The Dark Side of Harold Challenor - JOE THOMAS

Written by Joe Thomas

Harold 'Tanky' Challenor
Harold Challenor
 

A glance at Challenor’s obituary tells you a fair bit about his life:

Harold ‘Tanky’ Challenor was an SAS war hero. He was in the Flying Squad, then a ferocious and controversial Detective Sergeant working out of West End Central in 1960’s Soho – with morally questionable methods. He once, on foot, chased Reggie Kray down Shaftesbury avenue and halfway back to the East End. The twins offered a grand to anyone who’d help stitch him up. He had a well-documented struggle with his mental health.

Challenor was in the SAS with my grandad, and I first met him when I was only ten years old. He was always Tanky, to us. He told a lot of stories that day, leaving my grandad nervous and my nan rolling her eyes.

‘We were dropped into Italy*,’ he told me. ‘I landed slap-bang in the middle of a group of Germans. Off I went to a prisoner-of-war camp.’ I remember looking at my grandad, who said nothing. ‘So, I made friends with a washerwoman,’ Tanky went on, ‘borrowed her nail file to cut through the wire – which took three nights, mind – and, wearing her clothes, off I walked across Italy to re-join the regiment.’

That meeting stayed with me.

Challenor’s reputation was made as a ruthless Detective Sergeant, the scourge of Soho, that ‘Bastard Challenor’ as he was known. He was instrumental in arresting key figures in the Soho underworld, the near beer establishments, and clip joints. ‘Near beer’: the ale’s watered down so much there’s no need for a liquor licence. ‘Clip joint’: at the club’s entrance, a striptease and cheap drinks are promised, but neither materialise – and the extortionate bill is collected with the threat of violence.

It would be easy to glamorise a figure like Challenor, the derring-do, the hardman milieu. Challenor was ‘bent for the job’, meaning any corrupt practices he indulged in were not for personal gain but to clean up the filth of Soho, as he put it, his behaviour sanctioned by his superiors when those he put away were known villains.

But Challenor couldn’t always distinguish right from wrong, and then the problems began. As I write in my novel about my grandad:

‘I’m proud of everything he did; proud of how he lived his life.

But I’m not sure quite how Tanky lived his life –

And I’m definitely not proud of everything he ever did.’

Bent by Joe Thomas, published by Arcadia, £9.99
Bent by Joe Thomas

Read Mark Timlin’s review of BENT here

* Further information regarding Operation Speedwell can be found here

Joe Thomas



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