Nothing much I can recall since being 30 but people tend to avoid starting fights with me since school.

I did fight a black belt kickboxer on PCP round the back of Leeds University campus one night but I sort of stumbled into that one in progress.

We’d been to the polytechnic (as was) for their Friday night shindig with a bunch of friends (so it must have been someone’s birthday). One of our friends is notorious for disappearing (he is either a drink Houdini or teleports - we’ve never figured out which one) so two of us took him to the toilet. Despite being 3 floors underground and there only being one way in or out he managed to disappear from there, to parts unknown. So at the end of the night three of us stayed behind to wait at the door to grab him while he left and the other four started off for home through the, now deserted university campus, which, in hindsight was unwise as it was a long way from any roads and not overlooked by anything). Or missing friend didn’t appear so we set off to catch up the rest of the party and walked into mayhem.

A gang of locals had cornered them and they had a friend who they claimed was a black belt kickboxer on PCP (everything I saw supported that idea, although as he mainly used kicks I did wonder if it was more taekwondo) and they were egging him on to beat our friends up. By the time the rest of us arrived, he’d already dropkicked one of the women in the back, before anyone knew what was going on, and kicked one of the guys in the face (he had flashbacks to a previous beating he had at the hands of Combat 18 and ran, jumping over a low wall, only to discover it was a high wall on the other side and he was stuck in someone’s back garden with no way to get back).

I told the two.guys I was with to get everyone out of dodge and I tried to block his path but he wasn’t happy about that so started throwing kicks my way. I blocked them (or I might still be wearing my bollocks like earrings) and then landed a solid kick and a punch which sent him to the ground. He then popped up fresh as a daisy and I realised I might have to kill him to stop him, which is not a pleasant decision to make.

His friends gave chase after mine, encouraging him to follow, so he sprinted off after them and I had to try and catch him up. Fortunately it was a bit of a stand-off and I told my friends to keep going. I ended up with my “dance partner” in a bearhug when one of my friends came up behind me to tell me we all had to go. I turned to talk to him and it was the oddest sight as the kickboxer’s foot was somehow coming up under my armpit and was kicking my friend in the face, he was just too out of it to notice, so kept talking throughout. I made him leave and, by this point, had talked the kickboxer around to believing I was on his side (he was high and didn’t seem very smart at the best of times). So I sent him off in one direction to look for “Them” and I headed off in the opposite direction.

We got back to my friend’s house and Houdini hadn’t returned, so we retraced our steps, worried he might have run into the hoodlums. However, there was no sign of either. As we got back to base Houdini is wandering down the road in the other direction. He couldn’t explain what had happened to him but he’d ended up with strangers and had a pleasant hour or so drinking tea and eating toast. Boy did we have a story for him!