About the Author

The author was born in Slough in 1944, towards the end of the

Second World War. He left school at the age of 15 with no formal

qualifications.

John has lived through and been a part of the extraordinary story

of Britain’s changing club and music scene. The author was

responsible for the refurbishment of an old train shed in Chalk

Farm, London in 1966, which is now the Round House, a centre

of excellence for musicians. He then went on to develop the slum

area in Wandsworth into the now trendy area called Tonsley.

John next became a successful racehorse trainer and was

mentioned in one of the top training feats of all time with his

handling of the racehorse Manhattan Boy.

I dedicate this book to Ann my long suffering wife.

Copyright © John Ffitch-Heyes (2015)

The right of John Ffitch-Heyes to be identified as author of this

work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and

78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the

publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this

publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims

for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British

Library.

ISBN 978 1 78455 744 7

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2015)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Printed and bound in Great Britain

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Nick Fielding who helped unravel my rantings.

I was a war baby and grew up on bomb-sites and with the smell of cordite in my nostrils. I can’t remember a time when

my mother was not pregnant and we weren’t living in squalor! I wrote this book to show that just because you are born in a poor community that does not mean to say that you cannot

make strides in life. I could have grown up to be a gangster, a burglar or a fraudster – but I avoided that path. When I was 18 I signed up with the army for 7 years. It was there I came to

see that there was more to life than hanging around on street corners and fighting.

I first decided to tell my story in 1967 when I was just 23.

Little did I realise then what life had in store for me. I made a start on it and kept the manuscript in a tea caddy in the

cupboard before abandoning it. Finally after two bouts of serious illness, in which I came close to death, I reached the point where, in 2010, I took six months off work to delve into

my storehouse of hidden memories and write this Warts and All account – the most difficult work I have ever done in my life.

I have shared most of this time with my lovely partner Ann and what a time we have had – hanging out in Chelsea, Soho

and Saint Tropez in the height of the 60s – was a good time to be alive.

I have been fortunate to be in the company of actors,

artists, starlets, celebrities and gangsters amongst others. The kind of characters that most people only dream of meeting.

I worked in the music business and night-clubs and ran the Scotch of St. James’s and The Valbone. I also set up and established the Roundhouse at Chalk Farm and later ran my

own club, Bumpers, in London’s West End; hanging out with the likes of Viv Stanshall, Marc Bolan and Keith Moon, now

sadly all past and gone. Later in life I became a successful racehorse trainer – another world full of larger than life characters.

Not that my life has been all glitz and fizz. I have been wrongfully imprisoned in a Spanish goal; faced a perjury trial; done my full share of hospital time and suffered heartbreak

and tragedy. My only regret is not meeting my lifelong partner Ann when she was a schoolgirl!

So here it is the life and times of John Ffitch-Heyes WARTS AND ALL. I hope you enjoy it.

Contents

1. Introduction 10

2. Early Days 14

3. Children’s Home 24

4. My Generation 31

5. The Army Game 44

6. The House of the Rising Sun 51

7. Doing a Runner 58

8. Neat Change 61

9. The Roundhouse Chalk Farm 65

10. On the Scene 79

11. Spanish Adventures 105

12. Film Business 136

13. Sarah 165

14. Marbella 170

15. Horses 177

16. Perjury 201

17. Joeseph Wilkins 208

18. Bormann 215

3rd

June 1944 at 7.26am. She pushed, she squeezed, grunted and oozed with sweat. At last came the relief, as she thrust this

eight-and-a-half-pound lump of life into the nurse’s safe hands. “It’s a boy!” beamed Sister Topham as she wiped a speck of fresh blood from her starched white cuff. “I don’t give a shit,”

muttered Ada, “as long as it’s OK.”

My mother was a docker’s daughter, born in the East End of London, at 59 Wilberforce Street, Silvertown, West Ham,

close by the river. Her father’s name was Harry Oakley. In contrast, my father Dennis was the product of a minor public school in Penge and his father was a master baker. By my

father’s standards, Ada was common and uneducated and even though she provided his family with ten grandchildren (two of

whom were stillborn) and survived numerous miscarriages, they never accepted her.

Ada scrubbed floors, kept a clean house and lied for

Dennis. She always seemed to be banging into doors, falling over, cutting and bruising herself. All of these ‘accidents in the home’ were in fact the product of my arsehole father’s temper.

One such incident, around 1951, remains with me to this day. My mother used to leave the house where we lived in Slough

at 5.30 each morning to clean the local fish shop where she would scrub floors, clean the greasy fat fryers and get the potatoes ready for the chips. She would return home at about