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How's yourself? Yeah, really good. Thanks. First of all, thanks for coming on the show. You've got a very interesting story. Spent over 30 years in prison. 200 banks. You've robbed. But while you're in prison, you taught yourself how to read and write. You've come out won all sorts of awards for publishing articles. Now you're doing great things. You're 10 years out, which is your longest spent ever out of prison. But we'll go right back to the start, kind of where your life began and where you grew up and stuff. Well, I suppose really, I was born in London. My parents were Irish immigrants from Dublin. They came over in 1959. And I was born in 1960 in Charing Cross, the old Charing Cross Hospital. And really grew up until I was nine in North London. And we kind of moved around a lot as a lot of families did in those days. And North London was still suffering the effects of the Second World War. I mean, seriously, there was bomb sites everywhere. Houses pulled down all over the place. And we were just really normal kids. We just run all the bomb sites and done the usual stuff. And then when I was about nine, there was a big problem over where we lived, because obviously the streets were full of derelict houses and pulled down houses. And there was like four families living in a house. I suppose a bit like Glasgow in the 1930s in the Tenements and that. And they were mainly Irish, mainly Irish immigrants. So we lived in a house. We lived on the ground floor, the basement rather. And there was another three families living on each floor, another three Irish families. And one of the families had a newborn baby and left it outside the house in the sun in the pram one day. And came out about ten minutes late and there was a rat in the pram biting the baby. So the local papers got involved. My mother and all the people of the used to be a television program used to be on an evening called Today with Aiman Andrews. And it was like a regional news program. And they all went on it about Hollinsworth Street, which was where we lived. And all the families told how bad it was down there and everything. And what was the council took notice? They decided to demolish the whole lot and they gave us all a choice of moving out. So most of the people that lived on the street moved to places, states in North London. But my granddad was living in South London at the time. So we accepted a place over in South London in Belem. And it was really strange because the house we lived in, we were in two rooms. So it was the first time we ever had hot running water and heating, actual heating. It was a gas fire in the house attached to the wall. We couldn't believe it. Yeah, it was unbelievable luxury to us. So me and my brother had a bedroom and my sister had a bedroom and my parents had a bedroom. But we lived on the top floor of a block of flats. You know, I found South London a bit different and we eventually fitted in over there. And it was pretty good. Is that when you started Life of Crime very early? 13, 14? Yeah, I was 14. You know, it's like saying I started a life of crime. It was more a bit of fate really that brought me to a life of crime. I never set out to be a criminal in the traditional sense. I wasn't really one of them kids. I nicked a few apples out of orchards and stuff like that. And I nicked the odd mars borer out of Woolworths. But I was never really sort of... I used to like tixing the dark green and Zed cards. And I probably had a bit of respect for the place. Even though my dad was there, he had no respect for the place at all. He was a hard-fighting, hard-drinking Irishman, a proper Dubliner. And he taught us how to fight, really, me and my brother. And when we first moved this out of London, our main problem was we moved on to an estate where there was a load of kids the same age as us and we're the newcomers. So we had to fight everybody on the estate before we were accepted. Had to learn fast and kind of get your reputation. See, when you got the jail, first when you were 14, but did you get beaten up by the screws? Well, before that even happened. I mean, what happened to get me into jail in the first place was the fact that me and my mate were bunking school one day. We were playing truant. And what we used to do was... Because I went to one of the toughest schools in South London. The Tulse Hill secondary modernist pool down now. There was eight floors of glass and concrete, and it was a boys' school. 1,800 boys, all taken from the catchment area. Brixton, Stockwell, really rough areas of South London. So it was a bad, bad school. You know, it had a bad reputation by the 70s. And the teachers, there was a thing on the news at one time that the teachers had to be escorted to their cars at the end of the day in case the kids attacked them. So I ended up trying to punch a teacher out the first floor window. So there was loads of fights and stuff going on in the school. There was no learning really as such, you know. And so we used to play truant. So me and my mate make her up in a place called Chipsy Hill in South London one day, just, you know, in her school uniforms, walking along, messing around. And we had an idea that we were going to go up to the museums and try and pull a few girls, you know. I mean, girls' schools used to go on trips up there. So anyway, we're walking along, and all of a sudden the van pulls up alongside us, an old comma van, and about three or four big blokes jump out in work clothes. Never really took no notice. And they come round and gathered round, and suddenly we're grabbed hold of and dragged into the van. So we don't know what the fuck's going on. So they get us into the van, and they start slapping us about in the back of the van. And one of them is grabbed my hand, grabbed me by the wrist, and another one got me finger and twisted me finger until it snapped. So I became unconscious at this stage. They brought me round again. But they're still doing me, mate, as well, brought me round and one of them tried to break me over finger. You know, break his other one, break the other one. So what they were, they were a local burglary squad who had a bit of a reputation at that time around there in the 70s for violence and feeding people up. We knew nothing about it. We were school kids. But what they wanted us to do was to admit to burglaries so they could get off the day. You know, they'd been to the pub at lunchtime and thought, well, we'd get a couple of lightly lads to admit to a few burglaries. That's us done for the day. So by the time we got to the station, we were absolutely terrified. We'd never been nicked before. It was the first instance of dealings with the police. I've got a broken finger. We're in bits. My mate's got a black eye. We were willing to admit to anything. I was willing to admit to sinking the Titanic start in the Second World War, anything, you know? So they got us into the station and they got the big book out. And we cleared up 62 burglaries for them. Every when they put down, we said, yeah, we've done that because we were terrified we were going to get killed. So we were full team. And what am I, my mother come up to pick us up because obviously they couldn't let us go on her own. And when she saw my injuries, she went into one obviously and went, what happened? And the police told us, me and my mate, they'd found us on top of a wall trying to climb into a house, to break into a house. And when we saw them and they chased us, we fell off the wall and that's how we got our injuries. So anyway, kind of long story short, about three weeks later, we appeared in the juvenile magistrate school. We told the solicitor, the duty solicitor, we'd never done any of these burglaries, don't know anything about them. So lucky we had a magistrate then who was willing to listen. You know, in the 70s, magistrate's courts were police courts, but we had a fairly decent magistrate. So she ordered an investigation. She was wondering how two 14-year-old boys with Durham burglaries, some of which were done at three o'clock in the morning and antiques were stolen. Grandfather clock was one of the charges we were, you know, two kids. Yeah, what the hell were we going to do with grandfather clock? We didn't even have a watch between us. So anyway, she ordered an investigation after the brief explained everything and give us bail. And lucky enough, they ended up dropping all the charges and we were advised to sue the police. Now, I don't know if you've ever tried to sue the police, even these days it takes forever, you know, you're going through years, and in those days it was worse in the 70s. So when we tried to sue the police, it wasn't actually us doing it, it was the solicitor doing it for us, obviously. But after that, we became targets. Every time I left my estate, the police would pull me into the back of their car, give me a few slaps. Once they found out we were Irish, there was another thing against us as well. These are the 70s you're talking about when the IRA were active. So it was, you know, they'd punch us up, they'd get me in a car and twist me nose or pull me ear or whatever, you know, give me a few slaps. And then they started doing it to me brother and telling me to drop the charges. This was the idea that I would drop the charges if they harassed us enough. Eventually, I decided that they kept raiding my mother's house early in the morning, claiming they were looking for stolen goods. And, you know, in the end, I had to think to myself, and I thought, you know what, I'm not doing any good here. I'm bringing the police down on that house, and my dad hated that, he hated the police. So I decided to run away from home and I decided to live on the streets at the age of 14. I thought it was a way of protecting my family from the police. And once I was living on the streets, I had to think again and I thought, you know what, the only way to live on the streets is to be a criminal. So if they want a criminal, that's what I'm going to be. And I knew a fellow running an estate across the road from us, and he, I was living in an old car, by the way, on the estate, Triumph Herald, if anyone's interested, 1966. I knew this fellow who had a motorbike on another estate and he knew how to hotwire him. So he taught me how to hotwire motorbikes and that became my thing. I would go out every day. It was absolute freedom. I was 14 years old. I was living in a derelict car. I could go to bed whenever I wanted, do whatever I wanted. So my game was I would go out and steal motorbikes and drive around with no crush on me, looking for the police cars, because this was my war on the police. I wanted to get my own back on them. And I'd pull up alongside the police car with no crush on me and kick the door and get a chase. And I knew all the back streets, all the ways through the common, and nine times I had 10, they'd lose me. But that was my fun. And then after that, my next move was to get into the back of police stations, police station car bikes and steal their own bikes. He's just stealing the police bikes. They used to go mad. And I'd run the bikes into the ground, then dump them into the pond up and clap them common. So there was a kind of war going on all the way through 1975 between me and the police. Eventually I got nicked. And they gave me, I got nicked for theft of motorbike, free motorbikes and driving without license and all the usual stuff. And they gave me what they called the short, sharp shock, which I don't know if you've heard of that, but back in the 70s that was like government policy for juveniles. If you were aged between 14 and 17, you could be sent to a juvenile detention centre for three months or six months. And the game in the detention centre, and what they'd done was they recruited all the worst, horrible screws from around the country. They actually said, if you want to, you know, if you're violent, if you're a strict discipline area and this is where we want you, teaching these kids not to come back to prison again and commit crime. So it was like, the short, sharp shock was like a fucking nightmare from the moment they picked us up underneath the court. I'm sitting in the court when we lever jacket on with me collar up, thinking I'm a bit of a lad, just been sentenced to three months. A bit terrified inside, but trying to put it on the front. Smoking a cigarette and all of a sudden the door opens. Two big fellas come in. They're not allowed to wear uniform because we were juveniles. But they wore these big long-brained raincoats with HMP epulets turned over. That was their kind of uniform. And they come into the cell and they went to me, one of them said to me, what's your name? So I just looked up at him. I went, no, bang, punches me right in the jaw. And I went, Jesus. So I've kind of come off the floor and I went to sit down again. Bang, he's hit me again. So I've gone down and I'm thinking, what the fuck was that for? So he said, stand up. He said, stand up when you speak to an officer. So I'm standing there. So he said, no, what's your name? So I said, I went to say no. Bang, the other one hits me from the other side in the head. I'm wobbling around the cell. So he said, don't want to know what your mommy calls you. I want to know what your name is. So I get it. So I said, Smith. So he said, Smith, what? So I said, just Smith. Bang, another one in the stomach this time. When you talk to an officer, you say sir. Whenever you say anything, you say sir straight after. This was the start. They took me out into the van. There's another two kids in there. One was about 14, one was 15. And they're taking us out to Surrey in the van to this detention centre. And all the way there, they're telling us what they're going to do to us when we get us there. And they're probably enjoying themselves, probably say this, you know, we were terrified, us kids. So we got to the detention centre. And the first thing you have to do is run the gauntlet. They open the doors. There's about eight screws there. Four on each side. Shirt sleeves rolled up. Kick you out of the van. And as you go past, you get a slap or a kick or a punch. And then they got us into the reception. And they stripped us, basically. We had to stand there for, I think it was an hour and a half, naked, 14-year-old boys and a 15-year-old boy, in reception. With nothing on, whilst they went about their business. Screws come in, screws went out. And every screw that came in or went out at reception made a disparaging remark. And look at the arms of him, like bits of knotted string. You know what I mean? He's sure he's not a girl and all that turn out. You know, just humiliation. And what it was, I found out afterwards, it was like them setting out their marks, showing us that this is what we were going to get. And if we rebelled against it, there was going to be trouble. It's the same that I fought at you. Yeah. So we were kind of terrified. And they started everything with, when I say go, you do this. And they'd give you the order. And they'd go, go. So the first thing they'd do to us is bring us into a bathroom. There's two baths. There's about six inches of luke warm water in each bath. And the screw said to us, me and the other guy, he said, when I say go, he said I want you to run in there, jump into them baths and scrub your stinging bodies and then get out. Go. And when he said go, I got into the bath. The other fella took him at his word. He ran, jumped into the bath, came down, broke both his elbows, and that was him finished. He was out of the DC. They took him away in an ambulance. But that's how terrified he was. He actually took him literally at his word and jumped into the bath. And that kind of taught me something. I thought, you know, this is madness. How is this happening? I've nicked the motorbike. I've nicked a few motorbikes and all of a sudden I'm in hell. Ah, mental abuse? Yeah. Oh, it was terrible. Because of course you know. Because they had to close them down in the end. People died, kids died. But the things they would do is after about a couple of weeks, the thing was this, you're all in there. After a couple of weeks, you've got a common enemy, which is authority. So you know it's them and us. So that night when the lights go out in the dormitories, if you're talking, you're all talking about what you'd like to do to them screws and what you want to do when you get out. So we all banded together in the face of this kind of threat. And after a couple of weeks, there's new people come in. You kind of got a bite. You know what I mean? A screw might go to hit you properly seriously last week when you were new. Would miss you now because you'd be able to dodge the punch. You know what I mean? There was still a lot of nasty shit in there. I mean, they'd make you scrub the corridor with toothbrushes and you know, you're always like the bed packs you had to square everything off and cleaning out the toilets with toothbrushes and all that kind of fucking shit. Anyway, after about three or four weeks I'd made contacts in there. We're in my area. I was the only one who was really a bad little kid. I met other kids from other places in London and outside London who were also little bastards like me. So one of the guys I met, we're talking away and just what we were talking about was how to get money and what sort of criminals we'd like to be because by now, we're criminals. You know, we've done the crime. We're in the place where they're beating the shit out of us every day so we know that when we get out of here all we've got to look forward to is more of the same. I think you did that as well also because of the hate and your rage you had of them putting you through that, the police and the screws and as I have to say, fuck this. I'm not taking any shit. No doubt about it. By the time I was 15 I was so anti-authority it was unreal. You know, at 16 I was punching the screws up in the air. That's how bad it became because I couldn't take no more. So they give us a terrible beating. I met this geezer. He was from North London and his brother, we were talking about arm robbery and he said his brother had a couple of guns and he might be willing to sell one to me. So at the age of 14, I'd get out of DC and about a month later I'd get the money together about things about 40 quid. When I was a serious guy I'd make the contact with and bought off him a single barrel Steven shotgun with no ammunition and a Luger with no magazine and the barrel was bent. But we didn't care. They were guns. We were going to do an arm robbery and we need guns. So I found a couple of fellas who were pretty much at the same mind as me. They wanted a bit of excitement and they didn't give a toss. I'd met them in jail in a short, sharp shock and we all got together and decided that they were robbery. So what we picked out was a record shop. Jesus Christ. We had only seen robberies in films, obviously. So that's how we planned it. We had everything. We had pliers to cut the phone lines. We had the Luger and the shotgun. We had rope to tie up the people in the shop. We had masks. We had overcoats. We had stocking masks on underneath the mask. Gloves. And it was the middle of summer. Drawing attention to ourselves. We had the getaway driver sitting outside in a Mark 1 Cortina with a ski mask on and a big bulky jacket. Sweat pouring off him. And we went into the shop to do the robbery and it turned out that when we got up to the counter and I pulled the gun out in this geezer the first thing I could think to say when I pulled the gun out and it got caught in me coat. Where the shotgun had been zoomed down it was kind of like an edge on it, a burr and it got caught in the line in the me coat. And when I pulled it out there was a bit of red lining sticking on the end of it like a fake gun with a bang coming out. So the guy behind the counter just laughed. He's standing there looking at us two and he laughed. So I went listen mate I said don't laugh I said stand and deliver which is all I could think to say stand and deliver. I was cursing myself afterwards the embarrassment of it. So anyway we told him a bit he said give us the money so he's like he's opened the till took out a ten pound note and dropped it on the counter I said where's the rest of the money he said he went to the bank at three o'clock he said that's where we got left. So being a bit of a fatty merchant as well and having planned all this I've grabbed the tenner and I said right I mean mate when should we tie him up and I went no but I said listen mate there's a grown man talking about I'm 14 years old I said see that roof over there we've got a sniper on that roof he said and if you leave this shop I'll touch that phone in ten minutes he's going to shoot you straight in the head he went alright. What was your favourite film? I was just loved films. Q-Boy and Endings, Kei Duffer and that sort of stuff. So we had watched loads of films about heists and whatever and we thought this was how to do it Ocean's Eleven with Frank Sinatra but anyway so anyway we got this ten pound and we're on our way out of the door and there's a record rack near the door and just out of our darling well I grabbed a bundle of LPs out of the rack as well and we jumped out got into the getaway car, got away so our first robbery we got three pounds something each and I ended up with about 22 copies of the Basie Roller's Greatest Hits it made me popular with the local kids my sister and all that she loved the Basie Roller so they all had a copy of that and the other two guys were kind of like a bit disappointed but I wasn't and you know why I wasn't because I realised it wasn't the money I was doing it for the excitement and it gave me home back to be in control of something rather than all the time I've been beaten by adults uniformed adults and when I was doing the robbery I felt as though I was in control I actually had control so I wanted to do more I'm pulling the cow and do more and we did we went and done about five or six more and eventually we'd done a rent office and nicked 200 quid which was a lot of money in those days and then we'd done one where we'd done a sweet shop where an Asian guy fought back and we might hit him over the head with a bottle of lemonade smashed the bottle over his head and then the police really were after us so we ended up getting nicked me and me pal and got remodelled in custody for the first time by now I'm 15 and we're going to Lechmeer house me mates the guy who'd done the fella with the lemonade was 18 so he went to Ashford an older prison so the police we admitted the robberies in the engine we pleaded not guilty for a long time and then decided well let's just stick our hands up and get what we're going to get so my brief told us that me mate because he'd been to Borstal before we'd get another Borstal sentence and I would get six months youth custody he said he'd do a deal with the judge so we're up at the Old Bailey at the age of 15 I'm up at the Old Bailey when me mates were all in juvenile court and I'd go in front of the judge and the judge says no he said I'm not doing any deals here he said this is atrocious he said for someone your age to be doing this and he gave me a sentence under what was then and still is section 53 of the 1933 Children and Young Persons Act and the wording of that sentence is that they were allowed to give someone of 16 or under a larger sentence if it would have warranted if the charge would have warranted 14 years imprisonment or more if it had been committed by an adult so that's how they'd done it and he says as far as I'm concerned you're an adult he said you go to prison for three years which was a lot of time in those days so I'm 15 I've got three years me mate got three years as well and I've come out the Old Bailey at the time in the Old Bailey when I was in the cells there was a lot of guys were up like the Wembley mob people like who were proper armed robbers you know proper grown men and they kind of took me under their wing in the off-bale cell they're all sitting around the table playing cards, smoking all in like really sharp suits you know and giving the screws all that they screwed going giving me a cup of tea and all that and the screws are standing there these are my heroes I'm sitting there looking and they've seen me over in the corner a little skinny fella called me over here come over here what are you up for so I said I'm robbery they're all giving it out he's at the heavy already how old are you I said 15 ah fucking great kid I love my penis yeah so they give me tea and roll ups and everything you sit with us and when the screws come to put me in the cell leave him here so like I'm thinking wow this is the life you know this is what I want to be I want to be one of these guys do you think that was the first thing you were accepted as well yeah to give an importance yeah because if you're getting told you're no good and beating all the time it does break you it does and then you get there and it's like an affirmation that you're on the right road and you're doing the right thing so I thought you know this is great but I didn't realise I mean I got into the prison that night with me three years ah giving it to Provado as I come through I've already done DC you know I mean I'm a hardened criminal by now 15 and I get in there and I'm in a special unit in Ashford for juveniles on the top floor for violent juveniles and I'm swinging the shoulders as I come in me little skinny shoulders and that and the screws are all like yeah he's three years I'm robbery bum bum bum so I think I've made it got into the cell that night and when all the lights went out that night because they used to turn the lights out at 10 o'clock just bursting the tears missed me mother you know it was terrible and I was thinking to myself wonder how many of them fellows who were in the courts of day would be in themselves crying tonight you know what I mean because they were all coming down and going where did you get Ronnie oh I've got a 12R you do it on your head and I'm thinking Jesus so um so yeah so I got into I then realised the next day when I seen the governor that the sentence that I'd been given meant that I had to do every day of the sentence there was no remand time taken off no no you could only get out by gaining parole and you were given parole um you were allowed to go out for parole after two years and then after two years six months and then on a three year mark they'd let you out so not even half no and they had nowhere to put us there were so few of these section 53 sentences of juveniles that they had nowhere to put us so they had to put us in with the other juveniles in the ball still system they're in the ball still system you've got six months to two years but your date was nine months most people went home within nine months so I'm doing three years I'm going to last about four ball still sentences so they they found a ball still for me called Dover um and they put me down in Dover and I just went into one like almost from day one I just didn't want to do the sentence you know you're done human beings are not meant for captivity you know especially kids you know when it gets to about seven o'clock on the summer's evening they're trying to bang you up in the cell and you just want to be out playing football with your mates and you know the disappointment of all that so I turned into a mad thing I used to try and fight the screws every opportunity I got I'd try and organise all the other geysers to have riots I remember one night there was a we used to have to go to bed at 9 o'clock in ball still there was lock up time and I remember in the 1970s a thing come out a program the fella Dallas was in it and he played a guy he could turn into an animal or a current movie he could turn into any animal and this was a new program that was coming out Aquaman or something I can't remember what it was and we were all seeing adverts for it on a TV but it started at 9 o'clock and we had to be banged up at 9 o'clock so on this particular night someone went fuck it let's barricade up the television when we're not going you know let's watch it so we did about 40 of us barricaded ourselves in the TV room to watch this show but we never ended up seeing any of it the screws are outside they're screeching and shouting telling us we're going to get beaten and all that and we're giving it back to them yeah we'll come and try and take us then and it ended up in a big battle and they turned the telly off from outside anyway because the switch was in the office so we never got to see nothing but it ended up in a terrible battle and I got shipped down to the block and I was down in solitary confinement for about a month and then they let me back up again and I had a fight with the geese as soon as I was coming back up out of the block someone looked at me funny you're looking at bang we're rolling round the floor together so back down the block I go and this time I start friending the screws down the block and it's an underground block and every morning the stone floor stone flakes every morning they put a bucket and a scrubber and a cloth into your cell and you're supposed to scrub the cell floor so I went I'm doing it for years I'm not a bolster boy I'm not dead when they put the bucket in first I just kicked it over so they went well you have to scrub the floor so I'm not scrubbing the floor end of story I said I'm not doing anything you say I'm doing it for years I have to do it or what are you going to do and then when we tell you what we're going to fucking do and they went away and about 20 minutes later about five of them came into the cell beat the life out of me held me down and ejected me in the arse with something next yeah seriously yeah what was that do you know it was like actual I found out afterwards it's like what they call it in prison it's slowing me down juice it's a heavy heavy anti-depressant and kind of anti-psychotic drug that would use enough for the sake I'm tick-wad yeah what they say is fucks sake you must have been right now to forgive you that I was a wild kid but they held me down and ejected me with that I'm out and I wake up and I don't know how long it's gone by but suddenly I'm in another bolster seriously in a padded cell wake up in a padded cell so a guy comes to the door the door opens the next morning I have a clue where I am and all I've got on is a pair of shorts and I'm in this padded cell and the door opens and there's a trolley there and there's a fellow in a white coat and he's giving out medication and another fellow with a thing and he went here take that and I went what is it he went never mind what fucking is it he went take it swallow it when I'm not swallowing it he said don't make us come in there and force you to swallow he said because we will and he pulled a whistle out of his pocket he said take it so I went I'm not fucking taking it so he went alright it's a close slam another ejection he's gone yeah sure enough an hour later I'm near the feet coming I'm thinking what the fuck they've come flying in at the cell held me down bang injected any put in the pillow yeah fucking hell so I'm in this and the next time I wake up I'm in the same cell the same padded cell but I've got a straight check it on pair of shorts and a straight check it now the worst thing I'm still claustrophobic to this day because of it the worst thing about wearing a straight check it is that immediately your arms are incapacitated the same with a body belt your face starts itching your head's itching you can't scratch it it's a nightmare so I'm sitting in the corner in this body belt in this straight check it and the door opens same fella comes in again in the white coat this time he's got a fella in civvies with him who looks a bit kinder so he's the doctor ah Smith how are you I'm not good he said well if you behave yourself he said we'll take that jacket off your later on today he said and we'll feed you are you gonna be good so I thought I'm gonna fucking lose it here so I said yeah I'll be good so they come in about lunch time took the jacket off give me a bit of scran and another pill so he said you take the pill so I'm looking at the pill and thinking fuck it ah I can't be doing with a straight check it so I've took the pill so anyway I'm in this cell for about three days and there's a little kind of gap in the padding I've noticed by the door so I'm playing with that fiddling about with the padding and I've pulled it and it's ripped and I've managed to rip a whole section of it off so I think fuck me this is great and there's a wool inside it or some kind of fucking gear it's quite itchy it's like um asbestos so everywhere I've got I'm now trying to rip the whole cell apart you know I mean when I open the door there's all this asbestos all over the floor and me sitting there smiling at them so I said your pills don't work he said the pills are not to knock you out he said you've had the injection the pills are to stop the side effects I went fuck off so anyway they've took me out of that cell and eventually they've put me in a strip cell now so I've got a hole in the floor for a toilet and I've got a what I used to call a zoot suit which was like a shiny vest and a pair of shorts which were supposed to be unrippable so I've took the top off and I'm rolling in a ball I'm playing football with that I'm in there 24 hours a day they open the door three times a day and push him through what age was this? I'm 15 so fucking hell yeah so I'm in there and eventually the governor comes and he says if I let you out of the strip cell will you behave yourself and take the medication so I said yeah you know I'd say anything to get out so they've put me in a normal cell in the hospital so I'm there one day I'm there for about a month and one day I'm looking at there's a hatch in the door and I'm looking out through the hatch and there's a fella over talking to another fella through his hatch on the other side of the landing in a white coat so I assume he's a doctor so I said yeah come here I said what's this medication you give me I don't want to take it and he went like that don't tell anyone don't say anything so I went what? he said don't say anything it was a prisoner he'd got out of his cell had the white coat on him and his pal were planning to escape he was going to get him out of the cell hold the screw or hostage get him to open the door and take him out and the white coat never was going to walk out as doctors he said I'm not a doctor I'm a prisoner I went fair enough so I'm not that me hatched like that and he's gone to the to one of the screws he went off as a son so he said can you come down here and open the cell door please they'd planned when he comes down there he was going to grab him and take the keys and he went get back in here he said where did you get the white coat and how did you get out so I thought this place is full of lunatics yeah yeah yeah so they let me out on association for the first time this is after about eight weeks and there was a big rum there was a table tennis table in the tally and I've gone in there and there's about eight prisoners all kids sixteen, seventeen, eighteen sitting there like that dribble hanging out their mouths oh Jesus Christ one floor of the cuckoo's nest I don't realise that this is what I look like as well I haven't got clothes so there's a guy in there I know from DC a black fella called Vince Kennedy so I said Vince's come as well and he's walking really slowly I went Vince where am I so he went they gave me that injection the large actile I said they give it to me as well but it hasn't really affected me I don't realise that this is the I'm going I'm going I'm going to go I'm going to go so he said do you want to do you want to come to table tennis the first time we've been out at the self rages so I went yeah so he said so he said I'll get the ball he's gone about 20 minutes to get the ball in the office so he comes out he said I'll serve throws the ball up the ball's over there on the floor it's already and he's bringing his back back to hit the ball and I went I'll get it and I went about 15 minutes and this year was unbelievable so we became zombified really in this hospital so after a course of this this medication they said right they called me in the CSI psychiatrist because I was in there for mental observation and he said look he said we'll take you off the medication he said but you're going to have to keep taking the pills for the next I think it was the next month he said otherwise the side effects can be pretty bad so I said well am I going up to a wing he said yeah we'll send you back to a wing so they sent me a place called C-Wing in Rochester which was a brand new wing out of the whole ball still and it was escape proof it had been made it had been built two years before to hold all the people who tried to escape out of other balls still so they put me in there so I'm still taking the pills and then one day I thought I'm not taking the fucking pills no more I've taken them for long enough so by now they're not watching me so much I'm spitting the pills out so I'm sitting there and all of a sudden my neck starts going and I swear to God I've never had anything like it this is for not taking the pills the side effects start kicking in and I'm looking around and all I want to do is see something red I can't I need to see something red and my arm starts going and my shoulder starts going and I start rolling up into a ball I'm actually cramping up and they've had to get them down from the hospital and two screws have put a broom through my arms and lifted me like that and kept because all my legs have bent up and I was in agony cramping up so they took me over to the hospital give me another injection and it loosened me up within about ten minutes anyway they took me back to the wing and I was that was for medication that was me I took the pills then to the end and they told me if you ever kick off again in this place you'll be going straight back into the hospital and you'll be getting the larch-actile again and the walk that the people used to do on when they run larch-actile is known in prison as the larch-actile shuffle seriously the larch-actile shuffle I didn't realise till I see other people doing it I was doing it like a train you're like that but you think you're normal that's the thing everyone else is like that so is that like quieting does that numb your brain but you're active you know what's happening but you can't move fast you're reaching for a cup and you're like that so I've gone back to this escape-proof wing and met up with a couple of guys in there who wanted to escape and so did I so I said right we'll plan the escape out of here then but it's escape-proof there's gotta be a way out and sure enough we found a way out and the way out was that the weakness was they'd given us they'd made these wooden cell doors with a slit an observation slit so they could look into every cell as they went past and they had a bolt on the outside obviously that they shut every night and the lock and we discovered we got hold of half a pair of scissors which are someone of that on another wing to stab someone but we made it we ended up with this half a pair of scissors and what we'd done was we unscrewed the cups this was their big weakness was where the lock went in it was screwed into the wood so we unscrewed the cups in my cell bent away a bit of wood cut away a bit of wood on the inside so it could be seen from the outside that night Christmas Eve it was my birthday and I thought the plan was I'd get out my cell at night do the night watchman wrap him up get his keys we didn't know he didn't have any keys open the cells of all the other guys and we'd all head for the wall we had something like that frequent in real money we had civilian clothes tucked away everywhere we had a rope ladder that we'd made on the wing which wouldn't have probably held our weight but anyway so what happens is the night watchman they lock us up for the night I put my foot against the door when they come round to check and the night watchman has gone like that on the door he's put the bolt on and he's gone like that on the door and as I've got my foot against the end of the door and I'm leaning over like that it feels solid to him night and off he goes and checks everyone else's door and when he's gone downstairs and all the screws are gone off I've just pulled out the paper out of wood I can see the lock so there's no lock all that's holding me is the bolt outside and we'd already done undone all the screws on the the slit window so I pulled that out coat hanger out through the slit window undone the bolt this took me about 20 minutes undone the bolt and we thought I'm out so I'm out on the landing on this little spur and I'm out lads and they're like yeah fucking great we'll be home by Christmas day loving it so I'm talking to my mate at the door I said right I'm gonna go down and do the night watchman I said what I'll do is I'll creep up on him down there and do it from behind and tie him up I said I'll get his keys and I'll be up to and with that I can hear someone coming up the stairs so I can't hang about and I've gone into the recess at the end of the landing where the toilets and showers are and I've hid in there it's dark so I hid the night watchman coming past singing so he walks past goes down to where he has the key his clocky key and as he's coming back instead of walking past the toilets he walks into the toilets what are the odds? I'm thinking Jesus I'm standing over in the gloom and by a load of buckets and that's steel buckets and mops and he's singing so he's having a piss in the urinal so then he goes to wash his hands and he's looking in the mirror and he looks in the mirror and he sees me and I see his face going he can't believe he can't believe his eyes to somebody standing there with that I've grabbed one of the buckets chased him out of the toilet hit him on the head with it and knocked him out one of the steel buckets so he's down on the floor but the guys can see this out of their hatches he's on the floor there's blood spreading out from his head and when I've done him I'll get his keys and they're all going don't open me up don't want nothing to do with it nobody wanted nothing to do with it now you've killed him because he's dead and I'm going well he's not breathing and they're going no no no fuck that we're nothing to do with it I don't fuck it so I'll do it myself so I've gone downstairs to the office to look for his keys and it turned out he was just playing possum I've heard the bell go I thought the alarm bell I thought what's happening here I've come running up the stairs and he's standing there with blood coming down his face a big smile on his face with a finger on the bell and he went you're fucking dead now and I thought oh no so now the night watchman the patrol that are on the night are coming over to this all I could do with standing there's nothing I can do they've come in they've beat their shit out me there was about four of them not only for what I've done to him for getting out of the cell you know just the fright of it for them me out of an escape proof cell and they probably give me a hiding and I always remember they then held me one of them held me hands behind me back and went to the night watchman give him a few in the belly you know but the night watchman was so weak from the loss of blood that he was hit me and I weren't feeling it but I was going give him a bit of satisfaction and off I went down the block and I was down in that solitary confinement for nine months in an underground cell and this was old age before they were just 16 yeah I'd be 16th birthday down there shit man and then in a strip cell how did that mentally fuck with you it done me completely seriously for such a young age I used the thing was there was rule of silence in the block as well we were driven off so there was no talking no singing nothing you only spoke when the screws spoke to you you saw the screws three times a day they'd come and put your meal in you were allowed to shower every two weeks you weren't allowed exercising in the open air at all so there was no jams on nothing no exercise and your window in the cell was like a bit of perspex that had been there since 1906 or whatever and everyone had scratched on it so there was very little light come through and I couldn't read it I couldn't read and write at this time and the only thing you were allowed was they had an old cupboard with a load of old books in and every day you were allowed to get a book and change your book your bedding came in at 9 o'clock at night and went out again at 6 o'clock next morning and you were left in a bare cell except for a piss pot in a book so because I couldn't read I used to take my socks off roll them up kick them round play football with my socks you know sometimes I used to stand in the corner and I used to sing into the corner of the cell into the gap but they'd hear me bang bang bang Smith shut up right and then I'd wait till they'd go and then I'd act out all the films I'd seen because I'd seen loads of films and I'd play all the different parts on my own standing there in the corner of the cell you know tough guy oh yeah James Cagney all that sort of stuff do you think that kept you sane as well? it was try to play actors actors in there and just try to take your mind off of things that you're locked up in a fucking cage you had to do something and I couldn't read but what the thing was they never tell you they didn't tell you how long you would have to be in there so I'm pulled to visitors which was to visit magistrates so they could lose me unlimited bird but I've got no bird to lose I've got to do my whole sentence so they said why are you two-year parole you're not getting it I wasn't getting it anyway you know what I mean but what they done was they kept me down the block for nine months and every day the gov this was the torture every day you had to stand by your door to attention you'd sell out to be immaculate like the floor scrubbed and everything and they'd come down and they'd open the cell door name an amendment to the governor and you go Smith PJ2679 and the governor go good morning Smith how are you and you go fine governor and this is what you're waiting for alright you can go back to the wing today never came every day I'm there standing to attention every day I'm trying to get out try to be nice try to do what they're saying jump through the hoops yeah after that then so that was your first three year sentence and you could put it into the big boy yeah so what happened after the three years did you get out or did you your sentence get kept on I learned to read in books I learned to read from my books the first three years which was a good thing yeah in that block after there was a priest the catholic priest used to come down and he used to look through the hatches every day and see that everybody was okay so one day he looked through the hatch and he said to me why are you why are you kicking that book around and I said I can't read that's disgraceful I could read a little bit but I couldn't you know really understand reading and writing so he made it his job to bring me in easy readers and like Janet and John and all that and he would help me with words and he asked him if I could have a pencil and a pad and the governor said he's not getting no pencil he's sticking it in the lovelace as I we can't afford for him to have a pencil he'd have a pad and he'd have crayons so once he was 16 down the block with me crayons and all that you know what I mean it was terrible but I went mad down in that block I really did I learnt to read I started getting paranoid and down there everything echoes and I could hear the screws talking in the office and I convinced myself eventually they were talking about coming to kill me and coming the worst thing was I got into my idea they were talking about going to kill my mother so I could hear little bits of things and put them together and I said did they mention my mother so eventually what I'd done was I was allowed jeans by then I ripped the tag off me jeans off the zip sharpened it up on the wall and cut me wrist pulled the fucking veins out of me wrist because I went mad I thought they were going to kill me mother so I ended up back in the hospital again this time lucky enough they didn't dose me up and after I'd spent nine months in the block they let me out into the proper bookstore and I ended up doing the full three years how was your family's reaction to you doing all this did they know half the stuff you got up to no I mean my mother was great and my dad was great they'd come and visit me when they could but you know I kind of did I wasn't one of them kind of people who wanted to visit visits just reminded me of home you know and I just I wanted to do me a bit of bird and get out and get away from it sort of thing you know I mean I didn't but my mum and that come up my brother and my sister visited me on a quite regular basis I'd say about three times a year how was your mindset then coming out after that three years because that story there itself and that three years it's unbelievable from Looney Bins putting in with the adults cutting your wrists hearing voices all the medication all the beatings yeah let's get him by the time I got out I was 18 and nearly 19 and I was just ruined for a 19 year old I knew too much you know it's like I probably had post-traumatic stress disorder and didn't even know it you know I mean I'd had beatings all the time and I hadn't settled down at all I'd fought them all the way so for me getting out it was a chance now to get my own fucking back you know I mean they haven't got me anymore they're never going to get me again it was the idea and I come out and nobody expected me after that all that time to actually go straight it was like accepted that I was the kind of criminal of the area and that's who I would be even my family kind of you know my dad tried to you know talk to me about getting a job and all that yeah yeah yeah but really I went back and found a few of my mates who'd been in Ballstool and we went out fieving again and that was it you know I ended up becoming a proper armed robber and over the years robbed many many many places and worked with different gangs they see over 200 places according to the flying squad I mean they say I've been involved in 200 armed robberies but I was a working robber so every time I was out I mean we were robbing a bank every week sometimes we'd rob two banks in a day I'd rob three banks in one day one time and lost money how'd you work that one? I fucking lost money but um you know I was always at it and people knew I was game so I was forever there was no mobile phones in those days people would pull up outside your house not going to door this and we'd come down to do a post office and sorry your fancy how much is my way four grand yeah I'll have some of that you know it was one of them so I would go to work with anyone so I was involved with all different gangs until I put my own gang together and decided to you know to really try and smash it and get enough money to rezar on and that didn't really work is that what you try to do get your own fun try and get some cash what were you doing with your money? wasting it the bank robbers creed is this don't let them any thief don't let them catch you with the money spend the money because if they catch you with the money you've done the crime you're going to be doing the time and you ain't even had no benefit so spend the money as quick as possible I spent the money on suits I was a telly boy I used to go out and buy like fucking 500s pounds suits get made for me any styles I liked cars I didn't have a driving license I'm 18 I've got about 30 cars you know it was absolutely crazy not great cars all like secondhand not nothing like bent knees or anything like that but Mark II cool teamers and things like that and it was like I don't know we just spunk the money we went out every night and we just you know the money was nothing to us because if you make 10 grand a day in three days time you might you know you might come around and say I'm down at my last grand you fancy doing another one and I'll go yeah come on let's go so you're still craving that buzz with the robbery it gives you that high arm and control because you've been beating up so much I need to do this and that gives you that energy that adrenaline kick that I feel alive that's what I wanted I wanted that that is what I've done it for I mean the money was great don't get me wrong but for me the real thing was the buzz and I didn't realise how common it was until I actually spoke to other people in adult gels about arm robbery and they all talk about the same thing the adrenaline rush you know that you get of being in control of something for a change if you take over a bit of pavement if you're doing a van you own that pavement when you're in the banking premises you own those premises people have to do what you say but I was never one of those kind of I know everyone probably says this but I was never one of those bully fuckers who you know people would I would terrify people don't get me wrong that was my job I was the frightened that was my job in the gang but I was never one for gratuitous violence our way of thinking the people I worked with was this if you won't ever fight and hurt somebody go to football Saturday or go down a pub Saturday night Friday night you'd better get in a tear up if you want one if you're out robbing it's a professional job you don't gratuitously shoot at people or stab them or even touch them I was told by a professional arm robber I met an old guy early on he said the best thing to do he said when you're doing stuff like that he said don't let anybody get within arms length of your gun he said because when they get within the reach of your gun that's when you might have to shoot them because they might try something try and grab up and I always done that I always kept people arms length for you over there as soon as I used to come in I was the growler so I'd send people up the end of the banks and shit like that many strange experiences as well doing that stuff because doing all that as well when you say you did three in a day that's fucking it takes some balls as well to do that but everything has a ripple effect as well because it does affect the people who are behind the counters it affects everybody so when you're doing that as well what was the when you got your big sentence which was 27 years what robbery did you do then I've done a series of robberies with a mate of mine where we were kind of they were I wouldn't say really vicious robberies but they were traumatic robberies I mean I was working with a guy who kind of his idea of of getting people to open up because I don't know if any bank robbers have told you this but there's times when you go in a rob bank you don't get nothing you know what I mean if the staff will drop down behind a bulletproof counter and refuse to give you anything not like you can do you know you got to swallow and walk out and we used to always say well there's a million more banks to rob out there so you know we just go to the next one but I was working with a guy who kind of used to he had this habit of grabbing customers if they tried to not give us the money he'd put a gun up to the customer's head I wasn't really I didn't want to get that close to customers you know what I mean but that was his way of working and it was kind of vicious he's terrifying for the people it happens to because they don't know that he's got no bullets in the gun he's not going to kill them you know what I mean did you ever get done for ones that you never done because you did that many they just threw a couple at you that you never done loads of times yeah when you get Nick they go I remember one time I got Nick by Tower Bridge Flying Squad and they said they said we've got you for I think it was 11 robberies they said we're going to throw three more in as well which we think you may have been involved in and I was nowhere near any of them but I'm pleading not guilty so I can't say well I've done them but I didn't do them do you know what I mean it's a good 22 but then what happened was when I got me 27 I got that got cut to 19 on an appeal and then I was a recipient of a bit of good luck I'm in Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight when it was a dispersal cell and there was a ruling made in law I can't remember Regina Vida, Governor of Woodhill Prison not Woodhill another prison but anyway what happened was the prisons hadn't been given people their remand time when they were nicked on multiple charges and they hadn't had bail so you were just starting your sentence from the day but the high court ruled that everyone had to have their remand time back so during the 19 years I'm suddenly eligible for parole I've done 10 so all of a sudden they're coming to me and say I'm not that parole so I've thought I've tried you know what I mean so I went for parole and I was granted parole in 1997 I couldn't believe it 11 years you did? Yeah and the worst part of it was I was still a B cat so I'd gone from an A cat to a B cat and three months before I wanted to three months before they offered me to parole it'd come out of the blue I'd asked my personal officer who's supposed to do all your paperwork for you if he could try and get me down to a C cat so I could get to a C cat prison I wanted to escape from the C cat to be easier you know what I mean I wasn't doing the sentence I didn't want to do it so he said I'll try for you now what he didn't realise was they came me all the paperwork back and I actually got his report back as well and he said I would not recommend this man for a C cat in a hundred years you know I mean he definitely wants to escape and he's still a danger to the public so I got refused a C cat when I got the parole they called me down I'm playing cards with a couple of guys upstairs I get called on the tenant I come down to the office there's about six screws in the office including me personal officer and the governor and they were all looking grim faced I'm thinking someone's fucking died outside so I've come in Smith I've had a notification from the home office from the parole board I forgot all about that oh have you you granted parole you'd be leaving on Thursday are they gutted yeah they were absolutely sick I turned around to my personal officer I said see that C cat stick it up your ass and they were like they were terrible can you imagine you got your C cat and then you escaped and then fucking two days later you were getting released anyway would have been worse but I got out and went straight back at it yeah you know well I didn't go straight away no I decided this time a couple of days I was trying to go straight but it was actually about I think it was about five weeks I'll say straight I got a job as a road cleanser cleaner do you try and change your leaf then yeah so I thought to myself right I don't want to go back to prison straight away and really let's try something else you know I had a family body and I had kids so the kids had grown up and I'm thinking to myself well you know let's try something else so my brother worked for the council for Lamb of Council and he managed to get me a job as a road sweeper on the estates and my take on pay was 90lb a week 90lb a week I used to spend it on petrol getting to a fucking bank of rubbish you know what I mean so I'm living on toasted carpet and cuppa soup and shit and I'm living in a bed seat that cost me 50lb a week and I'm just like but I'm still trying you know and it went on for a couple of months and I'm out sweeping the estates and then one day I'm in a bad mood and I'm sweeping this estate up in Stockwell and it's a brand new dirty old run down council estate and there's a brand new I think it was a Mercedes sports parked in the car park and I thought that belongs to some fucking gangster or drug dealer on this estate so I've swept around bum bum bum just about all the way I'm looking at a car the guy comes down clicks up in the car gets into the car launches at me takes a load of rubbish out of the car just throws it on the floor I thought I'm not fucking having that so I've gone over I sit in the ear mate I said I'll clean this estate I said I've just swept there I said and put the stuff in the bin I said you just found all that out of your car it went so what he said you'll roast with a fuck off and that was it I went stand up he's got out of the car he went what bang nutted him he's gone down stamped on him a few times broke me bum over his head and then left me trollied there walked off got on the phone on the way back in the phone box found out me mate and said any work about it and he went yeah he said 10 grand you'll wait or more if you carry the gun and went sweet I'll have it and that was me back into the robbery do you think that's because you never had the power in the authority it's like being back in prison again well people were being cheeky and never seen you as because if you're doing banks if you're hanging about with the bad boys people are going to give you that authority and that will be a power that you are something what you think is respect that's what I was yeah a lot of people of course it is yeah but a lot of people it's like I used to respect for hanging all that and you know people are disrespecting you know and I was a bit like that and I thought well I'm not you know what I'm not sweeping again but I've just become another monk you know for these people they're just it's just people want to abuse you all the time and I thought I'm not having it I'm not having it so crime was the way for me and I formed the little team then eventually the flyer squad nicknamed us to laugh in bank robbers and that was it was over when was we robbed the bank on Christmas Eve we used to do free we used to enjoy our work you know we'd try and have a laugh while we were doing it as well even though it's horrible I know now I'm laughing but I know it's not funny but because you're saying it so calmly and Christmas Eve and I know I shouldn't be laughing but I find it funny because it causes the extent and it's funny on a different level but it's kind of when I think about it it was fucking crazy yeah but we're robbing this Midland Bank on Christmas Eve my birthday I think if I can't get a bit of luck on my birthday which I didn't when I was trying to escape was 77 anyway so the banks are open till one o'clock on Christmas Eve so the Midland Bank now that was our favourite because there's more money in the banks at Christmas eh? there's more money in the banks at Christmas banks have picked the Christmas and this one we'd done this one because it was in Clapham and the last time it had been robbed that we could find out was by Charlie Wilson who was one of the great train robbers he'd done it before and he got away with about a thousand pounds or something back in the 50s so we thought yeah we'd do that one so we've gone in there but as before we've gone in there's a guy outside and he's still in centre hats on the pavement a pound each so I said there's three of them we had a getaway driver and three of us were going in so I said there's three of them at so when we put a scheme on we put the centre hats on over the top of them went into the bank ho ho ho giving it all that you know they're terrified smashed the screen through jumped over the counter and nicked the money coming out with a sacks Merry Christmas and all that as we're going out out the door we think it's really funny so then I looked and the Flying Squad nicknamed us in the paper to laugh in bank robbers so we thought what else can we do this funny so my pal went listen they've got a training school in Hendon police training school it's going from through the middle and bank in Hendon which is their bank so we said yeah so we drove over there and sure enough we robbed the Hendon middle and bank and the police all come out of the college in their shirtsleaves chasing the car up the road to try and catch us but yeah that was quite you know we used to do things that so we could have a laugh as well even though we're terrifying and traumatising people you know at the end of the day we didn't care we were greedy lazy fuckers who just wanted the money and we just wanted a laugh but we knew that we weren't going to kill no one do you think that was your way a coping relief as well with the trauma and pain you went through yes a coping mechanism as people might not understand that but people deal with things differently because the angriest men also are the weakest we can portray fear and that keeps people away because we are hot with trauma or we have demons that doing that stuff is kind of we surround ourselves with people who've got the same pain you probably notice now that the people who did the banks we've probably had the same trauma they did and not bringing that you had do you know what I mean so that's a coping mechanism we had to keep ourselves laughing because as you say it's the fear as well we've got to be calm and the way we've done it was we've seen that that was our coping mechanism you know we were all good friends we were all close friends and we'd have jokes and that when we were out there you know like we went and robbed the Allie Irish Branking Cricklewood Broadway because I was going to Dublin to see me family and we all went in with Belfast accents and the funny thing was this we're calling each other number one and number two and number three have you got that there and number one get that there for the cause and all that this is what we're saying cashiers when I eventually get nicked for these robberies about a year later some of the witnesses that come up the Old Bailey two of them from the Allie Irish Bank two women said in their statements that number one who was me was definitely from a certain part of Derry because they recognized the accent I've never been to Derry in my life but both of them two separate women recognized an accent from I think South Derry or somewhere and they were adamant about it and I'm thinking that's my way out I haven't got a fucking Derry accent you know I mean it didn't work but yeah I mean what's the craziest robber you've ever did like dressed up wise and masked like a you ever dressed up as some women or anything to get into a bank I see what I was for a while though the newspapers when I was doing them on my own when I was on the run they were calling me the city gent because I used to dress in a suit you go boss suit bowl of hat carry a briefcase and go in and just pair of glasses and just open up your briefcase and I can't take the shotgun out and go right fill the briefcase so in the papers they were calling me the city gent but the funniest some of the funniest things happen when you're doing robber did you cannot account for I was doing one one day and my mate's filling the bag and I've got about 20 people up against the wall of a bank and I've got a shotgun and I'm like hurry up hurry up I'm masked there standing in front of them and I noticed that one of the fellas who had his hands up had a really nice watch on a Rolex so I've gone to him wait so he's looked over me yeah they're Rolex so he went yeah it is and when is it a real one he went yeah well let's have a look and he's got to take it off and when they don't take it off I said just show me it so he's turned it around and he's trying to I said I don't want your fucking watch mate I'm here to rob the bank you know what I mean I don't want your watch which I didn't you know what I do I wasn't there to rob people I was there to rob the excellent situation I can't believe Mr Chippet Bastard said that yeah I don't say there's no yeah but another funny one loads of funny ones I walked into a bank up in Fort Neath when I'd done the free and the day and I went right everybody on the floor everybody went on the floor about ten people and one guy's still standing there Blackfellow's still standing at the counter like Buzarm on the counter looking at me I went did you hear me mate I said get on the floor he went I'm a yardie he said I don't get on the floor for no one just walked up I went get on the fucking floor I blow your head off and he went alright I didn't think you were serious and another time I've walked in on my own again pulled the shotgun out and pulled out a plastic bag threw it towards the counter and went filled out meaning the cash is there's a guy on the other side on my side of the counter a customer takes the bag and starts emptying his pockets into it and went not you for fuck's sake give it to the cashier when I get the money away and I pull the bag out there's a comb a bus ticket like three pence in change and all sorts of weird shit another time robbing on my own again up in Stratum I walked in had the shotgun I had a rifle a 2-2 rifle cut down overcoat on I walked in I went right and I'm trying to pull it out of my coat and it's caught in my coat everybody up the end of the bank so about 20 people have gone to the end they're about quite far away and it was all marble floors so I eventually went like that and as I pulled it the gun slipped out my hands and the rifle slid all the way across the floor then it's standing there like that and it's landed at Geese's foot and I don't know what to do now I'm standing there like that and I went kick that back and he went alright he's kicked it straight back and I've picked it up yeah I've picked it up and I went right and another time there were so many of them I've got a bank in Croydon and I've got all the people up against the wall and all the cashiers have ducked down behind the counter so I'm shouting to them through the hatches and I'm going if you don't come up here and start putting the money up with him the counter free I'm going to start fucking killing your customers one by one and I've heard from all the customers and I've looked over and I went like that and they're all like that looking at me but these can't see me the cashiers they're down behind the counter I said one two and the customers are all like that I went free I said see you like you're a bunch of fucking wankers and I said see you like I said don't bank with these people no more they'd let you get killed for free grand behind the counter and I just walked out but what's the miss do you have a how about a bank I think it was 48 grand we used to do a thing called the reserve game we knew someone this is why we robbed middle and banks because we knew someone who had a relative in the middle and bank who was giving us information but they didn't know they were giving us information if you know what I mean and they told us we found out that what the middle and bank done instead of robbing the security van which most people do wait till the security van delivers the cash goes into the monthly cash goes into the cashier safe underneath the counter because the vault's on a time lock and that has got a key so if you can get them to open that you know you can get the money out of the counter that's what we used to do wait for the van to go straight in who's the Ed cashier they're not expecting it I am open that fucking safe under there and give me the money they're shocked that you know boom you're getting packets of money out sealed up that has just been delivered by a security court was there any jobs you look at I think I'd love to have been on that job like the great train robber there the Brinks or you'd like to have been involved in they all kind of ended in sadness really I mean when you look at all those big jobs that were committed by the bigger the job the more chance you've gotten caught exactly except for one one job that was absolutely fantastic it was planned by Billy Hill you used to be the king of the underworld 1952 it's called the East Castle Street Post Office robbery Roy Shaw was involved he got away everyone got away they robbed the post office fan of I think it was £238,000 in cash in 1952 which is the equivalent of about £17 million a day and they got clean away they had a fight with the police got clean away and the home office like Winston Churchill was the home secretary and every day he wanted a report on what was happening with East Castle Street Post Office robbery nobody ever got nick for it you know what I mean and that was it it was the biggest robbery ever and no one even got to see it it's only now these days that people know who was on it you know what I mean nobody knew at the time but that was Billy Hill he was master planner it's got to be well planned it's not just a case of you've kamikaze the few where you've been in yourself why did you do a lot yourself I've done them because I love the buzz I'll give you an example I came out of Wandsworth I've done three months in Wandsworth for possession of a bullet they found a bullet in me in the house so I've done three months and I'm getting out and they said I didn't have no money so they said there's no discharge crime for you so I said why and they said well paperwork's been fucked up you'll have to go down to the Social Security which is just down the road so I went alright so I walked into Social Security and I went listen I've just come out of prison there's the paperwork I said they've got no money for me and he went he said you only live up in Brixton I guess behind the counter I said yeah he said well your discharge crime is like to get you home in there he said it's only a bus ride away I went alright keep your money walked outside swear to God two doors along there's a bin with a McDonald's bag in it I take the McDonald's bag out empty it out get me a scarf wrap it around my face put me in there in a McDonald's bag walk into a building society that's on the same road and I went give me the money well they put seven grand on the counter off I've gone happy as Larry but I had this thing where I had a real sort of need to do it if you know what I mean I needed to affirm that you know that I was actually in control of things when I wasn't my life was spiralling out I controlled all the time but I had to believe there was a drink drugs involved at this time never we had this thing amongst us like that we would never commit a serious crime whilst under the influence of drink or drugs it wasn't professional you know I mean and we kind of classed ourselves as professionals well as kind of professional because a lot of people don't do anything sober majority of people I know a lot of bank robbers and people like that who would have a net or a snorkel to get that buzz because it's a fear in it they're scared and the majority of people who I've spoke to who's been in prison were wrecked we're on something we're on intoxicated we were going to a robbery one day and we had a guy who was a new fella who we hadn't worked with before and he's in the back of a car with a mate of mine I'm in the front makes driving and suddenly I in the back of the car I've looked around he snorting coke off a night what were you doing? he went he said I'm just having a bit of a life now he said you want one I won't stop the car get him out he went what I'll just get the fucking gun back piss off lay a bullet yeah don't want him on a road why if you shoot somebody I'm going to wait for the rest of my life you know I mean you cannot put your life in other people's ends without some sort of element of control and that's what I was always after an element of control I never had no control on my life so to me this was a false control you know I mean I could if I could do certain things that I could stick to like a routine then I was okay it's a bit like being autistic but I am a psychopath so it's kind of and I've been diagnosed as a psychopath so I suppose it's part of that you know I mean it's part of you need a routine then you're ruthless you don't really yeah so for the after the 27 years you did 11 you're trying to change your life you get back into crime then you're setting straight rule where you eventually got life yeah what robbery was that? that was a series that was the laughing bank robberies laughing bank robbers yeah I got done for 8 on robberies and 8 lots of positional forums and ammunition I was on my own the rest of them never got caught and I got caught down and you know I'm not lying planted DNA that's the only way they could get me and that's a fact I didn't even wear the gloves they found supposedly with my blood on them I didn't even wear those gloves they weren't my gloves they were my pals did you just know it was your no how they done what they done was this they knew I was at it yeah I'm not sure but another day in evidence yeah I'm on the flying squads wanted list when they're from my older probably still now but so they're keeping an eye out everywhere and they know we're mooching about and I'm mixing with other people who are robbers so what they done was when they've eventually nicked me they nicked me on another kamikaze one a couple of your pals went out to Costa Rica I decided I'd go down and rob a local bank in the summer walked in got an exploding die pack didn't realise come out set light it exploded and set light on me and they caught me down to that now what happened was they got me for that but I had an excuse for that which is the only the only defence for robbery is duress and that's the defence I run on that they wanted me for the other seven robberies they knew I'd been involved but they couldn't prove it so what they done was I said to my brief when I first got nicked I said they're up searching my flat I said there I had hair then I said make sure they don't take my comb and plant evidence like ski masks were dumped after some of the robberies so he went no I'm on that so they come back to the police station and they said we need to take your DNA it had never been taken so I said they said do you want to take a swab or blood so my brief went it'll take blood there was no blood on my little robberies it went no it took blood so like that so they took the blood anyway about eight weeks later they come up to Belmarch prison charged me with the other seven robberies I reckon they found a speck of my blood inside one of the surgical gloves that was dumped after a robbery in Klebham along with a gun and that it was 800,000 that it wasn't mine that it was mine however they work it now I knew it worked my blood and it took me ages to figure out how they'd done it and then I met a fella inside who was in for murder and he'd been nicked by the same cobra and I said we're chatting away and I said how'd I get you he said this funny thing he said they got a speck of my blood so me and him are thinking how the fuck are we both nicked on the same evidence but the same cobra and eventually we worked out what they'd done was when they come to take the blood they clean out the bin in the police station the sterile bin the doctor comes in he takes your blood he does two pots one that you were allowed to have tested one that they have tested and then he throws the syringe into the bin and off he goes and what they do is they come in afterwards take the syringe out and there's obviously a little tiny bit of blood and I might not expect that they can then plant something and I met six or seven geese in jail over the next five years who'd been nicked by the same police squad and had the same evidence against them I thought this was mental that's two bastards yeah so they got me by that and I pleaded not guilty because I thought yes I've done the robberies but if you get a cheat mate then I ain't gonna stick my hands up to them it ain't happening so I had a trial at the Old Bailey and the first trial the jury couldn't agree the police come in and they were proved to be lying about nearly everything and what happened was when the judge called the jury in half the four days and he said look he said if I was to give you till Friday this now Wednesday he said could you reach a verdict on any of the 16 counts he said just answer yes or no and the foreman went not if we say until Christmas and the judge went a simple yes or no would have done so he said well I've got you said I've got dismissed the case he said and charged a retrial so I thought great you know the evidence is absolutely crap and we retrialled two weeks later like an idiot instead of waiting a few months for the duster settle and by then the police had ironed out all the kinks in their evidence never called the cop as they called the last time and I got convicted within I think it was I think it was 20 minutes the first jury were out for five days the second jury were out for 20 minutes and the second jury were 10 middle aged women and two judges who never looked up in the whole time of the trial the trial never even looked at me but here's the funny thing there was a bird on the jury who looked the image of Fred West right I swear to God I thought it was Fred West and she was sitting down in front now I noticed her looking at me and a trial went on for a while so every day he used to come in and wink and smile her and she'd wink and smile at me so I said to me brief I've got a bird on the jury he said all you need is one more you walking so every morning it was he did I had hair then you know white teeth and everything I was a bit of a catch and this bird was all anyway come the end of the trial they said have you got a foreman four person he said I think oh my God so she stands up so he says on count one any count I'm going to prison for life on count one do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty she went guilty and then it was guilty for the whole lot for the whole 16 so I've got eight life sentences and eight lots of 10 years concurrent for the forest fucking hell how long did you serve out of that then well it was brand new at the time it was two strike what they called the two strike life and I've got the highest two strike tariff given out ever which was 12 years and I appealed against him he briefed I've sat down with me curiously underneath the old Bailey and I've known him Jim Sturman since I was a kid since he was a junior barrister and I've seen him Jim be honest he said do you think I'll get out ever on this and just looked at me went to be honest he said no he said not with your previous he said I can't see he said it's a new sentence I can't see you ever getting out he said this is your life they thought you had any further yeah he said you've got a 12 year tariff he said even if you do the 12 year tariff he said you're going to do like at least 8 or 10 years over that he said look at the age of you now so I said alright thanks for being honest with me he said but I'll tell you what he said if you do get a hearing he said I'll come and do it for nothing even if I'm a judge it's a 10 year time and he did he stuck to his word fair played with but I thought my life was over that was it you know and I said prison is now my life a jinx actor yeah I cut off my ties with everyone outside too hard for you to speak to people yeah you can't live in prison and outside at the same time I always tell people that if you have connections with outside you know I love my family and I love my kids but I didn't want them being dragged into prisons especially prisons like Belmarsh and Whitemore where they really humiliate families in some cases you know make them strip and all that or turn them away and say you like the dog sat down on you when it's obviously not true so I didn't want none of that but I still kept in touch with my family by phone by now prisons had phones you know you could use I ended up two years in Belmarsh and then they shipped me out to Whitemore which was like it still is I suppose the most top security jail in Europe and I'm in Whitemore for a while and this is what really made me change my life this was the whole crux my story is this I'm there for about a year and in 2001 I've done I got sentenced in 99 so I've done a couple of years anyway whenever you see a priest or a new man or a vicar or whatever in jail on the landings you know there's bad news for someone and I'm coming back from tea one day with a big drug dealer a big Juldy drug dealer called Bud and me and him are having a laugh walking onto the spur and I look up and I see a priest up at the end by myself and I don't think he's at myself and I've gotten about someone's having a bit of bad news anyway and off we've gone so I've walked up there and he's waiting outside myself and he went you know Smith and I went no and I've gone into the cell I don't hear what he's got to say I know it's bad it can only be someone's died outside so he said you are an old Smith he said I'm going to get off and slam my door on him he went and got the screws to open the door and they said look we have to tell you your son Joseph who was 19 was found dead last night outside so I went I said no I said I'm not having it I don't believe you fuck off or wake myself or knock you out and eventually after about 10 minutes of banger I thought I've got to get on the phone and see if my wife knows about this they're obviously trying to play head games with me get on the phone I'm frustrated yeah kind of brought it home to me you know I'm sitting in a prison and I'm helpless you know what I mean so anyway they said they said they'd let me go to the funeral it was kind of a standard thing to let you go to your kids funeral or a close relative funeral even though I was a lifer in a category A prison and I was a category A and eventually the vicar the priest said yeah he said I don't see the be any trouble you're going to the funeral and everyone was all coming down and like commiserations and all that and I went up in front of the security governor the next day and it turned out the security governor I knew the security governor from Ballstool I had actually broken his mate's jaw another screw where they were younger screws and he didn't like me at all and I had to stand in front of him and they said you want to go to your son's funeral he said back so I said look I want to go to my son's funeral can I please go and they went no he said I couldn't he said I wouldn't let you out anyway he said but I can't take the risk of having you out there with all your family he said my officers might get up blah blah blah your category A and I was just devastated I just went back to myself and I just I didn't know what to do and eventually a mate a mine a Dublin fella a Dublin drug dealer who was doing 20 years come down and he went listen he said he said my wife died about three years ago he said you know they have to take her to the chapel of rest he said it's legal requirement if they don't let you go to the funeral so I said I didn't know that so he's gone come on with me gone up said listen I want to go to the chapel of rest and the governor couldn't refuse he had to let me go so they got eight screws threw me in a van took me down to Maldon took me into the chapel lucky enough my wife knew I was coming and she had the other kids there and I had to go in chain to a screw to see my dead son in the funeral home is that his first time you had seen your family as well yeah and I bent down the kids' forehead and the screw tried to pull me back up again I've just pulled in it was just so disrespectful you know what I mean I eventually went back to the prison and the guys at the jail and a lot of odd men you know probably really fucking faces come to me and said he's out of order not letting you go to the funeral Geoffrey Archer's just gone to his mother's funeral he got sent in three days ago seven years didn't even have handcuffs on so there was a plan then to like in Whitemore prison that we were going to get our own back on the screws and they were going to bash the screws and it was going to be a riot situation an awful year good but thinking about it over the night I thought I don't want that to be the legacy my son leaves behind you know me and Nick again end up like Charlie Bronson not getting out yeah I'll never get out so do you think that was a ton of pointing in it was it was not right at that moment yeah over the next couple of months I really had I've grieved a lot and I had to work out my own head what I was going to do and I thought to myself do you know what just for once I'm going to try and find rehabilitation in prison let's give it a chance and see if it works because I'm thinking I've lost my son he's 19 I've got other kids out there well if one of them dies you know I mean so I looked around the only rehabilitation I could actually find in the prison system was a prison called Grendan in Buckinghamshire which is which is based on therapy group therapy and you have to volunteer to go there and they have to test you to see if you've got the IQ to understand the therapy in the first place because there's no point giving you like a couple of years of therapy if you don't understand it so I applied for that I had to see a psychiatrist you know and have drug tests and I had to do an IQ test and eventually they accepted me in Grendan and I went down and I ended up spending five years in there doing like intense working on yourself yeah is that the first time you accepted that okay I need help it was yeah and I mean I've resisted it even there for a while it was still part of the old prison head in me that Grendan was like a weaklingsnick it was for people who were like giving up and you know people in the system would take the piss out of it it's a lot of ego involved there is it's a lot of ego that they don't think you're weak but that's strength anybody who wants to get help anybody who wants to change is strength yeah in my eyes so when you eventually started working on yourself because I know we've had a laugh and we've laughed at some stuff but yeah you've robbed 200 banks you've spent over 30 years in prison but let's not take away the fact that you've fucking changed you learn how to read in prison and now you've got seven books seven books yeah do you know what I mean now you're working now you see your family you're doing good things after all those years so always say it no matter how old you are no matter how fucked up your past is people can change your prime example with that so when you started changing and started making the moves to better your life and get a better understanding that listen what you did was wrong there's not taking away from the fact that what you did was wrong but when you started changing how did you how was your mindset then did you start to feel better you started to distance yourself from the friends who you were in prison with no at first I mean the first say a year I felt worse because I did distance myself from people in prison I was still writing to a few people you know because people were happy for me to go there whereas some people would have got a lot of stick for it in Whitemore when I told people I was going to Grenada they were just going good luck something happens and so but what happened was the first year brought up a lot of really bad shit in me I mean I never kind of took on the notion that I had victims of my crimes all our robbers are the same they get together and they say well if you don't hurt anybody you're not doing anything all you're doing is putting like a penny on interest rates fuck the banks they got plenty of money you know I mean you're not killing anyone I'm selfish yeah you're not robbing old age pensioners or fiddling with kids so you kind of build yourself up into this kind of like as though you're a folk here like you're robbing hood you create that life so it makes it easier for you to accept it yeah you never see your victims that's the thing is when you go and do stuff like that people are cardboard cars you make them into cardboard cars because if you thought about them as human beings you wouldn't be able to do what you're doing so all the people around at the point of a gun shouting at people and all that and threatening people is easy if you don't see them as human he's had a nice he's got a way of it you know I mean it's kind of the same mindset you look at them as just people in your way in the way of what you're doing and they don't really matter and this is what really done me I had no empathy and my first year in Grenham was all about victims and they kept on at me how many victims do you think you've left behind no it's done and to me I'm going I haven't left no victims behind I haven't shot anybody I haven't like hit anybody over the head with a kush I haven't stabbed anybody in the banks but then they it kind of got to me that how many people and people started saying what about your family they're your victims they've been here without you they do the same yeah and it started coming into my head and I was sitting there one day and I'm thinking how many people in all these banks that I've robbed over the years and I just couldn't even count them I'm thinking in each bank there's about 20 people and about 5 cashiers yeah so thousands of people yeah and I'm thinking how the hell am I gonna make amends for all that and I can't and I finally accepted I don't think they call psychodrama I avoided it for 3 years and psychodrama is really a powerful tool if you get into it and you re-enact scenes in your life and things that bothered you and things that changed you but you're not cheered yeah and I re-enacted getting beaten up by the screws when I was a kid I re-enacted my son's death and everything around it it was the first time I was able to really really grieve for him I probably had a breakdown but it took me 5 years Grendan is supposed to be 18 months you stay at Grendan will be 18 months and you should if you're a normal sort of criminal be able to grasp sort of the intricacies of what you've been doing and how to change by then 5 years it took me I couldn't stop I was you know it was like that become your drug yeah that you're buzzed like a bank robbery I sort of started thinking I was a therapist by the end of it I'm starting to work people out when new guys are coming on I'm looking after people and I'm working out people as they're talking to me and I couldn't stop doing it it was someone would go to me they had certain buzz words in Grendan in all therapy I think how does that make you feel you know that was the moment how does that make you feel and you get sick of hearing it but people always say it or I'm in a bad space what the hell does that mean I'm in a bad space I'm in a bad space at the moment and I don't want to talk about it but I started thinking I can work people out now because I'd been worked out and I'd seen how they'd done it I started thinking well I can do it with other people you know I'm thinking I'm a fucking therapist here I'm not a therapist at all I was just a guy I went through therapy and it worked for me and I liked it sort of give me such a buzz that I really wanted to spread it around to people and even when I got out I was still on the therapy buzz and I'm talking to people as though I'm in therapy and people that side they don't want to hear that crap they don't want to hear how does that make you feel and what spice you in they're like let's go down the pub and have a drink, shut up yeah but a lot of people are in denial you've faced all your fears and demons and it's took you five years listen you'll be facing your demons and fighting them to the day you die do you know what I mean but the fact that you did the fact that you did face them and work on them and looked at that trauma and looked at those things we're getting bullied and the loss of your son you've faced it and instead of suppressing your feelings and emotions especially in prison with some of the biggest criminals in the world not just the UK the world they're not going to say I feel sad or I feel weak or I need help they ain't going to fucking say that the fact that you did do that and the fact that you did get help I take my heart off you because it's massive, massive respect and the fact that you learn how to read and write in there as well how long when you did your life sentence did you do when you get out then well I appealed against the 12-year tariff and they cut it to eight years and I ended up doing 12 so I got refused parole four times but the good thing that come out of therapy was one of the things that you had to do was write your life story as a kind of a pointer of where you went wrong and sort of you know that sort of thing and I I wrote this I started writing and I couldn't stop it was just flowing out of me I ended up writing I think it was about 900 pages of an autobiography over about a three month period at six hours a day every day of myself typing away on a manual typewriter people used to come to my door and go you're coming on association I can't know but can you put me in your book yeah of course I can don't worry about that bum but I was just I had to get it out of me it was like an empty is that your therapy yeah that was it I had to empty everything out of me and I put it all in there and when I was friends with Will Self I'd met him in 97 when I was out and I've gone to a dinner party with him and John McVicar and I helped him out on a book and he did so he sort of took an interest in me and he would come up and visit me in Belmarsh and he said look he said if you ever want to write he said I'll be your agent he said but I am not helping you unless you give up crime he said there's no point in me getting you a book deal and then the next week you're out robbing a bank and making a mug of me he said so when you're ready to give up crime tell me and I will help you with writing and I did after I'd written this I'll give it to him and I said look and it was mate I'll tell you what it was and he said I was really embarrassed as well as well as everything else because his funeral was quite expensive and my in-laws paid for it and I hated my in-laws at the time not so much now I got on a ride of them but it was a bit of that old tribal stuff because my wife was from a place called Porter Down in Ireland which is mainly loyalist sort of paramilitaries they're proper you know and our uncles are all in that backing road march all that turn out and my family were sort of low light Republicans from the south you know they didn't really care about like So it was a rave or a kingdom? Yeah and it was mainly with her family because her family was staunch loyalists and I'm a tag so according to them so they didn't want her with me in the first place now years later when my son dies and they pay for the funeral that hurts me I've been robbing banks all my life I've had all this money I've wasted it and I can't even put a penny on my son's funeral so when I wrote the book I said Will I said look there's take that I said if you can sell that I said try and get me about three or four grand so I can give to my son to sell it and pay them back for paying for my son's funeral and within about two weeks Penguin had took the book for quite a lot of money more money than I'd probably nicked and I just carried on writing from then you know and it just became a drug for me and I was writing for this paper inside time the Prisoner's Newspaper from prison and I had loads of stuff published I had a lot of poetry when I started out short stories and stuff like that and gradually learned the craft of writing and journalism and I took a course with London School of Journalism and done proof reading and editing and eventually I went up for a problem Will self came up to give evidence to the Pro Bowl for me in Blantyre House and so did Jonathan Akin who I'd met in prison the ex touring minister and looked after him in jail and you know he kind of come up and give me a good report and stuff like that and eventually after the fourth time I tried and they gave me Pro Yeah, how were you feeling the day you came out? It was kind of an anti-climax to be honest with you I mean I got out and my dad and my brother were delighted obviously you know they wanted to go out and go on a piss and I didn't really feel like drinking or you know I just felt like just standing in Brixton High Street and just taking it all in enjoying your freedom for once yeah and eating something that wasn't like a week old bread that wasn't hadn't been in the freezer for six months and stuff like that I mean little things really but I had to live with my mum and dad they borrowed me to my mum and dad so it was a bit kind of strange as well and eventually I moved down here after a couple of months because the life that you've had the life before you were 16 is enough misery and pain for anybody to last a lifetime but the fact that you've came out the fact that you've became a successful offer and the fact that you've won awards for writing columns for The Guardian The Independent and even the big issue is unbelievable do you ever look back and go okay I had a fucking mental life but I'm doing well for myself do you ever give yourself the appreciation that you deserve for making the changes and now helping other people sometimes I kind of find it hard you know I think to myself if I hadn't gone all through everything that I did go through then I probably wouldn't have nothing to say you know who knows where I'd be but then I think to myself I've been through all that and I'm able to come out of it and do something with it and that's a bonus because let's face it I mean a lot of my mates who went to jail for long sentences you'd be surprised how many people end up getting nusted off and end up in mental hospitals just through having a long prison sentence and they don't know what to do with them because people go a bit mad you've got 20 years to do and you're waking up every day looking at the same walls with the same people did you lose a lot of friends in prison oh yeah so they died yeah just all didge oh murder at one stage the British prison system at the murder rate was seven times higher than it is in the outside world so you know in prisons like Albany and Parkhurst and that you know you didn't just fight people you put people out of the game with hot water and sugar or stabbed them many times and the violence you see every day it kind of you might as well be in a war zone yeah I'm just about to see that I lost a lot of friends and I lost a lot of friends to madness as well they actually went crazy and yeah and after they went I mean one guy come out of his cell one day a really lovely fellow I've known since we were kids come out of his cell one day wrapped up in a sheet with a bible and a table leg saying he was going to punish all the sinners ended up in a mental hospital you know and this was the kind of thing you're dealing with every day PTSD yeah and you're all stuck in a cage it's like jail's like wipe more they call them spurs but they're nothing but big cages with 70 cells in you know you're all in there in single cells and they open the doors in there and you can wander the cage but the screws are outside the cage kind of thing if you know what I mean who kind of who was the maddest person you were in prison with? oh Charlie Bronson no yeah we're in with Charlie I love Charlie a lot of people don't like him but I found him very very funny I'm still in touch with him to a certain extent today but he was kind of the reason I like Charlie Bronson back in the early days not so much now I mean I still like him he's a nice guy I wouldn't like him living next door to me that's for sure but and I've had him living next door to me in a block in Highdown but he was kind of like where in the 80s where the screws had complete control of the prison system before strange ways jails like ones were from Brixton the screws were brutal and I mean absolutely brutal and to see Charlie Bronson strolling through a prison with eight screws running after him and him just marching along like with him opening the doors and trying to get out of his way before because that's what he was doing just a pair of boots and a prison raincoat he was kind of our guy you know I mean he was our not I wouldn't say hero but he was our tool against the prison system you know he was actually knocking screws up in the air and knocking them out and when we'd done it we was getting half killed you know I mean so he was kind of a bit of a hero how much could how through is that that he could beat he could scrap Charlie he could have a good route yeah I mean I wouldn't say he was Superman you know and what I found in jail is a lot of people who you think might be sort of invulnerable or they've got a reputation of being so hard you can't even they're not really there I mean everybody's human everybody's got their own weakness is yeah I used to see I used to the bodybuilders used to wake me I was 19 stone at one time I was in training all the time but what I used to do was all the bodybuilders we used to call them butty syndrome because they stand in front of the mirror in the gym looking at themselves in that and you know the worst way to hurt them you said all right Georgie how are you doing you lost a bit of weight and that's it that God what do you mean lost weight from where and frightened the life out of them you know I mean but yeah I was you know prison wasn't it was hell but it was kind of hell with islands of boredom if you like and a few times when things weren't too bad but on the whole it was just like it was a waste of life it really was it taught me nothing and that's for anybody watching and listening that is a life a crime doesn't pay it doesn't pay it's a misery it goes without all round not just the families who are the victims but it's also your own family but the fact that you have changed your life and the plans for you going in the future because you're saying you're and writing another two books just now is that correct yeah yeah I'm writing two books at a time and I'm writing one when we made Andy and it's called Green Bloods which is and it's about the sort of Irish influence on criminality in England since the potato famine and it starts off actually with the birth of the hooligan the word hooligan actually comes from an Irish fellow settled in Savak a family called the hoolahans but the English called them hooligan and they would go about bashing people up and like causing uproar everywhere so we go from there right up through everything like British brothers you know criminals that people maybe haven't heard so much about as well like Eddie the German Jimmy the danger burn who the fuck said that the German he was my cousin Eddie the German he was one of the biggest buyers of stolen goods and suppliers of forums in this country at one time and stolen cars these cars used to go to class go everywhere ringers, Porsches and stuff like that he's dead now but you know people like that Jimmy the danger is another funny one he's got his name because he was a Gallic football player and he was nicknamed the danger and they reckon if you've got a score against him like you've done well to do it but I mean he was a massive drug smuggler he was just one of them guys who used to wear glasses on a bit of string around his neck he was like an old teddy bear but crossing and that was it but a funny guy as well you know everybody's funny in their own crazy way I guess but now you know you don't license you don't license for the rest of your life yeah how is it how is that affecting you because any sort of breach because you've been out 10 years which is fair play to you that's the longest you've been out since you were 14 yeah are you in a good place I am yeah I'm a bit content yeah I got married since I got out the only the only thing is I've seen so many deaf since I got out family and friends all the old I mean mum died two years ago so I didn't hear that I was really pleased that she had a chance to see me out because it was always a wish all for a life she was always like you've got to get out and stay out and I used to tell her when I got out this time mum this time I'm out you know that's it I'm finished and after about a year and I hadn't gone back she's kind of started believing me and I'm glad she kind of we had a chance to have some time to get you know I mean dad's still alive but I've lost a lot of friends since I've been out and I also have kind of blanked a lot of people who I used to have in my old life you know because you can't really have people who have still got those negative attitudes the only way to really sort of consolidate any sort of rehabilitation is to keep away from your old life don't go back there I mean I get the same thrill that I used to get out of walking into a bank and all with a shotgun from writing you know that's the good thing about it writing has filled that void for me I write every day on the paper you know and in the evening when I come on them writing two books so you know it's focused your energy on your positive to keep going but yes this is probably one of my best podcasts if I'm honest no yeah it's been fucking phenomenal it's been phenomenal from your life what you've been involved in the story before you were 16 I've never heard a story like that really? yeah never heard and I've spoke to some fucking dangerous people your story is is phenomenal and it's one of the best podcasts there for it's for what you've been through and what you're doing now to make changes do you go to prisons and speak? I do yeah yeah I heard that giving people advice and trying to give them there's tools and techniques to not go down you always talk to them about writing I love talking to young offenders about writing as well because it's something they can do while they're in prison and prepare for when they get out it's no good going in and talking to a lot of kids say things like this I say the first thing I ask them what you went by how long you doing so you get a kid I'm doing five years I'm dealing cannabis or whatever why should I give up crime that's what they always say I earn two grand a week when I'm dealing cannabis I say how much you earning now seven pound a week and how long you gonna be earning that for five years mate so you know do something different with your life change now because everybody's an entrepreneur even if you're selling drugs you've got the entrepreneurial skills to make money exactly just try to focus that and doing something productive yeah put it in something else yeah because I've clearly got those skills so is there anything you'd like to finish up on though? yeah I mean I'd like really my main job on the paper is really to I do interviews with people every issue with people who've got out of prison and have kind of stayed out and made something out of their lives and I think that's a good thing we need more encouragement for people in jail more rehabilitation and education which is the key to rehabilitation which I've found myself but I'd like you know people inside not to give up like I'd give up for 20, 30 years and just thought that was my life it's not your life mate you can do what you want to do you know I mean I'll say that to my kids now as well you know it's kind of like you know if you've got the will to do something with your life and you get enough breaks then you can do it and you know I hope people take that sort of a face value and don't think I'm trying to preach to them but you know prisons don't go to anybody everyone thinks that crime is a life of glamour and to a certain extent it is for about 10 minutes but it's not glamorous when you're laying in some punishment block with like blood coming out your ears and you're covered in vomit and you're in a straight jacket you know then it ceases to be fun and I think people should realise that and you know realise that they can do something else you're not a loss just because you've been to prison you can do something because you're in prison as well you've got a diploma yeah you're in London School of Journalism I've got an A level in law and I've got that in order to fight the prison system so I know what I was saying so I know what I was talking about did you think now to move on you kind of released all your pain and anxiety and kind of to accept and kind of it's difficult as well but to release and kind of forgive I don't know I've got no hatred of the police I've got no hatred of the prison the prison system I have got hatred of the system itself yeah because it's both of us fail yeah the staff I met some decent staff in jail even the majority of the staff I met in there were proper dogs I mean there are some decent people in prisons trying to make an improvement some decent people in the police who are actually doing a good job and you know I think if I hadn't I have got regrets you know obviously everyone has regrets but I think as you can change you can change and I'm a bit like a I suppose I'm a bit like a war horse if you like I still walk past security vans and I see a security van I'm looking at me watch to see what time they're delivering you know it's just a habit here in the bugle again but I've got for me it's finished you know I see it from what it is and it was a mugs game in the first place and I carried on with it too long because obviously nowadays you've got cameras there's CCTV everywhere everything come on jump over a bank account and let me know I'll get away with it I sat on giving it ho ho but for coming on the day I know it's been some story it's been one of the best that I've had on my show but you've got your seven books out sorry how can people buy those books? you can get them through Penguin or John Blake is the publisher on with now as well Amazon or the internet you know they're freely available Rocket 88 books does me book about the Ted's and the punk gang wars so if you're interested in that you can get it from them yes read these books you've heard the story it is phenomenal and I can't wait for your new books coming out and for the future though I wish all the best brother and again I appreciate you coming on the show and telling your story thank you all the best brother thank you very much mate