Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

I’m a wonderful citizen, how do you think I’ve got this house and where I’m living now if I wasn’t? They’ve given me this, t’ council. This is the best little city on earth. How do I know? I’ve been everywhere else, and I’m here now, right on the family patch. Nobody can tell me anything, I don’t read t’ Daily Mirror and t’ Sun, I go and have a look. I’ve lived in the forests of North America, I’ve lived in the outback of the Ivory Coast, I’ve lived in India and Russia. I’ve had me breakfast in Moscow and me tea in Wood Street nick. Yeah, I’ve been about a bit. I’m the only man in the history of mankind that has swum across the Straits of Johor. I had to avoid a police launch, it were either that or Changi nick, they’ve got me passport in Singapore, yeah, I swam it. Nobody’s ever done it before, not because of the currents or anything like that, nothing like that: it’s sharks, not shark-infested, but none of the locals go paddling. Yeah, I swum it. I know about sharks, I know about sharks, yeah. I’m six foot three and 16 stone, two hundredweight, yeah, I’m swimming. These pumps, see these pumps, these were hanging around me neck when I done it, yeah. I thought, well, Jaws, I know how to condition them, I know how to condition people, yeah, Jaws, boom boom boom boom, yeah, they’re just flying about, you’ve got know how t’ job works, your sharks they’ll have a look at me and think, yeah, I know how to do ’em, you punch ’em right in the fucking earhole and they swim off.

Comment

Comment

The excerpt quoted begins around 24:30:

The quote in my title is from the programme intro. A perhaps better one, from Charles Cox: “Notorious memoir of a violent criminal and, briefly, professional boxer. Sykes was a drunken thug who spent much of his life in prison, but his book is nevertheless the work of a sensitive and intelligent man.”

As I understand it, the major threat in the Johore Strait, after the Singapore authorities, is from pollution, not sharks. Does anyone know more about his foreign travel claims, unmentioned in his autobio (Sykes 1991)?

First broadcast dated from the Times TV listings for 4 December 1990:

10.40 First Tuesday.
● CHOICE: Paul Sykes from Wakefield was good enough to fight for the British heavyweight boxing championship, and to take an Open University degree, and his autobiography won an Arthur Koestler literary award. But his life has been a shambles. He has spent nearly half of his 46 years in prison and he has a wild and violent temperament which has often made his high intelligence count for nothing. Nick Lord’s profile follows Sykes through his latest prison sentence and his attempts yet again to build a stable life outside. The signs are not promising. Within three months he is back in trouble. A specialist in roaring invective, a Yorkshire Alf Garnett in manner if not necessarily in substance, Sykes is a rich subject and Lord does him justice. Those looking for the roots of Sykes’s behaviour may find them in his tough upbringing at the hands of a martinet father who, of all things, worked as a prison officer.

Something to say? Get in touch

Original

I’m a wonderful citizen, how do you think I’ve got this house and where I’m living now if I wasn’t? They’ve given me this, t’ council. We’ve got the, this is the best little city on earth. How do I know? I’ve been everywhere else, and I’m here now, right on the family patch. Yeah, I know where it is, I’ve been, nobody can tell me anything, I don’t read t’ Daily Mirror and t’ Sun, I go and have a look. I go and have a look, and I’ve been, I’ve lived in the forests of north America, I’ve lived in the outback of the Ivory Coast, I’ve lived in India and Russia. I had me breakfast in Moscow and me tea in Wood Street nick. Yeah, I’ve been about a bit, I’m the only man in the history of mankind that has swum across the Straits of Johor. I had to avoid a police launch, it were either that or Changi nick, they’ve got me passport in Singapore, yeah I swam it. Yeah, nobody’s ever done it before, not because of the currents or anything like that, nothing like that: it’s sharks, not shark-infested, but none of the locals go paddling. Yeah, I swum it. I know about sharks, I know about sharks, yeah. I’m six foot three and 16 stone, two hundredweight, yeah, I’m swimming. These pumps, see these pumps, these were hanging around me neck when I done it, yeah. I thought, well, Jaws, I know how to condition them, I know how to condition people, yeah, Jaws, boom boom boom boom, yeah, they’re just flying about, you’ve got know how t’ job works, your sharks they’ll have a look at me and think, yeah, I know how to do ’em, you punch ’em right in the fucking earhole and they swim off.

332 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Boxing (3) ·
• Changi Prison (1) ·
• Crime (1) ·
• First Tuesday (TV programme) (1) ·
• Heavyweight (1) ·
• ITV (TV network) (1) ·
• ITV Yorkshire (1), previously known as Yorkshire Television ·
• India (6) ·
• Ivory Coast (1) ·
• Jaws (film) (1) ·
• Malay Peninsula (1) ·
• Passport (1) ·
• Peninsular Malaysia (1) ·
• Prison (5) ·
• Russia (8) ·
• Shark attack prevention (1) ·
• Shark attack (1) ·
• Shark (1) ·
• Singapore (1) ·
• Southeast Asia (1) ·
• Straits of Johor (1) ·
• Swimming (1) ·
• Sykes, Paul (1946-2007) (1), Wakefield-based heavyweight boxer, writer, criminal ·
• Wakefield Court House (1) ·
• 📌Wakefield (36), cathedral city on the River Calder in the West Riding/West Yorkshire ·
• Yorkshire dialect (20) ·

All tags.

Similar

• 30 May 1415: A native God creates the first Yorkshireman and -woman in the York mystery plays
• 30 May 1835: The (Tory-dominated) Leeds Corporation gives its assets to three cronies to prevent their being inherited by the new (Whiggish) town council created by the Municipal Corporations Act
• 12 September 1856: Band-leader John Hope tells an inquest of the life and murder of his daughter, the dancer Jane Banham, by her ex-lover, a Mancunian tailor, at the Malt Mill Inn, Armley
• 24 February 1777: Penniless bohemian Tom Fashion calls on redneck Yorkshire moneybags Sir Tunbelly Clumsy during tonight’s London première of a Sheridan play
• 15 November 1894: Application is made to move Maria Squires (11) of Dewsbury from a girls’ shelter in Wakefield to St Chad’s Home For Girls, Far Headingley
• 1 December 1843: Unappetising conditions in the police cells and the old lock-up at Halifax
• 13 August 1821: The laments of Ann Barber, adulterous poisoner, on the scaffold at York
• 21 December 1852: Sarah Slater (19) insists that Alfred Waddington (21) had no moral right to murder her and behead their toddler
• 29 May 1732: Old William Lindley of Dodworth tells various marvellous stories from his youth
• 3 June 1917: A mob wrecks and loots Jewish shops and houses in east-central Leeds