 Very often in the field, you're going to have winners and losers and losers don't like being losers. Chris, thanks for asking. I hope you're well all set up. Yes. Even when I'm not, mate, I don't complain these days. I just shut up and get on with it. Do attempt that in all fairness. I do try. Yes. I find dwelling on stuff just makes it worse, doesn't it? Yes. My wife describes me as a bit, well, actually not a bit complex. She says very complex, which it's okay when it's positive. It's not too clever when it's negative. There you go. Mate, I think we're all a bit complex. Certainly those of us that have got stories to tell. Yeah. Yeah. I say that because just trying to chat the podcast with people, when I get podcasted by other people, I can't just tell a simple story because life isn't simple, is it? No, not at all. And youngsters today, no disrespect to our younger friends out there, God bless you, but you're very used to having it snappy, little sound bites, bit of energy, bit something flashy, and the richness of sort of storytelling and letting it unfold is gone. Yeah. Do you remember the two Ronnies? Yeah. And a little Ronnie Corbett used to tell the joke at the end of the show. Sitting in his chair. Sitting in his chair and his feet didn't touch the ground because he was tiny. And that joke he would start and it would go on and on and on and it go all round the houses and finally he'd get back to the thing that he started with. That's like my life. I think a lot of the things of the stories that we might tell, you've also had time to reflect on them as well. And if you've told them enough times, you can elaborate so much more because there's other things that you remember that you may not have remembered the first time you told the story. But yeah, I'll take your point. Yeah. It's funny enough in the friends I know in the speaking world, they don't describe it so much as speaking now as storytelling because you are actually telling stories, unless you're giving an actual lecture if you like. But yeah, very much storytelling. Yeah. I was preparing for a talk the other day with the the event managers. I think I left them a bit gobsmacked. I don't think they were, I don't think they're expecting my grungy story. Do you think, do we mellow with age or do we just change our behaviour because we know it ain't the right way? I think I started off from a little bit of a Christian background, not in a heavy way, you know, not necessarily church every week, but certainly from a Sunday school, if you like. I kind of knew the difference between right and wrong. I think my mother also did a best to teach me right and wrong, a certain group of values, if you like. And then I suppose as time's gone on, it depends where you find yourself and you adapt yourself to certain scenarios. In some cases, it's peer pressure. Sometimes it can be respect that's given to you. So therefore you respond to that. I've recently written an article, it's going to be part of a talk I'm going to do called the treadmill. And it very much explains that that you once you get on that treadmill, you don't tend to look to the left or the right or behind you. You just keep going. Of course, you don't question how you've got on that treadmill. You sometimes other people have put you on there. And sometimes maybe you volunteer to put yourself on there. But once you're on there, it's it can be very, very difficult to hit the stop button, you know, when you do and then you look at where you've been, you get time to reflect. So yeah, possibly as you as I've got older, it's I think that's what right in the book, that's that was time for reflection. Even these podcasts, if I look back to the first one I did with with Sean, for example, I've never done anything like that before. And then I did a second one with him and then another and then earlier this year with James, James English. And when you ever afforded the opportunity to observe yourself, but the place have probably done it over the years. But personally, unless you've been in somebody's video or been on there, you know, on their farm, when have you read the opportunity to sit and observe yourself or judge yourself? That was certainly probably my first opportunity. And even in that say 18 months to a period, it's made me very, very conscious of what I say and how I say it. And who's going to pick up on that? Gosh, it's hard, isn't it? On the one hand, from the podcast's perspective, I just want to say whatever the frick I want when I want to say I got a stupid sense of humour because I'm ex-military. Right, even even I've realized now even the Marines don't don't get all my jokes. So I think things have changed a bit, right? And it's funny, you look at people like Joe Rogan, who's on his show Smoking Weed and talking about, well, he only does like, what's the word, hallucinogenic type of drugs. So he's not into like the street drugs, you know, coke and speed and all that sort of stuff. But even so, you know, he gets away with talking about quite a lot, right? But he used to talk about even deeper and it's why a lot of us love that show, right? He used to talk about the moon landing hoax and things like the events in New York and this sort of stuff and all the kind of nitty gritty that young people that want to know what's going on in life really appreciate, you know? And then one day, one day when suddenly he found himself with millions of subscribers, all that stopped, you know? Mike had just been a chatty ab with his misses and said, look, I've got the best show in the world. If I keep on like that, I ain't going to have it very long, am I love? And she probably would have gone, no, Joe, you won't. So cut out the conspiracy stuff and, you know, talk about it. I was going to say talk about shit, but it doesn't, it does make you wonder, are you right? You're right. I'm very curious. I made a comment in, I think it was, I think it was during the podcast with James English and I started to get a bit carried away. I started to kind of resort back to the old me, not the current me. So I found myself speaking like I would have done 15, 20 years ago maybe and I made a comment and I didn't explain it very well and it must have come across as really cold and really hard and it's not what I meant. It actually was trying to explain, don't go down that same path because this is what you could possibly do. And I didn't understand, explain the whole circumstances. Damage would have been done to a building, not to human beings, across. And consequently what happened, someone who'd seen James's podcast, it formed a Sunday paper in Belfast. So all of a sudden, I'm not sure it was a headline, but it was certainly in a Sunday paper, you know, basically saying I was prepared to throw a handbrake into certain buildings. So the next podcast I did, I had to make that perfectly clear that there wouldn't have actually been any human beings damaged if you like, you know. And that's what I say, you've got to be so conscious of what you're saying. Yeah, the good thing about podcasting though, especially with someone like James E. Oshawn is, if you did make a boo boo, and I just mean, you know, you're chatting, that's what you're doing. You're chatting like you were to a mate in a pub. But with a podcast, at least you can say the podcast, look, can you just take that bit out? It's going to cause me aggro. And I didn't even realize that's half the problem you see because I've taken on this different persona. I've gone back to something I'm now not. So it was almost like dramatic effects. So I can imagine from James's point of view, that must have been good drama for him. He certainly wasn't defending my actions or what I'd said. So I thought once I'd said it, I'd said it. That's it. But I've made sure every opportunity I've had since is to make it perfectly clear that it's not what I'm, it's not what I'm advocating. Yeah. For our friends at home, listen, the beauty of podcasting is that it's pretty much unedged. It's, you know, we're not the BBC, right? We're not. I used to do or I've done two and a half hour interviews with a BBC. When it's come out on the radio, it's 25 seconds. That is what some someone has sat on the phone with me for two and a half hours with their dictafone on record. And rather than go, Chris, we're only going to, we only need 20, you know, they make out that it's like they want to interview you and of course you're giving your story. And now they just want some sound bite that they can twist into not a lie, because you're not lying, but that they will put it in a different wrapper to make what you said something completely, you know, that's why podcasting is so much better than mainstream. I think they're not alone in that because I also had an experience once with the police. And when I was actually, you know, arrested and charged, etc. And I was asked, and I assume the tape was off. I just assume this was an off the cuff comment, you know, remark. And what the comment was, oh, well, Frank, you know what guns are for them? Yeah. And I said, yeah, they're for shooting people. He could have said to me, you know, what a cigarette lighter is for. I'll say it's like an affair. So I was responding to what I thought was innocent question. But of course, when that came up at a later stage, it was almost like me saying, I knew what the guns I had were for, were for shooting people. A completely different completely different context. So I learned not to be so so honest, if you like, you know, I've only had to edit one bit of any all of my 100 odd podcasts out. And it was, I'm not going to say who it was, for obvious reasons, but it was one serviceman who talked about drinking culture in the military. And he said, bloody hell, the RAF, I like the worst. In a Navy or the Marines, you drink a lot, right? Kind of nautical culture, brown man, all that, that, you know, all the history and stuff and poor. He's like, nah, the RAF. And then he messaged me, said, Chris, could you just take that bit out? I'm going to get myself in so much trouble at work because he was still in the military. Yeah, Bonnie. But let's go back to the beginning then, Frank. You ended up running guns in Belfast for the loyalists. So I'm guessing what organizations like the UVF and so it was the UDA for the, yeah, for accuracy, it was the UDA, yeah. Ulster Defense Association, yeah, been a while since I was over there. But you came up through the football stands, didn't you, is that? Yeah, I mean, I suppose it was one of, I didn't have any brothers, well, not so, that I was about 19. So we've not really had that, you know, brotherly relationship, if you like. The situation with my fathers, I had a father that basically had sort of gone for a break from my mother when I was about two. And then I had a stepfather and he was okay. And I'll give credit where it's true, he did his bit, but it just wasn't quite the same, if you like. And so I did send a radio towards older people. And clearly I was quite envious of anyone who, you know, any mate who had a good relationship with their dad, you know, the fact they even had a dad. And I suppose, so, you know, when I work with older people, I'm not so sure that I was consciously looking at them as a father figure, but I was quite heavily influenced, if you like, because you had a sense of security and you matured so much quicker, because you had to, you know, in their company. So, yeah, so I suppose being in part of a gang culture wasn't too hard to adapt to, it wasn't planned, it was, it just, in fact, it happened quite accidentally, because I was far from a fighter, I was far from the, or even a troublemaker, what most kids would get actually in the local community, yes, you know, pretty innocuous stuff. But an incident at a football match when I was 14, up in Manchester, sort of a plan away to Manchester, I've got on my own, which was a strange thing to do in the early 70s, because, you know, anywhere up north was pretty tough, pretty, you know, you went to Manchester Liverpool and Newcastle places like that, you know, it wasn't for the faint hearted. I was so innocent, I didn't know that, so I got there, and I got chased back to the station, was looked after by some older, some older fellas, and then of course, went into school on the Monday, and everyone said, couldn't believe I'd gone to Manchester on my own. Of course, the following week we were at home, and I was with some school friends, and we were walking up the top of my road, walking past the pub, and of course they were these sort of like 19, 20 year old skinheads, and one of them shared a friend, all right, mate, you know, sort of thing, and of course my friend said, you know, are they? Well, then I gave it all the big one, didn't I? Well, that's my mate, so I was up in Manchester, you know, I was a scared 40 year old, I'm sadly, you know, I'm sadly one of the boys, so that kind of grew, if you like, so to the degree where I did become more familiar with people, and in their company, and I enjoyed the camaraderie, and you kind of find out what you're all about as well, because especially, you know, especially if you're up north, or you know, you're somewhere in the Midlands, and you're well outnumbered, and you know, I've seen, you know, bigger men and older men than me on their toes, and that's what a lot of it was about, you know, was you going to stand or was you going to run, and I probably had more bottled and sense, but I stood, and people recognize that, don't they? So when they see you the next week, they kind of acknowledge that, and they're happy to have you in their company, and if, and again, you know, one of the things it used to be was clearly trying to get into the other teams ends, you know, if someone said, right, we're going through this turnstile, you took a big camp or camp through that turnstile, because if other people didn't follow you through, you was in trouble, but again, if you did go through, that was remembered, you know, people would comment on that the following week at the home game, you know, back in the pub, so it wasn't, it wasn't something I put any planning into, it just evolved, and you clearly enjoy it, you clearly enjoyed our attention, you clearly enjoyed our respect, and then that grew quite a lot, so yeah, that's how the football part of the thing happened, you know, all over Europe with football, you know, even pre-season friendly. Was it always for the terror, or did you enjoy the game as well? I genuinely liked football in all fairness, I played football from a young age, you know, in the street before we had proper football pitches, no, I did have a love for football, you know, and I still do, but it certainly filled a void for me, I think, you're saying, not having brothers, you know, cousins, it just, it was a safe, it was a safe ask for me, because there was that camaraderie, there was that, and I think trust, you know, even loyalty, you have to have a certain amount of loyalty to follow people to do what they say they're going to do, and I enjoyed it when it came back to me as well, obviously, so in a way the football did pretty much shape me, I suppose, I did make a comment before where I can imagine where some, you know, a group of sociologists, you know, would say, oh, it's quite obvious to me, you know, Frank was violent at the football, and he couldn't get enough of that, so he became a street activist and got more violent there, and then when that wasn't enough, he decided to draw on a pair of, I get, I can see as somebody could write thesis on that, you know, but it's totally nonsense to be quite honest. So, but yeah, I say the football would probably be the stuff, and again, what do you learn when you're at football, in that situation, in that kind of gang situation, you know, that's to organize people, you know, you start to learn about people, just things you pick up from people, and later on in life, you know, use those skills that I picked up. I'd love to have been a footballer again, I'll tell you. I was lucky, I was in the marines, so I was getting, you know, I was getting my, my fill of being a man there, right, but you look at young, young people at that time in Britain, I don't, people of young, young men have sort of mellowed a bit now, and I don't necessarily know whether that's a good thing or not. In fact, let's just say that's another subject, but back then, your big, odd young guy who wants to get out and make someone of his life, and you're working in a factory, bloody loading boxes all week, or you're behind a dance. It was your life, it was, it was very much that, and I don't think it was very much the culture of the day, that my music played a big part as well, but certainly when I was going, it was just football, everything was football, seven days a week, you talked about football, you know, no sooner one game was over, you was planning for the next one, you know, so yeah, it was very much the culture of the day, and I think you're right, I think there was still a, I think there was still a raw toughness, and well, you know, you look at it today, we don't, we don't have dockers, do we? We don't have, we don't have people working in the mines, we don't have, you know, steel workers, you know, the big, hard, tough men, you know, hard drinking men, I mean, there's probably quite a few women are glad they're not around anymore, because it's basically, we're not always the gentlemen when they go, oh, you know, so I appreciate that, could call social problems as well, but yeah, I do feel that's kind of, that's passed us by, if you like, and I don't mean there's the role models either, because you did look up to those people, you did get some kind of guidance from those people, sometimes for good, sometimes, you know, for bad, but you ask, there's certain things from that culture that have stayed with me, and yes, I did, I thoroughly enjoyed it, because I enjoyed the camaraderie, I enjoyed testing myself, you know, because the guts of Newcastle on a Wednesday night and come home in one piece, sometimes, yeah, was a bit of a challenge, but you got respected, if you did, but I will qualify this by also saying that I reflect on it now, and if one person said to me, it's because of people like you, I stopped going to football, because my dad said, I can't go anymore, that wouldn't make me feel particularly good, and there was an incident in Dublin years ago when England played and there was the riot, and if you remember that at all, and it was very, very violent, and there was a picture of a young boy on the picture of his dad crying his eyes out, and you kind of think, well, hold on, it's not much, it's not much glory in that, is there, you know, so that kind of makes me balance it out a little bit now and say, well, I think if it's just you, a group of people, and another group of people, when you're in a back street, and you decide to pass the living daylights out of each other, that's between you, yeah, when it impinges on innocent people, it's not quite so glamorous, if you like. That's the bit where it's an outlet for young men who just need an outlet, I mean, you can't just work beyond a desk all week and drink a pint at the weekend, it doesn't work like that, but where it become problematic, Frank, was the disasters, wasn't it? You know, the stadium, exactly, was it the wall that fell down? Yeah, yeah, and then obviously you had Hillsborough as well. And then Hillsborough was unfairly blamed on people, unfairly blamed on football hooligans, wasn't it, pushing from the back or sorry? I'd actually been in that same end years before when Tottenham had played Wolves in the semi-final of the FA Cup, and if you look at the old footage, you'll see how many people on that occasion had to get onto the pitch and sit around a pitch. So it wasn't as if, you know, it hadn't been flagged up in the past, there was clearly a problem that day, so it didn't come as a surprise to me when that happened, I just probably wouldn't have expected such, you know, disastrous steps if you like. And the other thing was the weapons, wasn't it? Even down here, people started, they used to stick two razor blades on the end of a ruler. The idea being that when it cut you, the hospital couldn't, because it was a double cut, the hospital couldn't sew it up, right? And that's just, that just takes it down a messy route again, doesn't it, you know? That wasn't particularly, I couldn't really subscribe to that, to be honest. I wasn't really into the weapons thing, I mean, I think I only ever picked a weapon up once, and that was a game, and we'd come unstuck, we just were too big for our boots, we were at a weigh game, there was a few of us, we didn't have much respect for the other, you know, the other mob, so to speak. And suddenly it became outnumbered, and purely by chance, there was a house being renovated, and there was a skip, and a pile of sand, and then the pile of sand was a shovel, so I picked the shovel up. Now, you know, that was more for defensive reasons, it was, I didn't have any idea I was going to begat the football max that day and using the shovel, and fortunately I didn't have to actually, you know, physically hit anybody with it, because the police came around to call one and all, and it dispersed us. But no, it's not, I can remember times, you know, being at football, and some of them, you know, would pull a knife out, and I was kind of like, well, over, mate, it was sort of, it was sort of, but how bad did you need to hurt somebody, why can't you punch somebody, you know, he's not saying I really approved of the minister. How was it then, Frank, because I watched all the football fight movies, I'm trying to avoid the word hooligan, because that was a real media word, but I watched all the films, and it just seems to be young lads, they just want to get stuck in and have a go, they don't, they don't seem particularly skilled in the art of fighting, was no, no, no, and I knew plenty of fellows who probably, you know, a straight one for one, would have probably beaten me, you know, I meant no bones would go out there, but whether they had as much bottle as me, was another story. So, yeah, you could, you know, you could get, you could attack another crowd of fellows that aren't going to attack you, but clearly why, your punching one fellow needs punching you, someone's punching you from the side, someone's kicking you, and in the days when it was literally hundreds onto hundreds, you know, you didn't know where the next punch was going to come to, but that's what it was about, it was whether you stood there and accepted if you were going to get a clumped, or, you know, the other reason was going to get a clumped, and that was yes, so maybe that was fair, that was fair, and I'd say the introduction of weapons wasn't really, you know, wasn't my cup of tea to be honest. When you see the Bruce Lee movies and he's got, he's taken on 30, 30 ninja assassins, right, I know ninjas are from Japan before anyone tries to correct me, but when you see that fights and you think that wouldn't happen, one guy would just grab him around the head and everyone would just jump on. I think I've only ever seen one, I think I've only ever seen part of one rainbow film, and I remember him standing in the village, he's completely surrounded by people with machine guns, or maybe they're just ordinary guns, or maybe not machine guns, and they all fire at him, and one of these bullets hit him, so I say to myself, well, we've only bullets gone in, so if you're in a circle and you're shooting inwards and you're missing him, surely you're shooting each other, but not one bullet hit him, so take your point, yeah. So you're young lads, Saturday's come around, it's match day, you're either at home or away, you're jumping on the train, is everyone grabbing like tinnies from the offie? Well, yeah, normally, yeah, normally, I mean, it's times I've travelled by car because obviously the police were getting wise to what people were doing, we got to a stage where we'd organise our own coaches, so you could come into a town or a city for a different route, not necessarily the one the police had planned for. Yeah, so it was, you know, there was a, I mean, not so much in the 70s, I would say, it was a little bit more ad hoc in the 70s, but certainly when you started getting into the 80s and the 90s, yeah, it became more, it did become more organised, and I think that's when people kind of got more recognised people that did have those kind of leadership skills, if you like, and basically, what it bogs down, if certain people were going, more people would go, because they had more confidence, because they knew that if those people weren't, they weren't going to run. They, you know, they say it goes back to the standing there game, you know, but yeah, okay, look, some football fans have different experiences, don't they? I mean, in hindsight now, you know, yeah, it probably would have been nice to go to another club's, you know, social club, you know, stand another drink with a mother chat. That wasn't the culture at the time, it wasn't that at all. In fact, let me not say, maybe that would have been a nice thing to do, but it wasn't at the time, if you know. What was your clubmate? Tottenham, I was a Tottenham fan. Tottenham and Reminders, what's their game called? Well, funny enough, you used to be known back in the 70s by whatever part of the ground that you studied. So, you know, our popular end of the ground was the Park Lane. So we were therefore, we were the Park Laneans, you know. And when it became less gangs or mobs, as we would call it, suddenly adopted the title of phones. And then the names got more elaborate. So, you know, you'd have, you know, Chelsea Headhunters and Millwater Bushwackers and West Ham ICF, you know, Booners, more than a couple of names they had heard and so on. And then for some may have reason, Tottenham started calling theirself the Yidds. And that goes back to all the years where we were taunted because of the Jewish support that we did have, which was ironic because I was the one that did exactly the same. The man at West Ham had got more than enough Jewish fans. But that was the term they used to use against us. So it kind of got turned on its head and people started saying, well, that's what they're going to call us. That's what we'll, you know, we'll call ourselves. It's not personally, I think, your last imagination. I think we could have focused a little bit more than, you know, a little bit more scary or a little bit more intimidating than that. That's the one that's stuck. Yeah. And when the drugs came in, that must have added a little more excitement to it as well. Everyone likes the knees up. Yeah. I mean, the casual scene is my generation. So if I started again in the late 60s, and then I grew up, I sort of went through the 70s. So our uniform, if you like, the group of fellas I was with, we wore donkey jackets. You know, council donkey jackets, inexpensive, you know, cost you nothing. You're the right people. So if you're having a tear up, you were rolling around on the floor, you're not going to be worrying about a donkey jacket. You're going to get another one next week or someone cut it or whatever. Well, of course, in the 80s and the 90s, when the casual scene came in, people were very conscious of how they looked. And to some people, the look was more important than anything else. And then the music. Well, I was really too old for that. I think I was a little bit too old for that. I was more chess and Dave, if you like. I certainly wasn't into raves and, you know, whereas things and so on like that. And I don't touch drugs. I don't touch drugs. So it's not really for me. It's not really for me. But I did like a dream. Now I did like a dream, you know. So as much as I try to stay as clear-headed as I could, I did like a dream. There's no better name. But no, it's not really, it's not that culture kind of passed me by. And there was a time when I was out of the way as well because I'd gone to prison. So again, I wasn't really caught up in it. So when I came out and people were talking about certain things, I was a little bit, well, I must have thought about, you know, because I had experienced it. But because I don't do the drugs, I probably wouldn't have experienced it anyone, you know. Yeah. Totten got a new ground now, haven't they? Yeah, it's quite impressive. I've been over a few times now. Yeah, it's very impressive. But their old ground was, that was pretty spectacular as well, wasn't it? On one side of it, what they used to call a shelf, you know, that was quite, you know, that was quite a nice bit of architecture to be quite honest with you. You've got a good atmosphere from it. It's just it was the capacity was only 36,000. Well, originally, I mean, you could get, I mean, I think something like 70,000 years ago before all the seats went in, you know, and then the capacity was only 36,000, whereas now it's something like 62. But yeah, special nights, you know, they played European games. There always was a special atmosphere. There's no doubt about that, even if there weren't any away fans, it was just those, the thought of playing somebody else, you know, from another country. It's very vocal, people are very vocal, they really enjoy it. But there's this state and that is a different, it's completely a different world than other facilities that they've got at stadium. You can see they've molded it very much on America, that you can see it's very much, don't be in the local pubs, or kebab houses, you know, coming to the stadium, two or three hours before the game, or a couple of hours before the game. Come and eat here, come and drink here, you know, come and buy your merchandise here, not off the poor bloke down the road who's trying to live here, you know, set in scarves. Yeah, it's very much based on that America where they want you to come into the stadium. And plus they stay open afterwards as well for a while. And then a band's playing and will keep the bar open. So yeah, so big money might be machine. I feel fortunate. I went, I think I've been to White Heart Lane once, maybe twice. Yeah, a bit of history there. Reminds me of, was it Ozzi Adilis? Yeah, I actually, I actually went to his first game with Tottenham. Wow. We're showing our age now, Frank. No, but people always say, people always say, yeah, I remember it, not in a forest the way it was won on. And I'll say that was not his first game, him and Ricky Villa's first game, was actually in Belgium, and they played Royal Antwerp. I was in a pub where I lived and a mate said, I was a Sunday night and he said, frankly, what are you doing tomorrow? So probably the same as what I'm doing. I don't understand you having to treat me, you bill. And he said, come on, let's go over the, let's go over the Belgium. I said, Bill, I've never been out of England or probably the UK. Never, certainly, never had a passport, never been on a boat. And we went down a post office and got a yearly passport. Now, you remember that you used to get a bit of cardboard and you've put your photo on it and it was a yearly passport. And before I knew it, I was on a disco boat over there to Antwerp and Tottenham 131. And I thought we were coming on. And one of the boys said, no, no, they're playing in Holland tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, they're playing in Venlo, which are the army people know well, because it's, there's an army based in Venlo on the Dutch German border. So someone's never been out of the country or suddenly been to Belgium and now I've ended up in Holland as well. So that was, that was technically their first game. Yeah, lucky didn't end up in Amsterdam. That would have. Oh, I've got some, I've had more than enough tear ups in Amsterdam. Thank you very much. And that's Venlo. I don't know who's in charge of the army in Venlo. But whoever was, his idea of giving all the army boys the day off, so that they could go to the match, was not a good idea. Because, you know, when a couple of hundred cockneys turn up in a town, they're not expecting to see blokes sitting at the bar outside of the bar, in Newcastle shirts, Liverpool shirts, Manchester United shirts. So we spent more time fighting with the British army than what we did with the, you know, with the Venlo fans, if you like, and it wasn't intentional, you know, but it was the fact that, you know, well, they united, you know, we just let that have the tear up. Yeah, and that's the thing that goes with being in the forces. Generally, wherever you go, the local heroes don't, don't like you. And quite often, because of your behaviour, they're quite right not to like you, you know. Yeah, we've certainly been a few. We were in Amsterdam. It was for a cup match. It might have even been one of the pre-season tournaments we played. And you've got two distinct areas there. And one is very much run by the South Malacans. And then there's another group called the Suraminese. So they sort of got their own distinct areas and obviously where the Red Light Districts and obviously where, you know, you go and get your drugs and so on. And the local Dutch fellows tend not to mix with them, you know, they tend to stay away. Well, cops wouldn't care when we got there, you know, we drank as much as we could and had a good old time. And when it came to the evening, wow, it just, it kept off big time. And the irony is that for the first time I've seen this, is that the police were on our side. And that, that does happen very often. The local police basically was saying to us, you know, no one's ever come here before and taken the liberty like you've just taken with them, you know. But I know friends of mine will remember, like, you know, someone getting, you know, someone had an axe, someone had a shotgun. It was pretty, you know, pretty eerie stuff. People were getting thrown in the canals. Yeah, it was a, it was a mad time. But it's the only time I remember a police officer's actually congratulating us, you know. But there you go. And I remember, um, so Ricky, Ricky, come the year, isn't it? And also the idea is when the Falklands kicked off. Yeah, that was awkward. Everyone was calling for their blood, wouldn't they? Yeah, that was, that was very awkward. That I mean, they went off the scene, didn't they? They got out the way there. Even then I can remember thinking this shouldn't affect sport. You know, it's not, not their fault, is it? Well, not when you're thrown into something like that. I mean, as long as they didn't make, I think, as long as they didn't make any unnecessarily comics, you know, which are, to my mind, they didn't. To my memory, I don't remember saying anything, you know. In fact, I think they dealt a bit quite well to them. I think that's why the respect for them continues. Yeah. So you mentioned being in the neck was, was, did that interrupt your football, uh, violence career? I think, I think what tended to happen was, was when I became more committed to the loyalist calls, if you like. Um, although in the early days, I, you, I did youth football as a vehicle. There's no doubt about that. You know, I did collect money for lawless prisoners. I did sell magazines, badges, et cetera. In that sense, you know, I was, um, I was organizing people. I was recruiting people, if you like. Very low-key, low-key way, you know, but how did you get sold on the, on the calls then, if, if, if you're English? It was, it was one of funny enough, someone sat with me the other day and I said, well, can't it smart with it? So, you know, she wasn't a very Irish and, uh, she's, you know, she's a hero to the Irish Republic movement. And, uh, but that was going back to the days of the, uh, you know, the uprising in Dublin, you know. Um, but it was, uh, it's a strange path because in my early teens, I was a young socialist for a while. And I, but I didn't know particularly young socialists were actually part of the Workers Revolutionary Party. And they were very, they were very, very middle-class and I didn't, I couldn't, I wasn't very comfortable with them, to be honest. But for people that were so concerned about the working class, I couldn't really identify with them. It wasn't my version of being working class, if you like. You know, they were more sort of like Hamstead, Beltside Park. Uh, I'm, I'm keeping each town, Camden Town, Sunderstown, you know, very, very working class. So I could really identify with that. Some of their terminology go straight over my head, to be honest. Um, and clearly they had, they had an international view of the world. So they were concerned about the students and the workers and so on, uh, in a, in a national context. Well, I was more worried about the bloke down a road. You know, our own, our own workers, if you like, our own workers conditions and clearly are unemployed. So there was a bit of a clash. I just wasn't aware of it, certainly at the beginning. And, uh, I think what did it for me was, I'll, I've rephrased it now. I wouldn't say they were necessarily pro-RA or necessarily supporting the actions of the IRA, but they were certainly supporting the concept of Reunited Ireland. Um, and I didn't really understand that most of the fellows I grew up with were Irish, you know, living in Camden, a big Irish community. So I was quite naive. I didn't really understand that, but eventually I left that, that side of the politics. And then my mates made it perfectly clear, Frank is the politics of the football, you know, which is it. So I went back to the football. And any of his one night, I was talking to somebody and of course he was rioting. I didn't really know the difference between, you know, right and left anyway. But he, he invited me, bottom line is he invited me to a national front, me and, and there were clearly more working class people then. And I, I could identify with him. And, um, this is where that, this is where the bit I want, you know, I'll get onto about the addictive nature. Uh, I could have picked it and I'd have landed up running my local branch. The same kind of leadership skills you'd adopted at the football soon started to kick in. This is national front now. Yeah. Yeah. It started, it very much kicked in. And what it was was because they clearly opened up a very patriotic side of me that I didn't really know that I'd had, you know. So that was it. I was very much, I was very much a British nationalist. So the Northern Island situation, uh, to me, had nothing to do with religion. It was just one of, one part of that community wanted to remain British. Um, and, and equally I recognised that the larger part of that island wanted to be independent and distinctly Irish and run their affair. So for me, it was quite simple. I thought, well, you know, I can respect your side of it. Why can't you respect this side of it? Why has it got, you know, why has it got to be violent and so on? And then it's by association, you meet people, you meet people from there and then it becomes more personal because friends of people that you know or relations of people that you know are either killed or they've become imprisoned, uh, or they live in a, they live in an interface area that's attacked on a regular basis. And I think we've all got a site that's where we care about people. And when given the opportunity to help people, the, you know, that most people would. And I felt I could, you know, I could help people. And because there was this kind of, I only recognise this in recent years. This isn't something I was aware of at the time. This is where I sit, you're looking at the podcast and studying myself and writing the book, you know, when you start putting yourself into words and then you read back over your fingers at me and why did I do that or, or whatever. And so I wasn't aware of it at the time, but there's clearly been a pattern, you know, and once I get involved with something, that's it. It's this, it's that treadmill story I was telling you. Once I'm on that treadmill, I see nothing else. That's the task. And of course, once people give you respect, once people give you responsibility, you feel you've got to fulfil that. You don't want to let people down. And what I've also recognised is you lose yourself. You forget what about you. You don't see you. You don't identify you. You identify the position that people have put you in. And you know, if you don't fulfil that position, you're letting all those people down. But somewhere along the way over the years, you've kind of lost you. You're not really sure what you're all about. And I said it, I said it a little while ago that any creativity that you may have had over that period of time, you've not used. You've not, you've not, you've not used it to your benefit, because you've been so focused on some, on something else. Look, don't get me wrong. Some of the comments that have been made to me over the years, you know, you can call them accolades if you like, the respect that's been shown, the trust and so on. I wouldn't necessarily change that. And I would say that there's certainly been a certain amount of prudence involved. And that's easy to get carried away with if you're not responsible. You also have to take into account that at different times you've you've been in a position where it's life and death, you know, you could have had somebody show up, you know, you could have had somebody kneecap. What I'd like to think I've acted responsibly and I've not used that, you know, I've not used that position to kind of exert my power, but just discipline within the group if you like. But yeah, you definitely, you definitely lose sight of yourself. And but say between the right in the book and the podcast and having conversations with people, you get a better understanding of yourself. So you can quite possibly go back to Sean's podcast I did. It wouldn't necessarily be the same podcast now, because I've had all that time to study me and observe myself, question myself and say, well, now that you've identified all of this, what are you going to do about it? But I was very dedicated because I'm not making any excuses that that's something I'm very, very, very clear about. Just there in, it sounds like I'm listening to myself, frankly, if I was honest, I'm just going to throw a few things out here just for people at home to, they can, they can try and make sense of this. But, you know, we're young, we operate out of our ego, you come from a background where there's been insecurity in your family, which clearly you've experienced and I have, you're looking for this hope, this mysterious home that's going to come and take care of you, give you a sense of worth, give you this importance that maybe that we, you know, we didn't have growing up. When you find that family, you are going to fight, fight for them. You're going to be loyal, loyal to them. It's not any interpretation to be honest. Yeah, you know, I've always been fiercely loyal and I still am, right? You'd have to do pretty bad things to, like, lose me as a mate. Do you know what I mean? Because I think, anyway, and the tunnel that you call it being on the treadmill, I think when you've got this imbalance in your history, or certainly I'm obviously talking about myself now, you get your sights on something that makes sense to you. And because of this big black hole in your life, you somehow can justify everything that you're doing, you know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong. Don't get me wrong. I believed in what I was doing. So there's no, can I give an example, Frank? So just again, for our friends at home, so they know where I'm going with this, it's just like, when I was involved in crime, I could justify it, Frank, because to me, I've had a hard life, fuck everyone else, you know? Where were you when this happened to me? Where were you? And you use that kind of very selfish, misguided, naive logic. Does that ring a bell with your story? Some of it, yes, some of it doesn't clearly identify, but also there was that, there was that care inside as well. So, for example, if you're convincing yourself that you're fighting a noble cause on behalf of other people, you've given yourself the excuse to do whatever you want. So that's where I say, I'd like to think that I did that in a fairly responsible manner. But when, look, I'm quite fortunate, conscience wise, as far as I'm aware, I haven't taken anybody's life. I'm not sure now if I had what state of mind I'd be in. If you take me back a certain amount of years and ask me what I prepared to, then 100% yes, I'm not going to make excuses. I clearly would have done. And I've also made it perfectly clear to people that if I'd have lived in Belfast, I've got absolutely no doubt I'd have either been dead or doing a life sentence. That's as clear as day to me there. And I think when you're on your first open visit, so you're still category A and you're still in remand, but the first time you're not behind a screen, you can actually sit opposite your wife and you say to your wife, I'm glad I got called. She's shocked, isn't she? She said, what do you mean you're glad you got called? And I said, where on earth did you think this was going? You couldn't be in my position. You couldn't have guns wrapped around you and this not in badly. So from that point on, I didn't necessarily change, but it gave me a wake up call. It gave me a wake up call saying that throughout the whole of the sentence. I was still at the same mindset. In fact, if anything, to get me through the sentence, I was probably worse. I was probably more militant in my head to get me through that because I haven't reminded myself for what got you here. Your law, it got you here. You know, so that kind of got me through. But of course, when I got out, when I got out, I was still in the same mindset. Where did you do your time? Rehabilitation certainly hadn't worked, because in an offense, there was no attempt at rehabilitation. No one ever spoke to me about the offense. And when I came out, I think there might have been people that thought, that's it, he's done his bit. That wasn't the case at all. And I wasn't a great supporter of the peace process. I didn't trust the IRA. I didn't trust human fame. I didn't trust our own politicians. And equally, when I went to Northern Ireland, I could see lots of areas that still being terrorized, you know, the face communities and so on. So I was in no move for peace. There's no doubt about it. In fact, we've been a couple of months coming out and going over to Northern Ireland. I was at a social event. And on the night I was there, the bomb went off in Dublin. I think it was the 9th of February, 1996. And a chap turned to me and said, oh, frankly, this isn't good for the peace process. And I said, fuck the peace process. The bombs just got off in Marseille. Oh, clearly still had that militant, had that militant head about me, you know. How did you, what, what did you end up in a nick for the first time around? I've only been in prison once. Now, I've never been in prison once. I'm sorry. Sorry. I meant the first time you were, you were having dealings in Belfast and you ended up in prison. What, what was it for? It was, I've got caught in Birmingham with a bag of guns. I had, I had seven guns in a bag. And afterwards they retrieved the rifle as well. So the child was possession of possession of weapons and supply. I think he was supplying persons unknown. We've been taken into the lives of persons unknown. Yeah, that was, that was the charges. So at what point were you starting to get a bit radicalized when caught with the lawyerless cause? Yeah. Did, did you start to step over the mark and, or do you know what I mean, start breaking the law and putting your liberty at risk? What, what did, was, I think we started, what started to happen was there would be, there would be incidents in London, but there'd been a bomb or it might have been, someone might have been attempted assassination or whatever it be. A few weeks later, there would be a Republican march in London. So for example, in January, you'd have the troops out movement in August. So that would be the troops out movement. In August, you would have the Irish freedom movement, whatever their internal march up in Holloway Road. So what started off as opposition to those parades? So I don't, by that, I mean, physically trying to attack those parades. I kind of got the realization, well, hold on, hold on. It's not exactly equal, is it? We're frowned a few punches, they're blowing us up. So over a course of time, it was what we're going to do about it. How are we going to go about it? You know, we had no roots there. We had no connections with, with any primary tool organization. But we made contact with somebody that was a conduit to people in Belfast. And eventually, we made a meet with the appropriate person in London who represented, you know, the Office of Defense Association. And we've made it too long a story. We were far down impressive in basically. And over a course of time, my own group of associates, friends, see, you know, you should be in charge. We went around a country and we met other people. And unfortunately, I was even less impressed with some of those. I didn't really identify them as, well, my perception of a primary tool organization. So not meaning to say it in a mocking way, I kind of say, well, you know, so why have you not done anything up to now? If you've been around for so many years, why have I never heard you've ever done anything? But you can't go and tread on people's toes straight away, can you? You've got to kind of ingratiate yourself. And next what happened over a course of time, we made it perfectly clear that if we were going to be part of that organization that we were going to, we were going to acquire weapons. And we went to millions of other people. We intended to use them as well, you know. So where did you get the weapons from? Well, live in the land and it's not hard, is it, to be perfectly honest? You know, I've grown up and I've known enough people, I've known enough villains over the years. You know, I've even had yardies offered me weapons before now. You know, it's not that it's not that difficult. And where, excuse my naivety, but I can imagine, you know, getting the odd shotgun pistol that's been handed down probably five or six times. But did you have sort of like a case coming in from China? No, what happened was, I'm glad you said that because this is how we identified that somebody was then going to take over from the person we had no faith in. He couldn't wait to take over that position. And we very quickly realized that. And we suspected he wasn't quite what he was making out, he was, you know, he was. And on one particular evening, a friend bought a catalogue almost of weapons that we could get via the army. And he flipped through the pages and the saying to me, you know, we can have this, we can have that. And this fellow went, yeah, good work, good work, speak to a friend. And another friend said, no, hold on, mate, you're supposed to be in charge. If we take a dive, you take a dive. And we could see he never had the art for it. He wanted the position. We could see he just, he wasn't the genuine article as far as we were concerned. So again, that elevated me to the front. So now I've got a responsibility in having on. So in order to do that, I'm encouraging these people to be militant. Now they put me in charge. So I've got to be twice as militant because I'm now, I'm now leading them. And there was an incident where we were actually offered, we were offered angrenades and we had this huge quarry where we could, where we suggested to this chap that we want at least one, you know, we need, you can't throw one once, can't you? You know, you can't use it again. And he was a bit standoffish as fellow, he was a bit standoffish. We couldn't understand it because there's a lot of money involved, a lot of money. And one day, one of our chaps was followed and all of a sudden his bloke was too helpful. I'll take as many as you like, you know, with him reason before we sum him one year. And we called it off basically. And a few years later, when I was being questioned by military intelligence, they bought the subject to Angrenator. And that goes back to the story where I said I would have gone into somewhere and I'd have, you know, that's there. Committing if you want to call it, educated if you want to call it, I would have gone into certain establishments and I'd have had no qualms about a friend over and I, of course, as I said it, I hadn't done the explanation, it wasn't actually going to be anybody in the club, you know. So yeah, it was access to some pretty naughty stuff, if I'm honest. And this is where the state plays its part as well. What I did get caught with, although I was quite capable of killing somebody, it wasn't the most sophisticated. You know, the only is the more sophisticated stuff that we could have got, but we wouldn't have necessarily been able to purchase ourselves, we would need that from elsewhere. That once you declared how militant you were, well, of course, you had to trust whoever you were telling elsewhere. Big mistake, big, big mistake. Because as we all know now, that the Republican movement was absolutely riddled with informants and so was the lawless movement. So people you respected and you trusted, because you thought, well, for them to be in the position that they're in, their men must trust them, mustn't they? And they've got the power and life of the F over people as well. So they must be important to these people. So I can talk to these people, or this individual person. Of course, you find out down the line, they've been working for the RUC or special branch or military intelligence. So you suddenly realize some of the things you were planning on doing, why they never happened. Because no, no sooner you'd have the conversation with somebody, they'd go and tell their anger. Now in hindsight, in hindsight, that's kept me out of prison, isn't it? That's kept me out of prison a lot longer. So in some respects, I think, well, that's worked in my, it's worked in my favor. But when you've been planning on doing things for quite some time, somebody comes over and suddenly says, Oh, listen, we've got, we've got a sympathetic officer and he's told us he's been talking to special branch on the mainland. You boys are being observed. They know what you're doing. You know, go and play politics for six months. When you've got your adrenaline up, when you've been planning to do certain things, you know, it's a bit demoralizing. So in hindsight, we shouldn't have been so open about what our plans were, to be honest. And it was quite extreme. I mean, you know, we had certain targets, which would have, you wouldn't have got 20 years, you'd have got 40 years probably, you know. Yeah, it's interesting. I think what a lot of people don't consider as well. If you look at the troubles, talking, you know, both sides of the water, bombs going off, let's say, let's just say a thousand bombs went off a thousand IDs or whatever. I think we'd have to be pretty naive to not factor in how many were set off by, by British special, you know, British secret service for their own political aims or to steer the course of the, you know, everyone seems to think it's quite cut, you know, it was cut and dried. But I think the thing is, I think the thing is now, I mean, we are, we had an incident one night where we were, we set up a group where we were going to communities, various communities, and we started to talk to people and actually asked what they wanted, not what we received that they wanted. And we had an incident one night where we sat around with a group of women in a community centre. And one woman was describing how she lived in like a bungalow, and she couldn't distinguish between whether it was a brick hit in her roof or a petrol pump. We suddenly realised she was blind, which must have been even more terrifying. And there were grown men who had tears in their eyes. There's no, there's no, make an excuse to go to the toilet. And I've said before, when men show their emotions like that, they don't like it. So they tend to go the other way. They tend to go, fucking know what we're going to do. We've got to help this woman. Come on, we've got to be, you know, you shouldn't realise, getting down above and shooting someone, that's not solving their problem, is it? You know, going to put a bomb somewhere, it's not solving their problem, is it? So what's the best thing to do? This should power these people in some way, you know. This should prove their condition. You know, if you're getting petrol bombs, well, let's make sure they've got fire extinguishers or fire blankets. You know, they wouldn't leave their estate, because if they left their estate, they'd get attacked. So we had a function and raised money for a faulty container that was converted into a shop. So my mindset, when he was old on, you can still be that caring, helping person. There's another way of doing it. There's another way of doing it. So we started to go around various communities. We raised money for a school bus. The school was potentially going to shut down, because it wasn't getting enough pupils coming from another area. They couldn't afford the mini bus. So we raised money for the mini bus. So yeah, I became doing more community work. I started, and I've got a lot of pleasure out of it, but it was still that little bit of militancy there. But thankfully, over the years, the need for that became less necessary. And also the fact you can trust people like you did before either. So you sort of came back, you know, amongst your own and was quite content amongst your own, if you like. But for somebody that wasn't necessarily for the peace process at the time, when most people were subscribing to it, I am a supporter of it now. It's not ideal. I don't think it's perfect. But the fact people aren't going to prison anymore. And you know, you know, they go to the graveyards and bury people, which I think the younger son, I've just got a bit of a romantic view of it. You know, they look back on it. They might want to be like their brother was or their uncle or their dad or their granddad, you know, I get it. I do kind of get it. It's people now, which they was around in the days of football, we're the ones people which they were around in the days of mods and rockers. You know, so I've been nostalgic about it, but this was far more, far more dangerous and far more sinister, you know. And it's not nice. It's just not nice. And it turns you into someone who you look back and you start, you know, criticizing yourself and somewhere, analyzing yourself certainly. You think, would I have done that? Would I have been catered to that? And of course, it's difficult for me to call somebody else, what are they, the terrorists? Win freedom fighters, they were terrorists. I'd have done the same as them probably, maybe not some of the more tough, some of the things they did. I thought it was a little bit too intense to be honest, but was I any different? You know, and as someone very well respected, he's no longer what it was, he'd say, you know, no side is exclusively right, none was exclusively wrong. So I kind of, it's kind of my mentoring. I don't claim to be totally right. And I wasn't totally wrong. Can we just talk a bit, nitty gritty, Frank? Sure. I mean, how many, how much time did you spend in Belfast? Were you there years? I was there quite a lot, quite a regular place. Can I ask, without obviously getting yourself or anyone in trouble, what sort of area was Tiger Bay was a Protestant area, wasn't it? Yeah, Tiger's Bay, I knew Tiger's Bay. The first place I ever went to in the mid 80s was Lisbon, which was just south. Lisbon, yeah. Shankill was Protestant. Shankill was west, that's West Belfast. West Belfast, Shankill Road. Yeah, I was there was when there was a fun run, the Army did a fun run in Lisbon, and there was a bomb under a vehicle. Yeah, that was a nice occasion at all. I was actually over there that year when it happened. Yeah, that doesn't sound like fun, a fun run, does it? Not at all. Most areas over a course of time. What years were you there, mate? Mid 80s was the first time I went, mid 80s was the first time I went. Had the Gibraltar III been shot by then? No, no, that came after. That was about 87-ish, wasn't it? That was just after, but I was going just before then, yeah. Yeah. Gosh, I'm just trying to gauge because I was there in what, 80, 89 of similar time, and... Well, I was going from the mid 80s up until 90... Well, that's when I was arrested, 93, May 93. And what sort of atrocities did you see during your time there? What acts? I saw the aftermath, you know, but mainly it was the aftermath, the feeling of people, the loss of some people, clearly the anger of people as well, you know. It's strange because the first time I did go, I went with somebody else, and many people have said this since after they've been the first time. I think you're overwhelmed by the sense of Britishness, that they are so proud to be British, they're so proud of their history, that, you know, particularly the Somme and, you know, the First World War. They are ultra-proud to be British. Well, yeah, of course I admit people back in London were proud to be British, and myself to a certain degree. But not like this, you know, and I've never seen so many Union flags in my life. So it was very welcoming. People were very, very friendly. They loved the fact that you'd come from London to spend time with them. Yeah, it was quite easy to fall into, to be honest. And I've had friendships from that first trip that are still here today, you know. I've stopped a guy in the Ardoin, right? And he's driving a, like, an old Cortino or Sierra or something. And I said, can I, you stop him? And he whizes his window down. I said, can I have a word, mate? Yeah, sure, mate. And he's from London somewhere, right? And we're chatting, and this guy's like oozing cockney friendship, you know, just, it's all good. It's, well, you don't live in the Ardoin as an Englishman. No, no, no, no, you have to be in Britain, which is kind of like, without having some serious connections. And I think he was married to one of the top players, sisters or something, right? Yeah. So when we P checked him afterwards, or when I P checked him while he was stopped there, it comes over, yeah, you know, affirmative. So this is an IRA player. And of course, by that, I guess a lot of people are just affiliated, aren't they? They're affiliated. They're not actually soldiers or whatever. We used to get stopped sometimes. And we'd have been, you know, we'd be in a taxi, we'd be in a cab, and the army would stop us. Of course, they'd get a shot because sometimes the soldier would be from London. They're not expected to have the wind of wind down. And we'd go, all right, mate. And then we'll send a soldier, what the fuck are you boys doing over here, like, I've got to be here, you know, I'm in the army. I'm doing my service. What the fuck are you doing over here, like, you know. So yeah, we had some fun experiences. Were you there when the siglers were executed? I wasn't physically there, no, but I remember the day we discussed quite a bit. Oh, God, that was just woods and hows, wasn't it? Woods and hows, yeah. Yeah, just very bad period. That was that, that those, those few weeks were very, very uncomfortable type for everybody, I think, because the glabbers were off, weren't they? The glabbers were off. Well, we, we were doing our pre-island build up. And when we were doing it, so for people listening, before you go on a tour, an operational tour, you do your training, and it's called build up. Obviously, you do it in all areas of what you're expected to go and fight or be involved in. So shooting, first aid, a little bit about culture, but to be honest, it wasn't really very, well, we weren't really too interested in that. And you get these sheets, terrorist recognition sheets, or what we call them players, right? Yeah. Did you call them montages? They might well have been. They basically is an A4 sheet, and it had about passport size photos, and it had about 30 on there. And you had these sheets, and you had to memorise them. Another thing, again, I had a photographic memory. So when we had finally got over the water, I could, I spotted everyone, just as if, as if I'd known them all my life, you know, I'd see someone in a car on the other side of the road, you know, at traffic lights or whatever. And I just, but I'm getting off the subject. So we're doing this build up. And one of the boys goes here, look at this, and he had a tabloid newspaper, and he opened the spread. And it was the picture from the helicopter down onto that. Again, for friends listening, was it corporal house and? I think they were both corporals, weren't they? Yeah. I remember it was Woods and Howl, yeah. Corporal Woods and Corporal Howl, they think it was. I'm not sure whether they were intelligent or whether they were signals intelligent. I think they were signalers, but signals intelligence, but I might have that wrong, but they accidentally on a tour of Belfast in an undercover car drove into an IRA funeral very quickly. The people in the funeral realise they're British soldiers. So they blocked them in with a taxi and these guys couldn't get out. One of them pulled his nine millimetre out, fired, I think one warning shot, but then accidentally dropped the magazine, which then felt clattered on the floor or fell on the floor of a car. Anyway, slowly they were overcome by the crowd, dragged out, stripped off and executed on Wasteland, a place called Penny Lane, which we used to patrol past regularly. And I think even at the very last minute, one of them tried to make a run for it. I think that, you know, they were fighting until the end, but it was another theory was in regards to why while they were attacked, which I can under which I would be able to understand was that because Michael Stone that attacks the Republican funeral at Mealtown, that some Republicans were of the view that when they saw two men in a car, they weren't sure whether that was going to be a repeat of what happened in Mealtown Cemetery. And that would make sense. That would make sense, because I can't see how they could have known who those two fellows were. Yes, you could jump to conclusions and say, oh, they must be, you know, undercover police or undercover army or military intelligence. Personally, I would have been more concerned to think that hold on, these two lawless paramilitaries, you know, about to drive into the crowd and open up with, you know, heavy weapons or, you know, grenades or whatever. I could kind of understand that. But I know, as you're right, the official version is that it was the fact that they were, you know, they were army personnel. How many Republicans were aware that at the time? I'm not sure. Yeah, it was just, it was just shocking, wasn't it? Beyond shocking. And just one incident of many horrific ones during the troubles and on both sides of the divide, obviously. That's why I say that the camp was stopped, didn't it? It's just, it had to come to a stop. You couldn't carry on with that, you know, with that degree of violence and, you know, humans doing certain things, humans, it just had to, whatever your views were, whether you thought you were right or you was wrong, it had to stop. And that's why I was saying there that, you know, I'm looking back at it now. I'm very much an advocate for the police. Yeah. And myself too. And I think a lot of people like have seen a better world like we are. I mean, you could be like a five-year-old boy whose dad's just been at the pub. Dad's walking back from pub. He's not, he's not a soldier. He's not a fighter. He's not involved in anything. He's just a hardworking man. A Protestant gang or a Catholic gang can bundle him into the car, haul him off and torture him all night. Then slit his throat and chuck him out of the car on wasteland. And that little boy or girl got to live with that shit for the rest of their life. Well, I said in one of the podcasts, look, it's too simple for me to sit here and say, well, my conscience is clear. I haven't killed anybody. But if the police came to me tomorrow and said with forensic, you know, modern forensic evidence, we've identified the weapons you thought, you know, you'd supplied earlier. One of those is killed the Catholic, you know, not Republican necessarily. And he had five children and his wife had a nervous breakdown. Six weeks later, he's never died of an heart attack. Well, I'm not gonna feel very good about myself, am I? I'm not gonna feel very heroic, am I? I'm not gonna feel I've done my bit for the cause, am I? And that's it. But it goes back to that treadmill. You do not think that at the time there. You do not think that. You're in charge, you're leading your men. And there's an expectation about you. And if our people are being attacked, if our towns and cities are being blown up, we're not gonna do something about it. You haven't got time to stop and question yourself. You just done. And look, the next one now, if I, you know, when I do talks, I make sure I say to the people, don't get on that treadmill. Don't get on it. If you're gonna do your own work, you know, question yourself, why are you getting on it? What are the reasons for it? Is it your own vanity? Is it because people are trusting you? Why are they not getting on it? So this is another question I ask now. Why are people supposed to put you on the treadmill? You don't ask enough questions, do you? You get carried away at the time. You think, oh, you know, I'm the man. They all trust me. They respect me. You don't see the potential damage. Not only what you're doing with other people, what you're doing to yourself. And I'll recognise that now. I can see that quite clearly now. And whether I go into schools, colleges, you know, universities or prisons, you know, I'm quite comfortable and I'm quite happy to say to people, listen, don't go down this road. You know, just do not go try and find another way to do it. Because it was just me. Why did you never become political? You know, why don't you get involved in the politics of it? You know, I just didn't see that at the time. Look, an insight now, I wish I had. I wish I had. I wish I'd used my time and effort, you know, more politically rather than militantly, you know, but it's all a learning curve in it. It's all a learning curve. I can pass some of that knowledge on to people now. I'm quite happy to do that. Someone said to me recently, Frank, can't you see that to some degree you was radicalised? And I'm sorry, Chris, I laughed. I said, you've got to be kidding me. I was the one doing the radicalising. I can see that now. Any of my close friends and associates followed me. Not the calls. I haven't even been logged to me. So I say, this can't do this. They can't do it. I've been trained to know how many, but actually doing what they would do for a supposed cause. And that's a responsibility and I accept that responsibility and I'm quite happy to analyse myself and question myself. And I can see that and the only bad scene is I didn't get anybody else killed and I didn't get anybody else in prison. So in that sense, I'm fairly content, but that could have gone wrong. That could have gone wrong. My actions could have got close friends killed or could have got me in prison for a long, long time. And as I say, I'm quite happy to talk with people now and say, just don't do it. I've just recently started a website a couple of weeks ago. I've got a website www.frankportonio.com and that explains where, you know, 1993, I was in Winston Green. You know, I've been arrested in Birmingham. I was on Category A in Winston Green. Yet in May 2011, I was a state visit in Dublin where the Queen was president. So there's the change. You know, there's the, there's the transition where I've gone from being militant to doing things in the community. I mean, the Queen herself didn't invite me obviously, you know, but clearly, it was, it was clear. Some of the recognize what I was doing and it was clear for me to be out of the go. And that was the first time that a royal British world stepped foot in Dublin for hundreds of years. It was a very, you know, historical occasion and a very surreal one as well, very surreal. That was fairly recently, wasn't it? In 2011. And what it was was to remember the 50,000 Irishmen who'd fought alongside Britain during the First World War and called to come back and been totally ostracized. Couldn't get work, couldn't, you know, find places to live because they fought with the, because they fought with the British. And thankfully now because of cross-border community groups and so on. Eventually. Was that the Second World War they fought for? It was the First World War. I mean, obviously we fought together in the Second World War, but it was mainly the First World War. And I say they were just completely ostracized from society. And fortunately now, I'm saying the surreal, because you had Irish Army, you had British Army, you had the Tricolour, you had the Union Flag, you had both Amptons, you had the President of Ireland, you had the Queen, Duke of Edinburgh. Yeah, very historical occasion. So from a personal point of view, you know, 1993, it's Her Majesty's Pleasure. In 2011, I'm getting invited, you know, with a nice embossed card with, you know, Her Majesty would like you to be in Dublin on a certain date. So it's been a strange journey, that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah, well, you've got, you know, you should be proud of your, proud of your, well, I'm sure you are, Frank, you know. Well, it's more to go, it's more to go, you know, there's more to give yet. And funny enough, a few people suggested that I do a podcast, and I've never had really had the technical skills or the opportunities. And in the last couple of weeks, I'd suggested a guest, though I thought was a very, very good guest to somebody. I had to get in touch with their secretary, if you like, sent a couple of emails and got no response. And I wasn't a little bit quite out to be quite honest. I'd rather have had, this isn't really somebody that we want, or at least a response of some kind. And then that kind of put it in my, would you know what, if you know what I'm going to interview this person, I'll interview him. And the chat who designed my website has got the equipment and basically made a commitment. And I found a sponsor, so we're opening with the first few episodes. So frankly speaking, we'll be honest until next year. Oh, brilliant. Brilliant. We'll give it a go. Yeah. Yes. It's another part of the journey, isn't it? Because there's nothing bad about it. The thing is, you see, people only know your past. They're going to judge you now on that past. So people still refer to me as that football element. People still refer to me as that right wing activist. People still refer to me as that lawless paramilitary. Particularly the media. The media just do not let go and they just regurgitate the same old rubbish. Journalists do the same. People have written books where I've been mentioned in. They've got my name wrong. They've got the sentence wrong. They've said I've had a drugs conviction. They don't come and speak to me. They don't ask. They don't check, you know. And that's why I wrote my own book. That's why I wrote my book. I thought, well, you're going to get the truth from me one way or the other. You know, the good bits and the not so good bits. And I've just written another one now to finish off the story, to show some of that transition. How did you all get involved in that? It's my opportunity. Yes, please do. I was just going to read the name out. I wasn't being rude. It's called Left Right Lawless from one extreme to another, which pretty much sums me up because I've gone from one extreme to another. Sean invited me along and he clearly, you know, he read the book. And from that, Sean said to me that I considered doing another book. And I said, yes, he couldn't believe that I didn't have the book on Amazon. So he said to me, look, would you mind if I rebranded it so to speak? So if you go on Amazon, you'll see that cover. You won't see that title. It says Lawless Paramilitary Gun Runner from Extremism to Prison. So he'd be very helpful, Sean, very helpful. He invited me back again for a second podcast. And then earlier this year, I got invited by him, James. They didn't try and borrow money off you, did they? No, they didn't. Yeah, now those two have been responsible for really supporting a lot of us, haven't they? You know, to get our stories out. And it's a big old thing when you hit one of those big podcasts. Your life is, it really helps you on your way. So I've got a debt of gratitude. Yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah, between them, yeah, they've given me a confidence to talk more publicly, saying that I am an associate member of the Professional Speaking Association very early days. I've got a very good mentor. He's been guiding me along the way. Unfortunately, of course, there's not been meeting. We've had to do everything via Zoom, but that in itself is an experience as well. And I'm fairly confident next year that again, depending on the climate, we appreciate companies have obviously got budgets. And they're probably going to stick to speakers that they know, rather than take a gamble on new ones, but saying that they want to hear new stories and new lessons to learn, if you like. And that's what I'm doing. I'm saying to people, if you want to listen to different experiences, different stories and learn something from it as well, whether that be speaking or training sessions or whatever. And I think the podcast will help. I think to sit and talk to people. And again, when I was in prison, I was a listener. So you learn to talk to people, not necessarily advising, but you learn to listen to people. So I'm quite looking forward to trying the questions out and waiting for people's responses. Frank, people can find your book on Amazon. I'm going to put a link below our video. Whereas, can they find someone who wants you to come and speak? I'll put that link as well. But what's the company called? Are you with an agent? Well, I've just started a company. And I've called it Category A Consultancy. That's the kind of reminder where I come from, if you like the category A bit. Certainly it's a reminder where I want to go as well, where I want to arrive at. But yeah, the website will explain what I've done is I've written some articles and every article has kind of got a moral to it. And without putting my name to it necessarily, it's clearly about my experiences. And most definitely the treadmill story is on there. And that's what I'm saying to people. Look, I believe I can come along and give real life stories, real life experiences. And hopefully people will take something from it. And it'll be a benefit to them. Yeah, well, undoubtedly it will. Well, Frank, thank you ever so much for joining us. No, thank you. No, thank you. It's part of my learning curve, to be honest. Yeah, if I can help you with a podcast, just let me know. No, I appreciate that. I'd love to come and chat to you then. I can relax a bit then. I didn't even ask, did I? You see, you just committed yourself there. That's part of my technique. Mate, you've got to get in early. Yeah. So, Frank, just stay on the line. I'll say a proper thank you when we stop recording. So massive thank you again. Good luck. Keep going into the light, isn't it, for us guys? To everybody at home, massive love to you all. Look after yourselves. If you could like and subscribe, I'd really appreciate it. And see you soon. Hello, friend. I hope this finds you well. My name's Chris Thrall. I'm a former Royal Marine's commando. And I fought my way back from chronic trauma and addiction to live, work and travel in 80 countries across all seven continents, achieving all of my dreams and goals along the way. Now, I pass my simple system on to other people, but I can only help you if you like and subscribe. So please do so because you get one life, and if you live it right, one is enough.