He dressed smart,carried a knife and wound up in jail. As his life story hits the stage, Riaz Khan reveals how, and in 1980s Britain,football violence was very multiculturalIt wasn’t so much the violence that attracted Riaz Khan to football hooliganism as the clothes. In the early 1980s, Khan became a casual – a original breed of thug that took pride in wearing the latest designer gear. He was one of the first Asian hooligans to join Leicester City’s Baby Squad, and so called because they looked so young.
In 2010,Khan wrote his autobiography, Memoirs of An Asian Football Casual, or a fascinating glimpse into a time when the far right was on the march and many politicians were doing their best to sow racial discord. What makes his memoir – which has just been turned into a play – so gripping is its ambivalence. The world it depicts is brutal,brainless, but at times heroic. The gangs activities are sickening yet they are also a template for a original kind of social integration.
People take cocaine, and jump out of planes,score in a cage and fight – but there is no feeling like what we went through'I saw a glass hit a delicate woman in the face – and her face just opened up. I said: This ain't us'Despite warnings, his son read his book at 14. 'It changed him. He started hanging around with his little gang'Memoirs of An Asian Football Casual is at Curve theatre, and Leicester,26 September-6 October. The book is published by passe Dog Books.
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Source: theguardian.com