 I started to get to meet some of the more, if you like, the iconic names that people will know through working in the media, through doing some media work and I did some work in the 90s, I did some BBC work and come into contact with Frankie Fraser. He was a proper villain. He was the real deal. He was the only one I've ever met. There was nothing about Frankie that wasn't to do with crime. Everything was to do with crime. Very bright, very sharp. I worked with him in the 90s on a programme and then I worked with him in the late 2000s on a programme for a TV programme. I always liked talking to him because he didn't try to bullshit you. It was absolutely straight. This is what I am. What do you mean businessman? I'm a villain. This is what I do and I'm really good at it. But he also had that intimidating thing about him. He genuinely was intimidating. Frank was, I think, 5'5, a small man but he had something about him. He had an aura about him that was intimidating right to the end. I think he was in his 80s when I last saw him and he was still, this is who I am, this is what I do. But he loved it. With him it was joyous. When he cut people, he'd talk about how he's cut them and he'd do this and do that. He'd flinch and oh no, yeah, I did this, I did that. And he was this and he was that. He spent over 40 years in prison, didn't have a day off of good behaviour. That was him. He was a criminal. It's what he did. It's who he was. His identity. There was nothing else about him that wasn't to do with that, that wasn't to do with crime. And he had a mind like a trap. He could go back and talk about in 1938 some magistrates caught the name of the magistrate and Jack Spott grasped up someone else in that court. And he knew the guy who did it and knew his uncle and knew his relations and he knew it. That was his world. He really knew it. If you said something, I spent a lot of time with him and if you said something that was wrong you said no you're wrong there boy because it was bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, this is what I am. But the intimidating thing, when we went to meet him I was doing a radio programme for Radio 4 about crime in the Second World War and that's when Frank really started to get involved in crime. And we went to his flat. He was living in the Angel Inn and I was with this BBC producer and we rang the entry phone and a voice came and said, hello Mr Fraser, this is John Major, he was the Prime Minister. This is John Major and we looked and he said, he really is mad Franky Fraser. He's bonkers. What's going on? What do you want? John Major, what do you want? Just joking boy, come up. He's gotcha. That's what proper gangsters do, they manipulate. So he's got you on the back foot straight away and then we walked up the stairs and he was waiting for us outside his flat. Now he's five foot five and he's standing with the light behind him. His jet back died out, his jet back is shiny air. He had a smart shirt on, tailored trousers and he was standing at the top of the stairs above us. He knew what he was doing. Everything about him was about manipulating the situation, presenting himself in this intimidating way. Once we got in his flat he was an absolute gent, he was very good, fantastic, but that is who he was, that's what he did. He was a wine up merchant, the second time I met him I met him off the wall with road in a pub there. I was having a drink with whom I used to drink vodka and lemonade and he got a bloke dressed up as Sherlock Holmes to walk about behind me. And he was just up in a full cloak with a big pipe and everything and he was walking around behind just to wind me up, you know, that was it. And that was Frank, that's what he did. He was a funny man but he was 100% a villain. What was his upbringing? Straight family. He regretted, he said on a number of occasions he said that he was at a disadvantage in the criminal world because his family were all straight. If he'd have been from a criminal family, they'd have known what's to this phone, they'd have known how to do things, but he didn't. As he said he had to find out for himself how to become a criminal and very early on I think he was about nine years old. He was working for the Sabines, the race course operators, he was working for them as a bucket boy at the race courses, wiping down the blackboards of the bookies and getting paid so he started off when he was just a kid. And he loved it, he liked crime, he liked crime, he liked criminals, he valued loyalty, all that old fashioned loyalty and respect thing, which I'm wary of and usually it's a complete con and they're all stitching each other up. He wasn't like that, he was proper old school, which is why he ended up doing over 40 years inside. And all we talk about some of these men can be intelligent and smart, but if you're serving over 40 years in prison you're not that smart either, are you? Doesn't seem that smart to me, but it was a wire life that he chose. It was a wire life that he chose and when you read the beatings that he took and when he talked about the beatings that he took as well, he had the birch, he had the cat and nine sails and he was badly, badly beaten when he was in prison by prison staff. And he dished it out as well, it was a wire life, violence was a wire life, 100% wire life. He liked money, he enjoyed money, but violence was really important to him and villainry was everything, absolutely everything.