In Training: How to handle a drunken chav

*** Welcome RHOG readers, hope you enjoy ***

Thanks to The Devil's Kitchen, Comedian Ian Merchant explains: Here's how to handle a drunken chav.

Before you read the excerpt below, let me first fill you in on what it means to be a 'chav'. A chav is a hoodlum, a troublemaker, someone who hangs out outside fast food joints or bus stops. They wear trackie bottoms and/or designer clothing and are for the most part little twerps. I've seen this with my own eyes.

The best example was a group of young adults all dressed pretty much the same, skanky, just different colors, in front of a grocery store at about 2:00pm. All smoking. This one chick was wearing a skirt made of sweatshirt material, and sticking out of the top of it was ... a can of beer. Tucked into her trackie skirt. I just remember doing a double-take and after a minute of silence between us Royal said "did you just see that, or am I imagining things?" Then we started in on the wonderful laughter that is "what the hell did we just see!"

Hopefully that gives y'all Americans a little insight into the chavvie world. Now for the fun.

We downed our halves and crossed over the empty street towards the last pub on Karen’s list, the Star. But another 50 yards on, on the opposite side of the road, a lad was holding a girl by her neck against a large pair of double doors. She was screaming blue murder. An unwelcome realisation lurched inside my guts. There was nobody else about. This was down to us.

Perry said: “I suppose we’d better do something.”

“Yeah. I suppose so.”

She was a plump, short, pretty girl with bottle-blonde hair pulled back so tight she looked like a Hollywood actress of advancing years, victim of a dozen face-lifts. She could not have been more than 15 or 16, and she was screaming, crying, wailing at the top of her voice. The yoof, 18 or so, in regulation chav gear — tracksuit bottoms, hoody, baseball cap, low brow, bad teeth — had her gripped by the front of her top, his face an inch away from hers.

“Do you f*****’ ’ear me, you f*****’ slag? You f*****’ ’ore! Do you f*****’ ’ear me?? I’ll f*****’ twat yer, yer f*****’ slag!”

I didn’t want to do this. This wasn’t my job. Why was there nobody else to do this but us? But I knew it had to be done, and the closer we came, the calmer, the more in control of the situation I felt. As I crossed over the street towards the couple, I called out to the girl: “Are you all right, love?”

“No,” she sobbed.

“F*** off!” said the yoof. He was very drunk.

“Would you like us to walk you up the road to the phone box, so you can phone your mum?” I said, all the time talking to the girl, ignoring the boy.

“Yes please,” she said, her sobs subsiding a little.

“I told you faggots to f*** off!” said the yoof.
....
The girl ran up the street, towards the phone boxes. And I had a prize, held under my arm, trapped in my power, a struggling yoof, a witless chav, a little shit in a baseball cap. It was too good a chance to miss. Suddenly, at once, my calm melted away to be replaced by livid anger, and I hit him, hit him hard in the face, three times in quick succession.

I felt my fist in his face, and I loved it. I still love it now. I loved each punch. Thwack . . . for your girlfriend, for all the times you’ve hit her and threatened her and terrorised her, for all the women you’ve terrorised and will terrorise. Thwack . . . because of what you are, what you wear, what you represent, the sneaking crimes you commit, the petty sneaking thefts, the pointless aimless vandalism, the joyless stupidity of your empty mind, for what you are doing to England, useless dregs of the earth, you and all the people like you. Thwack . . . for me, for the pleasure of it, because I can, because I love the feel of my knuckles against your flabby mouth, your flat nose, your vacant eyes.
....
Then came the post-match analysis. Part of me wanted to say, “Poor little lad. What chance does he have in life? There are no jobs for stupid people any more. He’s got no future. He must have been brutalised at home. And the drink companies exploit kids like that, and fill them with cheap booze, and it’s not his fault he can’t handle it, poor wee baby.” But that’s not really what I think.

Really, I can’t buy into relativistic accounts of behaviour at all, despite a lifetime of Guardian reading. Plenty of people live in poverty, bad housing, are the victims of an education system which serves only to prepare people for life in a call centre. Plenty of people get pissed. My own mother was brutalised at home by her father in conditions of unthinkable squalor, and she didn’t take it out on anybody else.

What I really think is this: there is evil at work in the world. Some people are evil. That kid was evil. Not naughty, not misguided, or led astray. Evil.

You should read the whole thing, and then read DK's take on it. According to the male chav, the two were "engaged" which makes it all okay. With all the people in the world making excuses for the all the people in the world intentionally doing harm to others, it's refreshing to hear this point of view.