Derek Shawcross isn’t a big man, but you get the sense immediately that you probably wouldn’t mess with him. For 30 years, he’s been a publican, frequently of unloved pubs that needed turning around.
Years ago in a pub he ran in Fallowfield - the Talbot Hotel - once owned by Frank Swift, the Manchester City goalkeeper turned sports correspondent who died in the Munich Air Disaster, he was surrounded and had a gun pointed to his head. Why, he doesn’t say, but he says that he told them to ‘do it’, because they’d only get one chance. He’s still here.
In a previous life, before he became a landlord, he was a bare knuckle prize fighter too, fighting in back rooms and cellars all across the city. One of his knuckles he’s lost somewhere up towards his wrist, he jokes, pointing at the dent in his right hand where a knuckle would generally be found.
