying the new odds, ran off.
    Incidents like this built up the legend that the twins were tough guys who went around the East End looking for people to punch. That is far-fetched and unfair. What is true is that they were tasting power for the first time. They had been accustomed to victory in the ring against one opponent but now they knew they were hard and tough and skilful enough to take on, and beat, eight or nine between them.
    And they enjoyed the feeling.
    The Albert Hall was packed that night, 11 December 1951. Tommy McGovern, one of my contemporaries at the Robert Browning Institute, was defending his British light-heavyweight championship. And five of the other seven bouts involved Bethnal Green fighters – including the three Kray brothers. It was the first time we had appeared on the same bill together, and it was to be the last.
    In those days, a boxer had really arrived when he appeared at the Albert Hall or Harringay Arena; it had taken me eighteen victories in twenty contests. But the twins, who had turned pro in July, had made it there after just six fights – and six wins. That’s still a British boxing record.
    My appearance almost never happened. I had decided to quit boxing and hadn’t been in the ring for severalmonths. But I wanted an extra bit of money for Christmas and agreed to take on an unbeaten Aldgate welterweight called Lew Lazar for twenty-five quid.
    We were the first three fights on. First, Ronnie lost to a clever boxer from King’s Cross named Bill Sliney, whom Reggie had outpointed two months before. Sliney was not too keen to continue