Concept

Lenny McLean

Résumé
Leonard John McLean (9 April 1949 – 28 July 1998) was an English unlicensed boxer, bouncer, bodyguard, businessman and actor. He was known as "The Guv'nor", "the King of the Cobbles" and "the hardest man in Britain". McLean's pugilist reputation began in the East End of London in the late 1960s and was sustained through to the late 1980s. He stated in his autobiography that he had been involved in between 2,000 and 3,000 unlicensed fights. In his prime, the tall McLean weighed over and was considered the "unofficial heavyweight champion of Great Britain". Along with being an unlicensed boxer, McLean was an enforcer in London's criminal underworld. As a respected and feared figure, he often associated with infamous criminals such as the Kray twins, Ronnie Biggs and Charles Bronson. He was also known in the London nightclub scene as a bouncer, where he often managed security. In his later life, McLean became an actor, and received praise for playing Barry the Baptist in Guy Ritchie's 1998 gangster comedy film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. He died in July 1998, shortly before the film's release. Lenny McLean was born into a large, working-class Irish family in Hoxton in the East End of London. His father, Leonard John McLean Sr., had been a Royal Marine during the Second World War, but after being debilitated by a near-fatal disease which he contracted in India, he became a petty criminal and swindler. He died when Lenny was four years old. Lenny's mother, Rose, married again to Jim Irwin, who was also a career petty criminal. Irwin was a violent alcoholic, who physically abused Lenny and his brothers for many years. By the age of ten, McLean had suffered many broken bones. However, when Lenny's infant brother Raymond was beaten brutally with a belt, McLean's great-uncle Jimmy Spinks, a local gangster, attacked Irwin, nearly killing him, and threatened to cut his throat should he ever need to return to protect the children. McLean admired his great-uncle thereafter and when he became a street fighter, he said that he considered every victory to be won on behalf of his vulnerable younger self.
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