The tough life of one of Britain s most senior policemen, who rose through the ranks from poverty and deprivation to the highest office, and went on to become Blair’s ‘Drug Czar’.
An abused, unwanted, squint-eyed boy, Keith Hellawell never knew who his real father was. His mother, a club dancer, was always bringing home different men, and would tie him to the table-leg to keep him quiet. He fought at school and went down the pit. It was a hard-bitten, inauspicious start for a man who was eventually to become Chief Constable of Cleveland, and then West Yorkshire, and later, controversially, New Labour s much-feted and summarily dismissed Drugs Tsar .