Here’s How to Handle a Drunken Chav

During his UK-wide pub crawl, comedian Ian Marchant found a girl being attacked and decided to act

Great Driffield advertises itself as the Capital of the Wolds, and was once an important market town. The glory days of the 19th century when it was the fastest-growing town in the East Riding of Yorkshire have long gone, but the Bell is still a smart old coaching inn with comfortable rooms. Planning a quiet Sunday night, Perry and I ordered a bar meal, which was brought to us by Karen, receptionist, waitress and good egg. She was lovely, but the meal was horrible. The hotel manager, whose resemblance to Basil Fawlty almost scared us, sat at the back of the bar, reading the Sunday papers.

We asked Karen what the pubs in Driffield were like, and she recommended three: the Tiger, the Full Measure and the Star. We agreed that we would have a quiet half in each and set off round the mostly deserted town centre. The Tiger was empty. The landlord, having worked out that we were southerners, assured us that we would like his Sam Smith’s. “After all,” he said, “the beer down south is as flat as a fart.”

We each had a half of foamy northern beer before moving on to the Full Measure, which was full of schoolboys, actual schoolboys in their uniforms. Even my dad, when he ran a pub, drew the line at schoolchildren in uniform. These were not adults dressed up as kids for a “school disco night”; these were real kids, some of them no older than 14. They were drinking tequila shots and screaming at the solitary barmaid.

We downed our halves and crossed over the empty street towards the last pub on Karen’s list, the Star. But another 50 yards on, on the opposite side of the road, a lad was holding a girl by her neck against a large pair of double doors. She was screaming blue murder. An unwelcome realisation lurched inside my guts. There was nobody else about. This was down to us.

Perry said: “I suppose we’d better do something.”

“Yeah. I suppose so.”

She was a plump, short, pretty girl with bottle-blonde hair pulled back so tight she looked like a Hollywood actress of advancing years, victim of a dozen face-lifts. She could not have been more than 15 or 16, and she was screaming, crying, wailing at the top of her voice. The yoof, 18 or so, in regulation chav gear — tracksuit bottoms, hoody, baseball cap, low brow, bad teeth — had her gripped by the front of her top, his face an inch away from hers.

“Do you f*****’ ’ear me, you f*****’ slag? You f*****’ ’ore! Do you f*****’ ’ear me?? I’ll f*****’ twat yer, yer f*****’ slag!”

I didn’t want to do this. This wasn’t my job. Why was there nobody else to do this but us? But I knew it had to be done, and the closer we came, the calmer, the more in control of the situation I felt.

As I crossed over the street towards the couple, I called out to the girl: “Are you all right, love?”

“No,” she sobbed.

“F*** off!” said the yoof. He was very drunk.

“Would you like us to walk you up the road to the phone box, so you can phone your mum?” I said, all the time talking to the girl, ignoring the boy.

“Yes please,” she said, her sobs subsiding a little.

“I told you faggots to f*** off!” said the yoof.

Now I turned my attention to him, armed only with my one small nugget of self-defence know-how, which I had been taught by an old boardmarker called Tony on my first day of working for William Hill, the bookies. It was Tony who trained me how to write up the results of horse races, how to make proper tea, and how to look after myself if ever I got in trouble in the sometimes alarming atmosphere of the betting shop. He called me Educated Evans, Educated for short.

“Educated,” he said, “there’s three kinds of people you never have a go at. They are ****s, ******s and blokes over 40.”

“Why not blokes over 40?”

“Look at you, Educated. You are strong and fast.” (I was 21.) “Now look at me. I’m 48 and fat and slow. If you come at me, I know that I’ve only got one chance, and that I’ve got to hurt you. If the fight goes on, you’ll win. An old guy has to hurt you. He’s got no choice.”

So here I was, 25 years later, and the yoof was young and strong and fast and I was 46 and fat and slow. So I knew that if he did come at me, I would have to hurt him. Also, since he was pissed, although his emotions might be running high, his reactions would be slower than mine. One more thing in my favour; there were two of us, and we were both twice his size. Only if he was very stupid would he actually have a go.

“Come on, son,” I said. “Calm down. It’s okay. Leave her alone. You go that way, we’ll walk her up the phone box, and you can call her tomorrow and say you’re sorry.”

I touched him on his forearm. I’m not sure which was worse from his point of view: that I had touched him or that I had implied that he might have done something for which to be sorry.

“We’re f*****’ engaged,” he said, which I’m sure was all the justification he needed for his behaviour.

“Not now, we’re not,” sobbed the lass.

“Come on, love,” I said. “Come on. We’ll find the phone box, and your mum can come and pick you up.”

“I told you faggots to f*** off!”

And he came at me. It was very strange. It seemed to happen very slowly. I felt as calm as I had ever felt, as though I was watching Devon versus Cornwall in a Minor Counties cricket match on a drowsy afternoon in June. As he swung his first clumsy punch at my head, I stepped to one side, and grabbed the little idiot in a headlock.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt less worried about anything in my whole life. The yoof was struggling as I held him round the neck, but I said to his ex-fiancée: “Off you go, love. You go up on to the high street and phone your mum. We’ll keep him here.”

The girl ran up the street, towards the phone boxes. And I had a prize, held under my arm, trapped in my power, a struggling yoof, a witless chav, a little shit in a baseball cap. It was too good a chance to miss. Suddenly, at once, my calm melted away to be replaced by livid anger, and I hit him, hit him hard in the face, three times in quick succession.

I felt my fist in his face, and I loved it. I still love it now. I loved each punch. Thwack . . . for your girlfriend, for all the times you’ve hit her and threatened her and terrorised her, for all the women you’ve terrorised and will terrorise. Thwack . . . because of what you are, what you wear, what you represent, the sneaking crimes you commit, the petty sneaking thefts, the pointless aimless vandalism, the joyless stupidity of your empty mind, for what you are doing to England, useless dregs of the earth, you and all the people like you. Thwack . . . for me, for the pleasure of it, because I can, because I love the feel of my knuckles against your flabby mouth, your flat nose, your vacant eyes.

Now the point of Tony’s argument about age difference and violence began to make itself felt. I had got in first, and stopped him and, I hoped, hurt him. But he was stronger and faster than me, more agile and much, much nastier. He was struggling free, like a slimy eel. Perry stepped in to help me restrain him, and he managed to get his nails into Perry’s cheek. He wriggled and shook us off, and he was gone, running up the street, shouting after the girl: “Gemma! Get ’ere, you f*****’ slag! Gemma!”

So I pulled out my last weapon. My mobile phone.

“Leave her alone,” I called after him. “I’m phoning the police if you don’t leave her alone.”

We chased up the road after him, rounded the corner. He had caught up with her, had manoeuvred her into a shop doorway, and was screaming in her face again, while she sobbed in fear. There seemed little point in taking him on again. It was beautiful punching his face, but it hadn’t worked. I dialled 999, and asked for the police. I explained that we had been witness to violent and threatening behaviour, that the yoof was still screaming at her, and threatening her, and that we’d done about as much as we could do.

I offered the yoof one last chance.

“I’ve phoned the police. Walk away. Go away. Leave her alone. We’ll look after her, the police will take her home.”

He ignored me. We stood a few feet away, knowing that there was no point in temporary restraint, followed by her escape, followed by him chasing after her again. This needed ending. We watched in case he hit her, and waited. Within a minute, two at the most, a squad car came round the corner, blue light flashing.

The yoof jumped back from the girl.

“Did you see that?” he said to the first copper who got out from the squad car. “She pushed me.”

“All right, son,” said the copper. “Get away from the girl. Just calm down.”

“You can f*** off an’ all, yer c***. We’re f*****’ engaged!”

The driver of the squad car got out and came over.

“There’s no need for swearing, son.”

“I know my f*****’ rights, you f*****’ c***s. Didn’t you see her push me? What are you f*****’ going to do about that?”

“Son, if you don’t stop swearing, I’m going to arrest you for disorderly conduct.’

“Just you f*****’ try, you f*****’ wankers.”

“All right, if that’s what you want; I’m arresting you on a charge of disorderly conduct. You have the right to remain silent . . .”

“You’re not putting them f*****’ cuffs on me.”

He started to struggle against the two coppers, who were trying to pin him down, to get the cuffs on, while he wriggled and fought. I was quite gratified to see that two policemen couldn’t restrain him either. One of them called for assistance on his radio, while they tried to control the little moron. Within another minute, a police van pulled up, and two more coppers got out.

One helped his two colleagues get the yoof to the pavement, face down, and pin his hands behind his back and snap on the cuffs, while the fourth went across to comfort the girl. The yoof was screaming now. The three coppers manhandled the squirming yoof towards the van, when, O horror of horrors, his baseball cap came off. This was too much for him. The proud badge of his stupidity fell onto the pavement.

“Me cap!” he wailed. “Me cap’s fallen off!” That’s when Perry and I started laughing. And as they got him into the van, and just before they closed the doors on his evil little face, he let fall one last gem: “This is a nice way to spend yer birthday, innit?”

Back in the hotel, Karen the receptionist, Sean the barman, and Basil Fawlty the manager were waiting for us. Basil was anxious lest we had caused trouble; Karen was anxious lest we had been hurt. We told them what had happened; Basil relaxed, and Karen glowed at us. Sean poured us each a whisky, and I started to shake. What if he had had a knife?

Then came the post-match analysis. Part of me wanted to say, “Poor little lad. What chance does he have in life? There are no jobs for stupid people any more. He’s got no future. He must have been brutalised at home. And the drink companies exploit kids like that, and fill them with cheap booze, and it’s not his fault he can’t handle it, poor wee baby.” But that’s not really what I think.

Really, I can’t buy into relativistic accounts of behaviour at all, despite a lifetime of Guardian reading. Plenty of people live in poverty, bad housing, are the victims of an education system which serves only to prepare people for life in a call centre. Plenty of people get pissed. My own mother was brutalised at home by her father in conditions of unthinkable squalor, and she didn’t take it out on anybody else.

What I really think is this: there is evil at work in the world. Some people are evil. That kid was evil. Not naughty, not misguided, or led astray. Evil.

Evil — not what you expect when all you want is a quiet night.

Extracted from: The Longest Crawl by Ian Marchant, published by Bloomsbury at £12.99.