While on a week’s holiday at Butlin’s with some of his mates, Ricky watched Rory Storm & the Hurricanes performing. Ringo came to him later and asked if he could do them a favour. Apparently they were getting hassled from a group of Scots lads and there was due to be a fight the next day. Ringo asked Ricky if he could help out.

“Yeah, we’ll give you a hand” Ricky said. The Scots lads didn’t turn up after all, although Ringo was still grateful for Ricky and his mates backing them up and said that he should get one of his lads up to sing at a talent contest that afternoon. Ricky asked what his mate should sing, but Ringo said it didn’t matter.

Ricky says, “Davey Smith volunteered and did a rock ‘n’ roll number with Rory and the band backing him. Then I realized that Rory and Ringo were judging the competition. Davey won first prize – a tin of full-strength Capstan cigarettes. I didn’t smoke, but appreciated the gesture.”

In another comment about Ozzie Wades, Ricky recalled, “It was late by the time I got back to Liverpool. I went straight to Ozzie Wade’s which stayed open until the early hours and was a popular showbiz hangout. Ozzie had been dead for years, but his wife Aida Taylor ran the place. She was only prosecuted once in thirty years for after-hours drinking and the Judge apologized when he fined her and called her ‘Lady Bountiful.’”

While having a drink at the Stanley Park Hotel, Ricky was invited to get up and sing with the Hi-Fi Three, who comprised Tommy Scully on vocals, Brian Edwards, a docker, on bass and Tony Scoggins (Scoggo) on rhythm guitar. Ricky was then invited to join the band who became Hobo Rick & the Hi-Fi Three.

Running alongside the venues and clubs where the Mersey Sound thrived, was another world of clubs frequented by members of Merseyside’s underworld (a scene detailed by Roy Adams in his book ‘Hard Nights’).

Ricky writes, “Because of the licensing laws, all sorts of drinking and social clubs flourished in Liverpool. People wanted somewhere to go when the pubs shut. Some of the pubs got around the licensing laws by serving food, others seemed to always know when police raids were planned.

“The Colombo Club in Seel Street (formerly known as the Rum Runner and then Maggie May’s) was one of the most notorious.” It was run by a former boxer Tony Gallagher who booked Ricky and his group for a few gigs on Sundays.

Ricky says, “The Colombo was always full of gangsters, conmen, hustlers, crooked lawyers, ex-boxers and hard cases. The only girls I saw there were mistresses or prostitutes who worked the ships. Liverpool had more hookers per square mile than anywhere else in the country.”

The bouncer at the club was Eddie Palmer, who Ricky describes as a psychopath, remembering one instance when a foreign sailor tried to get into the club and Palmer knocked him out.

“That should have been the end of it, but Eddie went inside the club, where he kept a metal railing behind the bar with a lump of concrete on the end of it. He was going back out to hit this guy, even though he was already unconscious. We had to wrestle the railing off him.

“Eddie had spent time in jail and was meaner than a junkyard dog. Sometimes he’d go into clothing shops, choose an outfit and walk out without paying. Most of the time people were too frightened to challenge him.

“It didn’t come as any surprise when Eddie turned up dead. Someone near took his head off with a knife. When the local police found the body they sent for a crate of champagne to celebrate.”

As Roy Adams mentioned in his book, the man who stabbed Palmer to death was Beech Doherty.

It was in the La Cabala in Bond Street that I had my own first encounter with Palmer. I was with Virginia and Palmer made some sarcastic comment. I turned on him and told him where to get off. He seemed to like that and I never had any problems with him from that moment on. He seemed to regard me as some sort of pal.

I remember him as a bouncer at the Tower Ballroom, he attacked one young kid and began to viciously kick him between the legs.

Ricky’s book continues with his odyssey through life, an event-packed one at that which eventually led to a successful career as an actor when, at the age of forty, he was chosen to appear in the TV drama ‘United Kingdom.’

Since that time he has become one of Britain’s most popular actors in TV and films, ranging from soaps such as ‘Brookside’ to series such as ‘The Royle Family’, ‘Cracker’, ‘Clocking Off’ and ‘Nice Guy Eddie’ to films such as ‘Riff Raff’, ‘Raining Stones’, ‘The 51st State’ and ‘Mike Bassett, England Manager’.

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