How Paul Massey and One Punch Doyle fell out with the Quality Street Gang
It was billed as 'Wedding of the Century'. And to mark the union of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer, the UK had been given a national holiday.
But in the Salford Club the mood wasn't quite so celebratory. As 600,000 people lined the route of the wedding procession in London and 10 million more took part in street parties across the country, a Wild West-style brawl was kicking off.
Pint pots flew and punches were thrown as Manchester's old and new criminal establishments clashed in a ferocious scrap. It was the start of a feud that would end up with several of the main protagonists behind bars and at least one man fighting for his life in hospital.
READ MORE: The night Damien Noonan and Paul 'One Punch' Doyle squared off in a pub car park
And it would mark the start of a changing of the guard that would have long-term repercussions in gangland Manchester. Sat around a table in the club that night on Wednesday, July 29, 1981, were soon-to-be Salford 'Mr Big' Paul Massey, his close pal and former boxer-turned doorman Paul Doyle and a bunch of mates.
Young, ambitious and ruthless, Massey and Doyle were then up-and-coming criminals. Having met in prison, on their release they began carving out a name for themselves in Salford's murky underworld. But that didn't sit well with some of Manchester's more established villains.
During the 1960s, 70s and early 80s, the Quality Street Gang were considered by some to be behind much of the major crime in Manchester. It was a claim the alleged gang members themselves - well-respected, but notorious men like Jimmy Swords and Jimmy the Weed - deny, insisting instead that they were a loose collection of businessmen, acquaintances and drinking pals.
Whatever the truth of the matter, it