I am Sheamus - Very Personal Development

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By trade, I’m a licensed doorman - aka a bouncer - and have been for about 18 months. I’ve had a few emails recently asking me about what it is like to do this kind of work. Last year I worked for six months in a very busy nightclub on a holiday park. I kept a detailed blog of my experiences whilst there. This is the first post of an occasional series of my adventures therein, included in this blog because it seems relevant to my personal development - even though a lot of this took place just a year ago, I feel like a different person. I look back in wonder and amazement at the situations in which I routinely found myself. The events transcribed in this article took place on May 17, 2007. The article was originally written on the same day, and is left unedited, language and all. Code names were used to protect the identity of my colleagues.

Another Wednesday, another psycho.

It was a quiet night until around 11pm. I walk into the main bar where they’ve got their nightly ‘adult gameshow’ on, and the lead ENTS girl comes over to me and points out a chap who, she says, has mooned the stage a couple of times. I observe him for a few minutes and he’s clearly pissed, a clarification not unassisted by him deciding to adopt his tie into a ‘Rambo’-style headband while I watched. This is rarely something done by normal people. When he started to boo the people on stage a little while later, I decided enough was enough, and told the bar staff to cut off all drinks for anyone on his table.

Then, it was simply a matter of time. There were only two possible conclusions: one, that they went to the bar, were refused service, and thought “Fuck it, then” and left, or two, they went ballistic.

About midnight his missus goes to the bar, and is refused, so he tries, and is also refused. Naturally, assuming she was the problem, he does what every sane man would do… and headbutts her.

She has a swing at him, and he storms out.

After a bit of a struggle - the guy was no runt, standing about 6ft3 - we get him to the main doors and he’s told he has to leave. Jabba stays outside with him, and Edmonson and I go inside to make sure there’s no additional problems. You see, when something like this happens, all kinds of ‘hangers on’ make an appearance. We had one 19-year old saying he was going to ‘do’ the headbutting loony because, well, he was a headbutting loony. We had another who was pissed off with somebody earlier and just wanted someone else to be pissed off with. And then we had Rambo’s girlfriend, her sister and her partner to contend with as well.

The missus was fuming. “Don’t worry about me or him,” she said, “When I catch up with him I’m going to beat the fucking shit out of him.” Then, one of the arcade girls came over to me and said Jabba wanted me. So I go out and Jabba’s still there with the psycho. I walk up slowly and casually just to see what’s going on, and then Rambo says:

“You’ve got some cajones on you, haven’t you mate?”

Except what he actually said was:

“You’ve got some gahoonies on you, haven’t you mate?”

So I’m like: “What?”

And then he starts doing all this B-Boy hand posturing bollocks and says, “You know what I said.”

But at the time I didn’t; I figured it out later, but had no idea what the fuck he was on about, and so turned to Jabba. “You called me?” I asked.

Rambo spoke again. “Are you talking to me mate?” he said.

“Er, no.” I replied. “I’m talking to this guy.”

“Yeah, but are you talking to me.”

“No. I’m talking to him.”

He then jabbed me lightly on the chest with a couple of fingers. This, in case you don’t know, is the first and last warning. A second occurrence actually gives us legal permission to use ‘reasonable force’ against him, which in my case would have been breaking those fucking fingers, using a technique I’ve recently been reading about and itching to try out.

But no. Edmonson showed up, and he went through the same drama with him. “Have you got anything to say mate?”

Blah blah blah, the same old mental ramblings from a total scrote. He leaves. We go back to his missus who is still ranting and raging about how she’s going to ‘do him’, and then she leaves. The sister and brother-in-law stay behind, with the other couple’s crying, 8-year old daughter (of course. Same old, same old.)

Edmonson calls through to the boys in park security to keep an eye on Rambo and his up-for-it missus, specifically because we want to know where they’re staying in case it goes tits-up later. Fine. They put the cameras on them.

Five minutes later we get a call over the radio. “Yeah, that couple you asked us to watch. They’ve having a snog now. Should we leave it there?”

I’m sorry? What? What!?

Five minutes was all it took for a woman who had just been HEADBUTTED by her partner to welcome him back into her bosom. Five minutes. I realise this isn’t a very PC thing to say but it’s incredibly hard to have any kind of sympathy for somebody like that, who is so clearly fucked in the head and/or a doormat that she’ll not only be with a man like that in the first place, but take him back after he assaults her in front of her child. In a public bar.

Because she couldn’t buy him a drink.

I mean, I don’t even know how to process this, or where to put it. The mind doth, indeed, boggle.

Later, I spoke to his brother-in-law, who confirmed that his sister’s partner was, in fact, quote, “a total cunt.”

My thought: then why do you stand by and do nothing when he headbutts her? And if you know this, why are you all on holiday together?

Yet again, however, I’m almost certain nothing will be done about it. No action will be taken by management. While Edmonson and myself both strongly recommended to the boys in the park that the police should be called to handle this, they decided against it, waiting for ’something else’ to happen. A kiss cures all ills, eh? What this means, of course, is that John Rambo will be back at the main complex tomorrow, sober, and wondering why the fuck he’s been barred.

Oh well, not my problem; it’s my day off tomorrow.