Recommended Reads: The Guv’nor Tapes by Lenny Mclean

Continuing our series of reading from the inmates of Walton prison, Anthony recommends this tale of a hard man with a heart of gold.

The Guv'nor Tapes (John Blake, 2007)

Lenny Maclean and Peter Gerard

This book is one of those books that you can’t put down. Bareknuckle fighter Lenny McLean was Britain’s hardest man. There have been many times when his back was against the wall and he has always come out on top. He once went up against eighteen men on his own. Nine ended up on the floor and nine ran away. He has been shot twice and stabbed once, which almost cost him his leg, but he’s never been put down and he always made it to hospital on his own two feet. He has fought the hardest men around and won, like Roy ‘Pretty Boy’ Shaw*.He even went to New York and beat the toughest man the Mafia could find.

What I respect about Lenny is the fact that he’s not a bully, he won’t hurt weak people and he wouldn’t let it happen in front of him. Also this is a man who loves his wife and kids very much and has always looked after them properly.

There was only one downside to the book and that is the beginning where he talks about his childhood. How he survived it, I will never know. His stepfather beat him black and blue from the age of five and it knocked me sick. Maybe if he hadn’t had such a bad childhood he would not have ended up being such a hard bastard.

Lenny went through all this and lived, but then something he could not beat killed him – cancer. Lenny McLean died in 1998. God bless him.

Posted by Anthony

* Roy Shaw actually called himself Roy 'Mean Machine' Shaw, but there was no love lost between these two.