Chris Eubank - Chris Eubank - The Autobiography

One day my father came back from work and said to my brothers, ‘Where’s Christopher?’ No one knew. At 9 o’clock that evening, there was a knock at the door and it was the police, who informed my father that I had been taken into care. I don’t know if the authorities can do that without consent, but they certainly did it with me. I’d had a social worker assigned to me for some time at Peckham Manor. He was called Mr Lord Okine, an African fellow who drove this little white Datsun. I didn’t even know what a social worker was, I didn’t understand.

Peter was the first brother to be taken into care, then David, then me. Simon stayed at home. It was not my father’s fault: he didn’t give us up to care, the authorities took us away. It wasn’t a complete shame for me because it had become boring at home with Dad. I couldn’t stop misbehaving, it was in my nature. I remember thinking, why is this man beating me so much? I realised it was because I was getting caught . . . so I stopped getting caught.

The first care home I went to was The Hollies in Sidcup. It was a massive complex made up of 36 different homes, each named after trees, and one called Reception Centre where I was. My brother David was in Larch. I was met at Reception Centre by a member of staff who took me on a tour of the building. He showed me a room which had a table tennis table, a pool table and a communal eating area. The tour continued, revealing a tuck shop, a storage room and the staff room, before finally ending up at my dormitory. They sat me down in there and gave me my briefing.

Being taken into care was almost like winning the lottery. Can you imagine my sense of bliss? The fridge was full of food – beefburgers, sausages, everything. I could play pool. I had a dorm with new friends to meet and, most fantastically of all, my own warm bed – no more four to a mattress! The whole place was even heated! It was such a wonderful experience meeting these kids from Scotland, Manchester, all over the UK, seeing their different attitudes, hearing their different tales. That first term at The Hollies was one of the best experiences of my life – I had three meals a day, table tennis, pool, and there were girls. Heaven! We used to climb down the drainpipes to get into their dorms: it was such good fun.

But just as at school, however, I found myself getting into trouble and was shifted between care homes several times in four years. In 1979 I went to Yastrid Hall in North Wales, which I now know to have been in the midst of the sexual abuse scandal that did not come to light until the mid-90s, when it was revealed that a network of adults appeared to have been involved in abusing children across the country. I wasn’t abused sexually or otherwise, I didn’t even know there was a problem. It has transpired that certain children were being abused, but at the time I never knew. Admittedly, I was engrossed in my own little world but, fortunately for me, that whole terrible saga passed me by.

From Yastrid Hall, I went to Stanford House in Shepherds Bush for seven weeks in a lock-up for assessment. From there I was sent to St Vincent’s in Dartford for a month, before being expelled and taken to Orchard Lodge in Crystal Palace, for another seven-week assessment in a secure unit. From there, I went to Karib, a care home for ethnic minorities in Nunhead, SE 15, was expelled again after only one month, then sent to Davy’s Street in Peckham.

All this time I was a highly unruly boy. I still had a short fuse, I was a very fast runner (ten miles in 72 minutes when I was 13), quite clever, and my sleight of hand wasn’t too bad. I took full advantage of my skills, always breaking into staff rooms and tuck shops or the newsagents down the road to pilfer cartons of 200 cigarettes. Such petty crimes later progressed to shoplifting and repetitive absconding.

Yes, it could be described as a very itinerant childhood. However, my view is this: moving around so much is the perfect way to ensure that an individual continues to have new experiences. You never get stuck in a rut when you’re barely at the same place for more than three months at a time. Constantly having to make new friends was not a burden because I preferred my own company anyway; I was still something of a loner. Now, as an adult, I can travel anywhere and feel comfortable in any situation, an ability I put down partly to these teenage years spent on the move.

It was around this time that, despite my antics to the contrary, I started to read proverbs. Although it would be some years before I succeeded in applying (or at least tried to apply) myself to many of the words I was reading, the wisdom they offered always appealed to me. I was always enthralled and intrigued by the wise man and words.

In North Wales, there was a kid in care with me called Timmy Brian, who had this marvellous way of strutting about. I watched him swagger around and noted the effect this had on people, so I started to do my own version, with my own flavour. Timmy was a very courageous black kid from Nottingham who thought of himself as Superman. He used to point his hands skywards like he was flying through the air and I used to roar with laughter. Sometimes I still copy him. If you’ve watched me on television, perhaps on A Question of Sport, you may have seen me doing this. When a show starts, the warm-up man asks the audience to give a round of applause, even though no one has done anything of note yet. I always thought that was an odd situation, so when it happens and the applause starts out of nowhere, I often put my hand in the air like Superman, like Timmy Brian. It is just a fun thing but, of course, some critics say, Oh, look at Eubank, assuming they are clapping him.’ I’m not, I’m just being a big kid again, back in North Wales with Timmy.

At my last care home, Davy’s Street in Peckham, I was always getting into trouble with one particular care worker. He was a huge man, very tall. It was not his considerable size that was most threatening however – what was most scary was the fact he never treated me for what I was, namely still a teenager. He saw me from day one as an adult and for that reason his obvious dislike for me felt much more tangible and intimidating.

One day we’d had yet another disagreement over something I had done, so he cornered me. He was really angry and breathing heavily with fury. He leaned down over me and said in a truly menacing tone, ‘I don’t give a f**k about any of this, I will kill you.’ Now I had stood up to my fair share of bullies and bigger men in my younger years, but I knew this man was simply too big and too aggressive to mess around with. After this unseemly confrontation, I went to the bathroom and, because the home was a lock-up at the front, I crawled out the window and was gone. I was never in care again.

I had been so unruly when I visited my father on leave from the care homes, he could not tolerate my behaviour and eventually refused to have me back home at all. For the next 18 months, I was homeless. My territory was around Peckham and the Walworth Road, I did not have a permanent roof over my head. Much has been made in the media, and indeed by the public I meet, about how awful this must have been. No, I won’t have this said. I lived like a king. I wouldn’t say it was bliss, because bliss is not having to work and being at ease with yourself. You can’t really be at ease when you don’t know where you are going to sleep that night. So it wasn’t bliss, but it wasn’t far off.

I was a teenage kid, shoplifting daily and earning easily over £100 by 6 o’clock each night. I was young, quick, had good sleight of hand and bundles of courage, so I was never really too compromised. I had girlfriends all over the place and as much marijuana, Special Brew and Treats as I wanted, I went to Blues dances, called Shobins, two or three nights a week and was driven around everywhere by taxi, wearing the finest clothes. I was my own boss, I had no parents to report back to, no school to trouble me. I was lord of my own manor.