Can you feel the Ground Force: an interview with Tommy Walsh, Jack (unpublished), 2004

Image: Phil Guest/Wikipedia

[I’ve just heard that celebrity builder Tommy Walsh has died. I interviewed him for Jack magazine in 2004, the day before the title closed and I was made redundant. So you could regard this as a lost interview. It was for a themed issue – a sort of Cool Britannia idea where we talked about Britishness. I loved seeing Tommy on TV: a no-nonsense grafter who was also a bit of a thinker. The sort of person we’d like to be ourselves, perhaps. I think I’d just had a tough time with a builder judging by the intro… See you, Tommy.]

Jack, 2004 (unpublished)

On the whole in 2004, builders are untrustworthy shitpots. Liars, chancers and opportunists, they spearhead the wider malaise of Britain’s swagger away from traditional values. ‘I’ll be round at eight on Monday morning sharp to start the work – make sure you’re up!’ he’ll joke. Eight arrives, as does nine, ten, and 11. Come midday, with valuable hours lost trying to locate this cretin on his mobile, you’ll receive an excuse that hasn’t even had the courtesy of thought: ‘Err, I forgot – I’m busy now till next month.’ In the background you’ll hear the beeping of bank machinery. He’s cashing your cheque for the upcoming work and sees no wrong in doing it.

If only these sons of bitches could learn from Tommy Walsh, the dependable, gargantuan Ground Force builder-cum-landscaper who could easily crush breezeblocks to powder between his mighty palms. Goader of Titmarsh and Dimmock, he’s a grafter in the old-fashioned sense – hard work backed up with jokes and opinion. Renowned as an early morning chatterbox, we catch him in full flow at 10am strolling through Victoria Park, London.

Are you much of a football fan?
I’m a goalkeeper. I play for the Arsenal Celebrity XI, and my old school XI – the Old Palmertarians.

You’d be an imposing figure in goal. Have you come against any top players?
Well, in summer, before the Euros, David Beckham took a penalty against me.

Did he miss?
No, he bloody scored. I had ten penalties before that, and I saved all ten. This was at the England-Iceland game in front of a full house, for Sport Relief. Ten penalties and ten saves. That’s why Beckham stopped to watch it because he couldn’t believe it. He stopped training with the others after seven, and when it got to ten he was smiling, so I invited him to take one. But he refused. Then I said, “Come on, have a go.” The crowd got behind it, then he went and took a penalty. I thought he was definitely going to put it to my left. Experience shows that it’ll be 70-30 to the keeper’s left, using the club of the foot. He just dinked it to my right and I went the wrong way.

Are you an Arsenal fan?
This is the irony, actually. I play for the Arsenal, but I’m a West Ham supporter. And England.

Why can’t England hold onto leads?
Surely that’s got to come from the coach. Trouble is, when we try to play like the Italians, we very rarely succeed. I’ve always been saying, all through my playing career, if you’re going to defend deep, you’re going to concede goals. Sooner or later, if you’re up against class players, the break’s gonna happen. Football is not a difficult science. It’s get the ball and pass it to someone in the same colour shirt as you, and don’t give the ball away cheaply. These 60 or 70-yard passes are all a waste of time. You’re knocking it long and give it straight to the opposition. I’m a believer in the best way of defending is attack.

Was the 5-1 win against Germany the finest England match for you?
The best game I can remember was when we beat Holland in the European Championship (Wembley, 1996). That was a fantastic game of football. They were supposed to slaughter us and we played them off the park. But again, we went forward and attacked them. You’re on the world stage – to be a successful footballer at international level the most important thing you need is a large pair of bollocks. You must have the confidence to do things that are unexpected. This is why Gascoigne was such a great player. He used to do things the opposition didn’t expect. That’s why he was always such a dangerous player. Rooney’s got it an’ all.

There’s been some real lows supporting England. Which for you has been the worst time?
I suppose it goes right back to when we lost at Poland the first time round.

Nineteen seventy-three.
Yes, when we failed to qualify for the World Cup. The Polish keeper was supposed to be a clown – and he was outstanding.

What do you like about being British?
I like our innovation, our creativeness for design.

Our engineering prowess?
Not just engineering, but across design. We have a trait for that. The good thing about our classic buildings, when they were designed and built, it’s not just about the aesthetics. For a good design, it must have a practical function. That’s the true art of design, which sadly is ignored today, mostly. They go for sensationalism as a look, and don’t have any practical purpose. I’m not saying we’ve got to live in the past, we’ve got a need for modern and contemporary design and places for architects to practice their wares, but it doesn’t mean you have to ignore the lessons of the past.

Are you a fan of the new Wembley?
We suffer from the same old problem. I think any stadium now should be designed with multi-use. For the extra cost involved it should have a running track around it. It should be built so that it has big music festivals, a proper venue not purely for football. And that way we’ve got a national asset. It’s just pathetic that… hmmm, you know, I get too angry. We had the opportunity to build a classic building for the world to admire. It would be a nice showcase for Britishness. And again it’s a bloody compromise. I’ll tell you what I don’t like – cheap, high-rise buildings and cheap public housing. There’s a clear, definable difference between the private sector and the public sector, and that doesn’t sit very well with me. I find it distasteful.

A lot of the high rises are coming down now, aren’t they?
Yes, but you see, as someone once said, when you look at public housing, you know it’s public housing. Is that deliberate?

So you’re saying that the designers thought, “We’re going to show these people that they’re worthless and live on a council estate.”
“And I’m gonna show everybody else exactly who lives here.” Is it really that sinister? When you’re designing and putting features into a building, it’s not that expensive to make the outside of a building look nice. It increases the cost very little because the cost is in the purchase of the ground and the infrastructure and logistics. It’s not difficult to make the building look more attractive than a box. It might be more than meets the eye, that the class society we live in encourages that we make the difference between the great unwashed and the ones who do wash. And while I’m on a rant, one of our worst traits is the way we treat our elderly.

Is that something that particularly galls you?
I think we should take a leaf out the Italian and Mediterranean book. The elderly women are seen as matriarchs, the most important people. Here, the elderly are deemed as a liability, which is sad, because they’ve got so much to offer. They’re often ignored and disregarded. I mean, we’re all gonna be in that position.

Whenever it seems that the elderly need looking after, we tend to put them straight into homes, don’t we?
It’s very sad. The government could do far more. The elderly could go within a community. There should be places within the local community where they can live safely, have wardens to look after them, medical care, and at least they’re not locked up in a bloody cell room.

In some parts of the country these small communities exist. In South Yorkshire, they look after their pensioners very well, and have communities of bungalows with wardens.
Then someone should do a bloody great big article on it and explain to the rest of the country how it should be done. Down here in the South, it’s disgraceful.

Do you often stroll through parks?
Well, I love public green spaces. Hackney, where I live, has got more green space than any other borough in London. I just love the fact we have more public, open green spaces than New York. I’ve been there and they’ve got Central Park. Other than that, they’ve got no green space. These are like little lungs all over London. It’s very important that they’re not interfered with.

Is Hackney your favourite green space in London?
It’s where I was born and bred. I like all the public parks, Green Park, Hyde Park. For 40 years Victoria Park suffered from a lack of investment. There’s been a huge investment in Victoria Park which has probably increased the numbers that use it many-fold. It’s a lovely place to go and spend time. It’s a nicely-organised green space. But if you want something more natural, there’s a wildlife park over by Hackney Marshes. In runs into a proper wildlife park, a beautiful place. You can have solitude over there, you know.

That’s if you can get to the public green spaces with London’s woeful transport network.
That’s a symptom of our short-term fixing. I can’t stand that. It drives me mad. Politicians create policies just to suit the political timetable that they’re in power for. I think you can look at any bloody legislation and it’s clear. With a new election coming up, they’re going to revamp the National Health yet again. I mean, what the hell is going on? If they want to know how to make it work, then look to the past. Look to what we were doing in the past and reinstall that. And make people responsible and accountable for what they do.

After paying National Insurance contributions from our pay packets, how come we don’t get dental work done for free?
Well, that’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Don’t you think that’s happening all around? Do you not think that the only thing on the government’s agenda, whether it be local government or central government, and whether it be any particular party you like – you take your pick, they’re all the same – that the only thing that’s really on the agenda is how they can possibly fleece more money out of the populous. Because everything that you’re talking about, any charge that comes in, for prescription increase, whatever, every single charge that comes in is a covert taxation.

We don’t seem to get a lot out of our National Insurance contributions any more. Fifty quid for a filling – it’s a wonder we have any teeth left.
No, we won’t get much of a bloody pension out of it either. It’s crazy. Again we go back to the politician’s short-term fix. They say, “Let’s not really look at the wound and put a graft on it or stitch it up, what we’ll do, if there’s a wound, all we’ll do is stick a Band Aid on it. Stick a Band Aid on it and that’ll suffice until someone else has got the problem. Hopefully it won’t start leaking blood till after I’ve finished. Stop the ship from sinking until I can get what I want out the system and retire on a lovely index-linked pension.

Do you think we should re-nationalise the railway?
The public transport system in this country is a travesty. It really is. How can we have such a bad system? It’s not that difficult. If we have a problem with the tube, when engineers are going to work on the tube lines, they get about three hours a night’s work in, with all the health and safety stuff. It’s cost absolute billions. Shut the bloody thing down for three months, have a complete team ready, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, teams of people coming in, organise it, orchestrate it properly – I could do it. Orchestrate it properly, shut the bloody line down. Spend three weeks on it, then reopen it so it’s ready for another hundred years without having to have a revamp. With all this tickling about, it’s costing us absolute billions. It’s a quick fix and nothing is getting done properly. Shut one line down at a time, then as you’re going through it you’ll learn what mistakes you’re making as you’re going through it, so when you come to do the second line, shut that down –  we’ve already made the mistakes on the first line, so it’ll be a piece of cake to go through it.

Why don’t you go into politics?
Well they’ve asked me. They said in the House Of Commons that I should go into politics. The only thing with it is I think you become very dissatisfied. If you go into politics and you’re an idealist and you want to get things done, if you don’t conform to the way the boys are – it’s like a big school for the boys… if you don’t conform to the way they behave in there, they’ll just leave you out in the wilderness. You’ll be a back-bencher. You’ll never get a proper job and you won’t ever be able to do anything to change anything.

And you’ll just get disillusioned.
Yes. You’ll become disillusioned. I don’t think I could afford to waste that time and be that disappointed at the end of it. We can’t avoid our responsibility to the way things are now. There is a desperate need for good people to go into public service and they’re just not there. There are politicians now, even the ones in local government, they’re all self-serving. That’s right across the board without making any exceptions. Even in Hackney, our mayor gets 60 grand a year. I don’t think there’s anything wrong if they’re going to be professionals, but they’ve got to be paid a sensible salary and they’ve got to be accountable. If somebody takes public money and makes a cock-up with it, that person should be accountable and taken to task. They either repay that money, or else they go to prison. Why should it be any exception for public service because it’s public money? Politicians, they make a cock-up of the railways, let ’em do time.

The crashes on the railways, the mismanagement, it’s white-collar crime.
It’s a catalogue of disasters. This class system is what screws us. We should start our own political party.

Good idea. Although it’s generally regarded that the country is going to the dogs, you don’t get characters around the world in the same way that you do in Britain.
I do like quirky, strange people. There’s something I find extremely attractive about that. People look down their nose at it, and they ridicule people. I think the eccentrics have the last laugh.

Any in particular?
I know quite a few locally, and I just love their eccentricities. And that’s what makes us stand apart, because we are a bit eccentric. We shouldn’t all conform. In America they’re all terrified of their own bloody shadows. The thing that people ask me, “Could you go and live in America?” I say, “No.” They say, “Why?’ I say, “Cos they draw a yellow line on the floor, and they say, ‘You cannot step over this line.’” There’s policemen and official guards with weapons saying, “You cannot step over this line.” In America they all conform. I say the very first thing I have to do, by my nature, is step over that line if they say you can’t. That to me is an eccentricity of the British. I think we’re reasonable people but you have to approach us respectfully. Pointing the big finger saying, “You can and you can’t do,” I just don’t wear it.

In Tokyo, if there’s no traffic, but the little man on the zebra crossing is on red, people won’t cross.
It’s very strange, but that’s what I like about the British bulldog spirit. It’s in our genes. There’s been plenty of attempts to water it down, but sooner or later it’s going to raise its feisty head, and it’ll kick all these arseholes in politics out of it.

It’s probably why we tend to be fairly good at wars. If the Germans ever decided to kick-off again, we’d be able to sort that out again. As we always have to do.
Ha-ha-ha. Don’t even go down there. I don’t want to think about war. What a waste of time.

Are you for or against speed cameras?
Well, it goes back to the nanny state and covert taxation. All these bloody speed cameras. The car industry is a big earner for the government. The taxation they get in is unbelievable. Petrol tax, road tax, you name it, it’s phenomenal what they get out of the car. So they’re not going to stop production of cars or force people to slow down, they want people to have cars so they can hit them for tax. What does piss me off, they say there’s too many cars on the road and they’re going to put petrol up as a way of discouraging it. It’s cobblers. They put petrol up because they know we’re going to use it and they get more tax revenue. But what I dislike is the complete bollocks they come out with to cover up what they’re really doing. And they’re so patronising in the way they talk to us. They think we don’t know what they’re doing. They take a road and then they decide they’re going to increase the pavement that hardly anyone walks on to four times the size, they’re going to narrow the road down to one lane each way, and put a bus lane in it. And they put traffic lights everywhere. There’s no need. There’s millions of traffic lights everywhere now, every bloody junction. You’re getting cars and buses trapped there, spewing out fumes, which everyone is suffering from.

Is that because local councils have to be seen to be spending money on the roads in order to get the same amount of money next year?
They’re deliberately doing it to cause problems. The latest thing they’re doing that pisses me off is bus stops. Now you know that a bus that stops to pick up people is going to slow everything down. They used to cut the bus stops into the pavement. The bus pulled over, people got on it, traffic could flow, the bus would indicate and pull out and away they went. What they do now, they build the bloody pavement in an island right into the road. You’ve got the bloody pavement which is three times as wide as it should be, and then an island so the bus has to stop in the middle of the road. The traffic stops, there’s more fumes, less room to get round. The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, wants to make London a city for pedestrians so that we’re going to have to walk everywhere. Well that’s fine for him when he gets his bloody chauffeur to take him wherever he’s got to go, but what about the rest of us? We have to travel all round London to get a living.

If there was a good rail system in place, you couldn’t argue with it. But there isn’t.
The public transport system across the board, be it buses, bloody railways… and the only way to improve the Tube is to do what we said, and then what you could do is build a monorail over the top of every big, major road. Where you have a central island, you can actually build some steel stanchions and have two rails hanging suspended, east, west, north and south. They actually don’t take up any more space, just run it above the space that the road takes up now.

Fantastic idea.
It’s bloody clever. It’s very simple. That way, it’s running with the traffic, you haven’t got to disrupt anything, there’s nothing in the middle of the bloody road anyway, and just have these big steel stanchions made, stick them in the floor, concrete them in, put the rails up and clip on your monorail cars.

Just as the Underground sunk tunnels underneath roads, so the monorail system could be London’s next generation of rapid transport.
And think, it’s a lovely way to travel. If you get on a bus and sit on the top, it’s quite interesting.

It’s a lovely view.
And you see things you didn’t even know were there. But if you sit on a monorail, you’re up, you’re elevated, you’ve got a nice overview, all around London.

Tommy, we’d vote for you.
Well, I think I’m gonna vote for meself. Think of this, one last passing thing. If you go down the Embankment, right along the river, it’s a very busy road, and that can be made to run a lot easier if they cut the bloody pavement size. But right along the middle, what they’ve got is a five-foot central reservation with tarmac on it. Now why not get a load of kids from horticultural college and mix them up with some kids who are imprisoned and construct some raised beds right along there, some raised, and some not raised, right along that central reservation and plant it up beautifully. Let kids who are serving time, give them an alternative. I was just walking through the park today and I thought about this. I was looking at all the lamp posts and the ironwork and the benches. They all badly need repainting. What about having “the alternative sentence”. You go to a kid who’s going to go down for whatever reason. Hold on, you’ve got an alternative – you and a few others to create a team. You’re looking at getting six months in prison. We’re gonna give you an alternative where you can come and do some public work and that will be your sentence. A community project. If you fail to turn up for one day, you go straight to prison and your sentence is doubled. It’s six months – you can either do your time or you can do six months on a community service. If you do that community service and you don’t turn up for a day, whether you’re sick or whatever – cos when you’re self-employed you can’t be sick – you have to go to work. If you don’t turn up your sentence is immediately doubled. With no exceptions.

Do you put the world to rights most morning on a walk?
Well I do, you see. Even when I’m asleep my brain don’t switch off. I drive my old woman crazy.