Heather Bellamy spoke with Jim Ford about his violent life and his first encounter with Jesus

Jim: I think the only reason I became a prefect, in actual fact I became deputy head boy, and I was house captain at school as well, but it was only because I was so popular with the kids. I think the teachers were almost forced into giving me the position because I commanded the respect of all the other kids in the school. I think that was the only reason I got made a prefect, but it was probably the worse thing that they could have done anyway, because we had a great thing going on at school. We had protection rackets and all kinds of stuff going on. Obviously in those days we used to have biscuits at break times and we used to sell biscuits and we used to have money. There were the girls, because they would say can we stay, because we want to stay in the classroom and well I won't tell you what went on; but even at that age at senior school we had all kinds of things going on.

Heather: And you left school without qualifications?

Jim: Absolutely nothing. I left school with no qualifications whatsoever. In fact I jokingly said I think the teachers cheered when I left school; that was the sum total of my life.

Heather: How were your parents handling you at this time and the sort of trouble you were getting into?

Jim: With great difficulty is the short answer to that. There was, from the age of 10 and it could have been before that, there was just degeneration in the relationship between myself and my parents. Through all of my life, I never had a loving relationship with my father; I can never remember even now, and my father has gone to be with the Lord, I can never remember him putting his arms around me and telling me he loved me, or affirming me, or anything like that. There really was a total breakdown in our relationship. I still got on well with my mother, but as a family unit we never did anything together.

Heather: Did that lack with your dad shape you?

Jim: I don't know. I wouldn't know. Obviously I was looking for love and affection. I think anybody out there who went through the same kind of things as me in terms of being a gang leader, is always looking for that love. Not receiving love from my father, not being affirmed at all, obviously I would say had an affect because I looked for it in other places and I never have ever found it really in that sense.

Heather: And one of those places that search took you to was the red light district and girlfriends and you weren't treating women well back then I guess?

Jim: Well no, but you're still looking for love. I think one of the things in relation to that is even today you know love is not sex. I actually ended up working in the red light area, even before I was 15. I was working in a local pub at one of the rough pubs in the red light area called the Star, which was along Marsh Street. I was a bouncer and a barman before I was 15. I knew a lot of the prostitutes by first name terms, not because I was always going with them or anything like that, I just knew them. That's where they hang out when they come in for a pint and you talk with them. One could say that some of them have got worse stories than I have, but that's another story.

Heather: Tell us about your first encounter with Jesus.

Jim: My first encounter with Jesus was when I was probably 16 or 17. I was in the city; I hung around in Hanley. One night two girls stopped me and I thought my ship had come in. Two girls stopped me on the street and started to talk to me. They invited me to church and I thought you've got to be kidding me. I came out with some expletives and all the rest of it. I said we could do some other things, which will remain nameless and that was the end of the story. The following week it was raining and they came down again and said, 'Look, there's free coffee and biscuits'. I was at a loose end and there were four or five of us that were there at the time and we said, 'Yeah let's go up to this church for a bit of fun'.

We went up there and we wrecked the place. We weren't there for any other reason than to cause mayhem and just have free coffee and biscuits, but it was quite interesting, because these people actually put up with us. It became this thing we did on a Sunday evening, because it wasn't at a church service, it was an after church service kind of thing. Some of the young people actually went on the street and invited people like me to come along, which was very brave of them because we were rough.

After a while of going to these things on a Sunday night I thought, they've got something that I haven't got. That's a confession really for somebody like me. If you were to look at me in the natural I've got everything; wine, women, song, sex, drugs and rock & roll. That was the deal. I'd got a reputation as long as my arm. I'd got tattoos up both arms. I was just cool, but they had something that I didn't. All they ever kept talking about and all they did was share their life stories and testimonies. In the end I thought, well they've got something.

One night they said to me, 'Jim why don't you just give your life to Jesus?' I thought, ok, and so I made a sort of commitment. I went to church for a few months and it actually made the newspaper. There were another couple of gang leaders that went along at the time and the police came up and there was an amnesty. They had this amnesty for weapons and actually made the national newspapers at the time. This is 1964ish. Some of the weapons that were handed in were home made guns and all kinds of stuff; I mean we were rough.

The church will remain nameless, but we started going to this church, about 150 young people, you could almost call it a modern day revival or something like that. We went to the church and we were still rough behind the ears; we didn't know anything about Christianity; we weren't brought up in Christian homes for goodness sake. Some of us, all the clothes we had were what we stood up in. We were rough. After a couple of months it went pear shaped really, that's all I can say. The church didn't want us congregating outside the church. I mean we were there an hour before the services would start just waiting for the church to open. We couldn't get enough of it in that sense. They didn't want us hanging around outside the church because we were giving the church a bad name. We were asked not to sit on the front rows because we were too noisy. It wasn't your typical Anglican church. It was a Pentecostal church; happy clappy you know, sort of gospel stuff, but they just didn't want us. The older people thought we were too noisy. Then they wanted us to wear suits on a Sunday. The following Sunday we all voted with our feet.

You can buy Jim's book Wrong Way Right Way for only £5.69 from Cross Rhythms Direct.