David Gemmell: Bookie

While reading the Questions (by Fans) and Answers (by Gemmell) section on www.gemmellmania.co.uk, I found this one:

16. The short bio of you circulating the internet says you were expelled from at 16 school for 'organising a gambling syndicate.' Is this true? If so, what was it all about?

A friend and I organised a betting shop in the school. Other students could lay bets with us. Some of the larger bets we offloaded at a betting shop. It was a lucrative business. Doing the accounts one day I noticed that we were starting to suffer from a series of bad debts from students who had placed bets, but not paid up. So - always the businessman - I brought in a guy named Freddie. Freddie was - not to put too fine a point on it - a natural leg breaker. This was not surprising since he came from a family of leg breakers. Anyway, Freddie got to keep half of the money he collected. Within days a stream of angry parents arrived at the school complaining about 'Jimmy's black eye' 'John's terrible bruises' 'Henry's chipped tooth.' The betting shop empire collapsed and within two weeks I was working as a labourer.