 If you're looking to sponsor the Anything Goes podcast and have your business promoted on this show, you can contact sponsoranythinggoesatoutlook.com or you can call 07584 650 203 for more information. Make sure you click the link to subscribe to my YouTube channel and also click the notifications button to be notified for when my next podcast goes live. You can also follow me on my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest is. I hope you enjoy this week's episode. Thank you. Mae'r onn. Tadau'r guest, we've got the London legend Dave Courtney. How are we brother? We're pretty well sir. How are you? You good? Yeah, really good, thanks. First of all, thanks for letting us into the castle. It's some place. We've got a room full of guns and knives. We've got one room full of books. We've got jacuzzi's. Where'd you come from? Where'd you come from? I thought you had been used to a room full of guns. I was just trying to do it. I made you feel at home and just sprinkled them out liberally. I think because you've done so many films and wrote so many books, friends would have crazed stuff like that. I think the majority of people know your story. But it would be good to dig a bit deeper and go back to the start and understand your life a bit more. I'm afraid that's your skills as an interviewee. Try and drag it out of me because I've very much listened to all my old interviews and I all sound exactly the same. I've been saying the same thing for 30 years. But if I'm not asking anything different, I can't say nothing different. They talk to me about the craze in that era. It's very hard for me to elaborate on something that's not happening anymore. I can only tell you what it is. The past stories. Where did you grow up, Dave? In my heart, I didn't really grow up. I'm still a child, but I grew up in South London. Birmingham's here in Forest Hill. Beautiful parents. Good Godfairing, Cub and Scout leaders. One brother, one sister, we weren't poor. I wasn't on the bread line. Nice house, enjoyed school. I just found the entertaining people making people laugh was my way forward. That was my gift. Being an entertainer, being a cult jester, in any situation you have in life, I have found that it is the best gift I could possibly have had. Making someone laugh is a gift. You can laugh someone in a bed. You can laugh a durian again, not guilty. If you can actually make your mum laugh by the time she's there, just making your ass in that bit, you get a lighter smack. Making people laugh was my gift. So at school, I learnt it, which turned me into a natural leader material, really. Being able to use your tongue better and talk and make light of a situation where normally another one will go, do, do him. It turned me into that. That must have clearly worked at court because you've been not proven over 20 occasions. Give me if I get a semi-ard on when you're saying that. How did that come? How did that happen? The truth is, engineering, good friends and the law being what it was made it possible for people to get away with things then. Which is why they slowly over 20 years changed it. They brought out, they can recharge you, now you know you could get charged for the same thing twice. Is that double jeopardy thing? Yeah, they can do the whole double jeopardy thing, but now there's the internet. I'm afraid there is no more getting not guilty because a simple thing is this. If you had just had an accident in your car and you said to your mate, do us a favour, say you witnessed that for me, he'd say he's witnessed it and you get your insurance money. Or if you went to court and the cop had said I saw him shoot someone and you went, no, I was with 20 people, I heard a bang and we run over there, I'll pitch up the gun and then you come and it looks like I shot him. He can say, shot me, if I've got 20 people to go to court for me as a witness and swear to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and they're not all looking thugs, they're a couple of firemen, the sergeant major and the TA. If I've got 20 people to go to court and say you've never done it, the first law in the court room is if there is an element of doubt you have to be found not guilty. The British legal system can be guilty of letting an innocent man get away but it can't be guilty of locking an innocent man up. So if there's an element of doubt you can get not guilty so if you've got 20 people to go and say he was with me, that's the element of doubt. But you can't do that anymore because they now go on your Facebook and they go all of your witnesses are your fucking best friends. Every single witness you've got in this court case, I've just looked at Facebook, they're all your best mates so not one of them can. What was your first ever crime? It's what the situation was here where it's what I actually thought I believed was a crime at the time. I just thought I was having a giggle, I just thought I was having a laugh and forget what the expense was if it went wrong if I got nicked or like. But I was the first to climb in the windows, open the doors, nicked the cars, drive the cars, hide the stuff, make the diversion for the shoplifters. I was up for all of that so as soon as I could walk or talk what other people were considering crime I was considering enjoying myself and having a laugh. Was that just to get a buzz? Really just to get a buzz plus I found I had an awful lot more money than everybody else because I was hanging around with bigger people that were doing the nicking the cars and breaking in the shops. I was hanging around with them because I was being a bit funny, a bit daring and up for the laugh which made me look brave I suppose. How did that come about then because you're clearly raising a good household with your mum and dad? Because I enjoyed the cult gesture thing, the entertaining, the having a captive audience, even prison work bad for me. I had 600 people to make laugh all day and I wanted to laugh because they were bored. Entertainment and that's how I really first got into it, nicking cars and all that. I was a late starter with the fighting, I didn't realise that until I was about 15, 16. Because a lot of people say you didn't carry a gun, it was more a knuckle duster? I still do carry a knuckle duster, 24-7. I wouldn't even hit my own woman without my name. So you still carry a knuckle duster 24-7? I still do, yeah. What's the story with, did you rob a post office but did you have your dog with you and you were on a moped and you were driving a moped with dragging a dog along? No no no, you've got two stories mixed up. The knuckle duster thing is this. You should not carry a weapon that you are not prepared to do the bird for. What I mean by that is if you are someone that chooses to carry a knife out with you and there's a lot of people out there today in an assortment of different jobs that have to carry a weapon. Dormann, soldiers, prison officers, police, you know, you need to carry a weapon and if you actually pull out a knife and go bum to pull the knife and save your life, forget that situation. What most of you are going to happen is you're going to have to pull it out unexpectedly while you're going down the shops with your wife and kid in the car, it's someone up the arse on his new car. If he jumps out of his car, open your door and start smacking you in the mouth in your car. If you had a knife in your pocket, you would go and stab him in the middle of the ice street for murder. Or if someone trod on your foot in Sainsbury's, you had a corn operation, you trod on his foot and he jumped on you and started smashing in your head with a tin of beans, you would pull out your knife and stab him and kill him because he trod on your foot. So don't carry someone that don't kill someone for fuck's sake, that's all I'm saying. Do you think it's a coward's way out? I don't think it's a coward's way out. I think it's just a sign of the times. Years ago they used to battle people under the years before that. They had the two primandals with a chain in the middle and now it's knives and it was gas and then it's acid and then it's guns and it's all changing but the eastern bloc people in flux into this country is up to the level of violence. Everyone's on a natural world carry and achieve now as they do and I'm afraid that doesn't help you win a fight. You don't just stab someone and they stop hitting you. A stab feels like an half decent punch. You have to go to make him stop. Do you think people should be sort and rival these then between street feats, square gaws, feinting each other more? It's not awful. There's a completely different world out there than me and you. We've got no thinking it. There's no one at any control now whatsoever over what's going to happen to the youth. It's spiralling out. It's going to get awful, awful lot worse. The police are aware of it and can't remember rubbing their hands with it really. We're trying to stop it. If they wanted to stop it they could. Any life of crime is bad but back in the day there was a lot more respect for the older gangsters. There was, I'm afraid, I have sickest sounds to a general public but there was a unity among naughty men. You couldn't actually go and spread and talk to everyone else that weren't in your job. Your wife couldn't have it with one else's wife because of what you did as a job and it almost had an air of, dare I say, respectability or class if you were a bank robber or a villain almost. You were prepared to risk going to prison to go out and earn the money for your kids to eat. That kind of attitude. You could almost stand up in school and say, my dad's a bank robber. The same thing today is you can't stand up and go, my dad's a drug dealer. That's a different, don't cut it. As much as the rewards are far more superior than any of us have ever earned. It don't cut it. A load of criminals in them days would have been a safe cracker, an arm robber, a hijacker, whatever a bank robber. Now he's got drugged and not got it till he's shot his smugglers and it's too much money to keep a lot of morals and honesty about it. Then you had walls of ears, loose licks, sink ships. A spy is more dangerous than a thousand men. No comment, no comment. That was the order of the day. England had just come out of a war and we had a bulldog reputation. If you could pull our fingers out, we wouldn't sell it. It was England and if you had a job at the time as a policeman, you had a terrible job because no one ever grasped anyone. We had war morals. No one would say nothing. Well then they've learnt after that, they spent the next 40 years twisting the whole country's head going, grassing people up is good, advertising it on every single television station, prime time telly, and there's grasslines in every newspaper you get, ring up someone if you know they've had a drink and driving, ring up if he's got a job, ring up if they've had a drink, ring up for guns. They've reduced the grassing on your mum and dad now. They teach kids a telephone number to go to school and grass up your mum and daddy if they give you a smack. They say to a kid, come in and bring your mum and daddy and we'll put your mum and daddy in prison and get you a nice bus to their home. Seven, seven, nine, three, three, two, two, one, come and grass up your mum and dad. Somewhere down the line they've just got to come back and kick you in the bollocks. They've turned the nation of bulldog-y people into that, that we would just run around and stab people. When did you start getting all the fame and attention? I put it in one night. What happened? I was running a big security company, chicken over just fucking beautiful, maybe the biggest security company in Great Britain at the time, Raven had first come in, everyone was like, I had about eight, nine hundred people working for me. I was having odd dealings with the craze because I had other friends out there and it was dealing things that was going on in the clubs that I was working. I'd been to see them, I was a bit impressed, I became in awe wrongly and looked after them and didn't mind them being associated with me or me being associated with them and the way my life was going at the time I didn't mind the association with them. Ronnie Craig died, the funeral pilot got a death threat. They said we're not all craze wing fans. We're going to come down there and burn it down, the funeral pilot is in there. They've rung Reg, Reg rung me. I had to sleep in the funeral pilot for two weeks and then at the end of that he went on and needed to do the security. So after they'd done the security for the craze wing funeral, in the next morning I was on the headlines of Air to the fucking throne, celebrity gangster. What I'd signed in for, I was running a set of doorman. It was like a job centre for naughty men on Friday and Saturday night when I was at work. The rest of the week they had no work. So you could get them to get the neighbours making them out, throw the squatters out, go and get your car repossessed. You know, now there's the big musliol lumps all working on the door and I was like a job centre for them. But they all got the craze wing funeral. Up till that minute criminals are supposed to colour up in the shadows, no pictures, no comment, drive a little low key car. And right from that minute they had to be going, Hello, interviews, chats, freedom and the press. I'm on telly, here I am. And I've got the best 180 odd men I could find to do that for you, which was three calls of a million people. And I've got to be honest, when they all met in my garden, 180 of what I considered the best ones I know. Mr Glasgow, Mr Edinburgh, Mr Manchester. Everyone I know in my, oh fuck the freedom, I want to go and invade a wreck. I've got to look at that. Did that give you power? I've got the power anyway, but I haven't seen it before I could touch. The power comes through your telephone. Everyone's a cunt apart from their phone. You can kick fuck out of me, but if you let me get to my phone, I'll fuck you, whatever it is. So clearly got a lot of contact still. And the police after that day saw that and although they understood about organised crime, that was the first time in this country they had seen organised crime to such a volume. One criminal had ordered all of England's Premier Division criminals, all their own criminal CV, 200 of them nearly, all to come to London to celebrate the death of a criminal. A load of these people ate each other, they wanted to shoot each other, but on that day all arranged by one other criminal. Well that was their first thing of criminal organised crime and they just, from that minute they went fuck, you can't have an army in England apart from the army. So they just went out to shut me down and that altered my whole life. They stopped every television thing I was on, stopped me writing for the magazines, changed the law legally that you now can't glamourise crime. The whole country was going through the freedom of the press and everyone was liking what us little boys had to say. Not that we were right or we were glamourising crime, but we made it sound entertaining. And I got Reggie Cray, regular parts in magazines, Charlie Brunson, myself, me, Freddie Forman, Lenny Arn, Tony Lambriano, I was working for Pink Shirts modelling, it all went stupid, everyone loved their books. The films looked like a gangster chic and the freedom of the press was celebrityising us. They didn't like that. They didn't like that, no, they just put a stop on it that no one, like Gary Busch will say to me now, Dave, with your new book, don't give it to me to be a critic because by law I'm now not allowed to say Dave's book's good because that's glamourising crime. Virgin can publish my book, but they can't put a poster up saying Dave's got a new book out because the poster is glamourising crime. Even if it says fiction? Yeah, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So how can... I always believe anybody can change, Dave. I always believe them. I'm not glamourising crime. So how can people better their life or change if they try to make it... I tell you why. I tell you why. They're trying to make it, well, and rightly so, look like crime don't pay. Which is true. And you can't glamourise crime, which is 100% true. I say that. It might pay for the minute you're getting away with it, but you all get caught. Pay while you're sitting in a soft top being with a little bird in a flat you just bought in my bay and then try and tell you crime don't pay is hard. But talk to you in three years time when you're sitting inside for 23 years. And your best friend's reading your book. Yeah, yeah, of course. Then you realise it don't and you all get caught. I'm afraid. How is Charles Bronson? He's a lovely guy. He's just... Were you at his wedding? Yeah, I've done his wedding at my pub. Both of his weddings at my pub. I've been to see him a few times. We had a little ifyware meeting when we first met. We didn't really get on. But I'm afraid the crime now with Charles Bronson, I'm afraid, is they are now genuinely entitled to say we can't let him out, he's mad. Because anyone that had done 27 years in solitary confinement would be Cuckoo. The Pope, me, you, Mother Teresa. And so they're within their rights now to say of all the naughty things he done in prison using him as a deterrent. This is what we're going to do to if you mess about in prison. You're never, ever, ever coming home. You're never coming home. He's mad. And all these people that are going free, Charlie Bronson, would you like him living next door to you? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, he might be great. Saturday, odd, for no reason at all. And their crime is this. He wasn't mad when he went in. So that's their crime. They're not wrong in saying he can't come out now. And all these people are going, well, he ain't murdered on anyone. He ain't, but he's... Potentially. He's made you money. He's done some nutty old things. I love him. I love him. But he can see his own plight that he's made there. Potentially, if he did get out, would he kill someone? I don't know if he'd sit out or if he'd sit down thinking of killing someone. But he's so strong and egg shell ready to snap. He could. I don't want to be the one that goes, don't give me parole. Yeah, their crime is this. They are right in saying he shouldn't come home. And I know he ain't killed no one. But they're wrong. He weren't mad when he went in. They actually made him like this. Break him mentally. Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's what they do, though, if you're causing harm. I know you love to burn the whole boxing and the fighting and you have your events. How's that for you? Now I've had to take a very, very backseat in my old way of life. I like to keep me and in as much of the interesting stuff as I can. I loved the boxing events. They were a boxing event. Plus they were a meet and greet place for all the naughty men to meet. I kind of might have planned to meet them. All the naughty chaps met at the boxing. It just attracts a certain type of person, I think. I used to have a mirror at the side in the bowels of hay. That's where I took the first World Championship title in England and America, was your netback garden with the bowels of hay. It's now gone on to the B-Bad boxing promotion. There's another one on Saturday now. It's now at the O2. So that's gone from in the back of Dave Cootley's garden, hidden under bowels of hay, to it's now being filmed at the O2 by Sky. And now they got away with it. They just now wrap a little wrap of bandage around your local. So it isn't bare knuckle no more, gladitorial, full combat sport that there is at the moment in this country with all of the health and safety being going on. It's, you know, and it's asked Julius Caesar. We all like to watch a Goods Grant. Does that turn you on, watching people fighting? Man, there was a time when it did. It made me feel very old, but at the moment now I'm 60. I'll just sit and watch it and get very jealous that I can't fucking do it anymore. How is, because you're healthy, but you're listening, you're looking great, by the way, for six days. Thank you very much, yeah. But you had a heart attack last year. Well, you never attack, you never attack. When you get to 60, you've got to go to doctors and they give you an MOT. Just check you all over. And then when they're doing it, they went, you've got a leaking heart valve, Mr Cootley. And because I'm a dickhead. Sorry, a vagra have you been taking? Yeah, all these bundles off. I'm a man with a dungeon at the bottom of my garden. What do you feel? I went in there and he said, you need a new valve. There's nothing urgent. He went, we don't know how long that's been leaking. It could have been leaking for 40 years or it could have just happened, but it would make you prone to an heart attack. So somewhere down the line, we're going to fit you in for a non-urgent appointment to get that mended. I went, you're cool. And then I've said to the people I'm getting this thing putting me out. And everyone's going to me, oh, you're getting a stent, a stent, a stent there. And I've ended up truly with my hand of my heart, I thought I was getting a stent. That's really what I thought. A stent is something you're going in the morning, you stick it in a vein in your bollocks and they stick it up to your heart and you're out in the afternoon. I thought it was that until I went in and I had to sign the certificate if I'm dying. What are you talking about? I was doing it for the week and then I was having open heart surgery. Breaking all my ribs, cut my breastplate in half, take my heart out, cut a lump out of it, put a pig's bit of a heart on there, then put it back in you, sew it all back together and say, that's it. And I was like, wow. You know, and I really weren't ready for that and I had a little bit of a rheumatoid heart right as kicked into me and I'll give someone a clump and his tooth stuck in my hand and the poison got into my bone marrow and the poison was going around my body in my bone marrow and they thought it was in my blood so they gave me blood transfusions. I was in the hospital for five weeks but I was trying to find out what it was. I'd got it. So getting better from an heart attack that's how I'd work. It really hurts. Try to slow you down. How has it slowed you down? It slowed me down because what it made me do is I've ended up sitting in front of the city for half a year watching Netflix which I think is a new invention. Ain't that fantastic? I could never understand watching Netflix and eating and I went up to 19 and three-quarter stone. I couldn't get fit again because I'm now huge. I ain't got the will power to do it so I really was not running on the full tank for about a year and a half. A bit of depression there as well? As much as I hate to it's the first time I've ever said this out of my front room. Yes, I think I had depression but I didn't know. I think I did. My son was murdered. I'm not very happy about being single the wife I loved her. A lot of things. I got off to blame for it. I got ill, I've had a fucking heart attack. You know, fuck. I'm sitting there with woe is me. One little bath when I stood up and looked in the mirror, big full-leg mirror that made me cry and went, oh, what have I done? I couldn't even reach me cockled and I never went. I mean it was a fucking joke. So then I've locked myself up in this health farm. Just gone. Looks mostly the most severe health farm in Great Britain. And they feed you nothing. And they're up in the morning. You've got the boot camp that runs a zumbur of yoga for five weeks. And I've come back. I've done two and a half stone and I feel brilliant. Yeah, good. Because you're just back from a run there. I think that shows more about your character, Dave, because because you had a life in Soul of the Party, because you had a big fucking personality, the fact that you went through all that thrombon as well and it's affected you. And you probably didn't realise it because you've probably been too proud to say, okay, wait a minute, I've been sitting here for six months watching Netflix, but you're doing something about it. So it takes your spirit. Do you know what I mean? To make the changes. My well-being, I'm afraid. My state of mind and my own personal well-being. Most of the time I get off on it or I don't mind, but it affects an awful lot of other people. My well-being, nothing to do with them, whether I'm looking good, whether I'm well, whether I'm looking affluent, whether business is good, affects an awful lot of other hundreds of families all over the country, whether Dave's all right or Dave's not all right. I'm their boss, I'm not ever... You know, they work through me. The people they know are all down through me there. They're associated as mine. You understand what I mean? So in my own little jigsaw puzzle of a world I've got in my head, everyone's got their own little bit. It's like a... an ulterior... mason's. All in one look after each one. I don't just know naughty people. The naughty people in my phone book are firepages, but I can get you a moody mortgage to wash your machine and repair it, someone to cut your grass, a cheat by the day, someone's video they're not using. Is that why they call you the yellow pages? The yellow pages, the other one. Yes, it's not me. It's my phone. If I can bring somebody up to a shoot, you're for nothing more than a bang on the edge. You're in the gang. I'm tougher than you, aren't I? And that's what it is today, it's the telephone. Cos as we all talked to him, because you do it a lot for charity, you open up your place in your house and have barbecues and raise money for people. The autism, cos we're autism. I've seen that in the papers and stuff. You do good things. I don't actually do it for the publicity of it because if I do get the publicity for it, I put myself under fire of people going, so I don't actually do it. I do it for genuine reasons. It's the proof of my family revoltism. I most probably have got and have had ADHD all my life, so I support that. You understand what I mean? The victims support you and people have come out of prison and it's all gone a bit by side from them. I'll help that. But what good is me trying to help Oxfam? Or... Bagcharis? Yes, something like that. At least that one I can help on, go around the prisons and talk to them. You know, I can try and say in an on-road way, crime don't fucking pay me. It's because of your character. If you did bad, did you think you were glorifying it? If you did good, did you think... Yeah, absolutely. When we made a record 12 years ago, me, Freddie Forman, Frankie Fraser, Joe Paul, Ronnie Biggs, made a million quid. We give it to Helper London Child and Helper London Child said, you know, we won it, cos you won it, thank you very much on that. But we cannot be seen publicly saying thank you to people like yourself. So give it to these avacharities and it will filter through to us. But we can't be seen saying thank you to you. And we made it with a record, with tricky, massive attack. It's called the product of the environment. It's a blinding record and we all put a little tune on it. And it's awful. It's this. Yeah, it's because if you do good, you feel good. My house is now driving past looking at it again, I'm glamourising crime. I'm making all the kids want to be a gangster and I'm like, I ain't. You're not beating a Sherlock Holmes policeman no more. You're trying to beat technology mate, none of us can do it. The cameras, the phones, the cards, the sat nav, the satellite, stop. Don't be a criminal. Don't do it. How are you, Dave, when the cameras are not off, the feels, if you have to be in character or the team is like, you're just here. No, you're only character. This is actually here. It's just your Twitter. Yeah, it is here. Because I've been surrounded by cameras a lot of them at my time, I'm afraid, not woe is me, but I'm afraid I was the forerunner in the crime world where right up until one day, the young written rule book was no comment, no pictures, have your collar up, whispers, down a little alley, keep a low coffee. I was at the era when criminals were going, you know what I mean? I was getting a magazine article and they wanted to do documentaries about you and I can't do any of them if I'm still active. So I actually retire from crime. The day I've done the Crater in Funeral is the day I've retired. Because after that, I couldn't do anything wrong. The more famous you get for being a criminal, the less criminal you can be. The more heat you bring on everybody else. I couldn't get out of my car after that, just banging the geyser in the car behind, because everyone in the street would get up and say, I've caught me a nine. It's a cratering bloke. I've fucked. How was people treating you? Because in the underworld, people would try to keep their nose out with papers and press and draw attention. How did other people treat you? It was a jealousy. Of course there's a lot of professional jealousy. Plus a lot of people that aren't retired wanted the glory of being a gangster but can't because they are a gangster. I thought I weren't deserving the whole ace of the front thing which I weren't clambering for. I've never said I'm a fucking superhero gangster. I've never said I'm a great fighter. I've never said I was rich. I've never said I'm a celebrity. Never. Not in any book, never. I've never robbed the bank, trained, never been done, you know, beat Lenny McLeod. Never. But I'm good at doing this. And at the turn of the millennium, the gangsters weren't down in Little Alley with the collar turned up. They'd all retired. I can only walk around going, look at me now. I'm doing fuck all. Now I've got big paintings of myself on the side of my house and flags up. I can assure you, I ain't doing nothing in here. How was Lenny McLeod? Lenny McLeod was cool. I was in prison with him when he'd done the murder. He was in my first documentary. I've been on a few boxing shows with him. He's cool. They're all really cool. What happened was, the Premier Division naughty men, the Freddie Formans, the Ronnie Reggie Charlie Cray, the Ronnie Biggsies, they all knew that I was better at doing in front of camera than they were. Because they were their old lifegun. Now they're actually expected to go. Let's sell ourself. Dave is the best one for that. So they wrapped me up in cottonwall and sent me out to try and sell them. Look, get their book deals, get their film deal, get all that, because they weren't used to it. Not that I was the biggest gangster. I was the best at that bit. Networking. Networking. If Lenny McLeod is your mate, why do you want to have a fight? Get Lenny McLeod to do it. He's the best at that. The rest of the world didn't know that. The rest of the world thought I was out clambering for get a load of me. The gangsters were loving me for it. Who's the toughest man you've ever been surrounded with? It's all different people, I'm afraid, in different situations. The best nightclub doorman fighter I've ever seen was Lenny McLeod. You're born for certain things. Usain Bolt born at Run, Mum and I League born at Box. Lenny McLeod was born to stand in doorways and fight groups of men, because he made it famous when doorman got famous, individuals, because there was every Saturday you had football liners. One Saturday, two Saturdays a month, London got 20,000 Liverpool supporters for Saturday night playing Arsenal, 20,000 Man United supporters playing Tottenham, 20,000 Leeds supporters playing Chelsea, 20,000 Newcastle supporters, all down in London for the night. So the little doorman in the London West end had 100,000 Norverners to compete with one night. So there were fights. There were no radios, no trouble exit number five. You actually went help me. Doorman had the sleaze ripped off their deep skins and looked like a doorman. 30 blocs of standing at the bar, all with a chipper, having a bit of Charlie and the government went from out. You had jobs then, that it was a different kind of doorman and he loved it, loved pain, loved the taste of blood, went to work with a broken collarbone, a broken nose and a tooth knocked out, his arm in a sling on a Friday and went to work on a Saturday and still no one would fight a gun. So how was the police treating you now? The police treating me now I'm afraid target number one because I know I'm not active but I make crime look like a careers option. The house, the clothes, the cockiness, the amount people want me on telly and want to listen to what I say but I'm saying don't. I'm actually saying no but I still get my ass bugged, we're still followed. They still, if I have an audience with somewhere, they go to the place and went listen if you have Dave Courtney and his mates turning up to your premises you won't have a licence for a telly so cancel it. You know they go to the film directors and go I don't want them in the film. Yes, they're still up till last week. They go to the recording studio and say if you have Courtney on this album it's going to be looked at as a criminally organised is it criminal money that's done it? You know, it's mental. So you say as well for the, was it the M20 or M25 where you said somebody tried to murder you? A2 Well, I was taking the police to court I got nicked with the police didn't I? I paid police in all my life, everyone knows that everyone I know knows that and if Ronnie and Reggie, Charlie Crain all them Ronnie Bigs think I'm not a grass I'm not worried if some cunts is that but a professional criminal does pay policemen, I'm sorry if you're clever and when he got caught he went no he's not paying me I'm paying Dave, had that been believed it would have got me shot he had no proof of it but he needed an excuse he's been caught, he couldn't go yes I've been bought and paid for by Dave Courtney and his boys for the last 15 years because there'd have to be a load of retrolls compensation, you know so the best they can get out of this now is they've got a copper now and nicked it's going to come out that Dave Courtney has put a copper in prison I taped the copper, I bugged him and when he actually said no I'm paying Dave I've got the tape so he couldn't I couldn't lose the case but then he went not guilty and I was wondering why is he going not guilty and what they did is they went right, damaged limitation, Courtney's going to put you in prison anyway so whoever comes out looking like a hero for doing it or we could pretend that we believe you say Courtney might be a grass for eight months and now get some Chinese whispers going and on the day the court case starts you can change your plea to guilty and if he ain't shot by then it will have stopped all that I ain't Dave a funny bloke, he's running for mayor and everything, I had a mayor thing and they did that, they genuinely said they believed him right after the day I'm going to court which I'm going to court dress as a court jester all of my friends like what you do, I shouldn't be I've bugged him, you've heard it you've got the tape and you're still taking me a court putting that in the paper and it was you and then after the court case finished I then went to the High Court of Justice and brought out a summons I paid $380 for it with me and Bill Murray and it was on Sky TV and nicked the police for attempting murder because I said I will accept any excuse in the world of why you put it in the paper that I was a grass after you had the tape of me bugging him after you had ideal proof of it I'm saying you put that in the paper saying that about me to try and get me killed but I will accept any other excuse and I've took it out I've summoned them any excuse of why you put that in the paper I'm saying you try to get me killed before I got out all the other fucking jobs you've done I'm saying that I'll accept any excuse and they didn't know what to fucking do about it and they run me over on a motorway at 12 at night and they run a pit manoeuvre on me on the A2 do you know anyone that would kill someone of all the ways to kill you mate I think I'm a million before I went I'll let you while you're doing under mile an hour on the A2 which is all camera'd off and do a pit manoeuvre that's their one they make programs about it they do that and then they done it to me I didn't die I come out of camera in five weeks so I went right get the cameras I'll show you done it and they went it's the only day in its history that the A2 weren't camera'd that night and behind me just so was you can check all this out at Google it was a unmarked police car that saw all of the accident that I had took the 13 witness statements there too and then because I was in a coma for five weeks they've lost them when I woke up the police had lost the 15 witness statements the police won't had no video footage of the thing does that not scare you Dave then though and the insurance people when they checked out all the car for it was really written off I rolled it on the motorway found five monitoring devices in it five I found one in my bedroom the army found one in my bedroom I found four in my house one in my bedroom forget all the fucking gangster shit they're going to be here in the kitchen they heard me having a wank I'm like that I know that to me did they play out so does that not scare the shit out of you what am I supposed to do what am I supposed to do what can I do if I know that they are bugging my home my phone in my car now I know that now what do I do do I not talk that they won't set you up of course they've set me up of course they've called me fucking great of course they've set me up I'm just going to come down and say there'll be a care Charlie in the boot of my car and I'm just going to fit me up I pay policemen they tell me how they do it and what a judge says if you can't say that cop will set me up a judge says this that police officer earns 28 grand a year where do you think he earned 35 grand to buy a care Charlie to set you up Mr Courtney where did you meet you on that and you're looking at you and they go right but how they do it is if I raided your house last night and found five care Charlie and by the time I got down at the police station I went I've just raided your house and found two care Charlie and he says there was five no one in the world there was five there was five not one person there's a care Charlie on the way to my house in the morning he rings his own police station so I've just seen Courtney going into his house struggling with a bird with a gun by the time he gets to work they've already got the warrant to come and raid my house he then comes down my house with the 12 of them and he said fuck all any of them runs in kicks the door down and goes ah and drops his care Charlie wherever and goes I found it I didn't call him a fucking fit up and he never that's it he's it all of it it's as simple as that they walk round and pick dog ends up with someone that they can't nick just put it at the scene of a crime and then go and say check that DNA that right where was you at two o'clock in the morning and you'll go I was home in bed and they go can you prove it and you'll go no well unless you explain why you end got in that bedroom you burgled the house do you think there's a lot of corruption in it I don't think I've paid them for years and years is there many any men inside the now doing big things that you know that's been set up 40 40 men have got life I'm not saying they're good men they've never done anything else but they've been done do you think it's because if you're in a life of crime they know you've done certain things but they can't catch you sort of just some of them do it just because they wanted to fuck you're a woman and they go and put you in prison for 30 years it's simple scary I've had people on my show listen to this I can prove it I know a friend of mine was going to do a job in Chemsmead he made a care gear he was going to go and rub the man with a gun when he turned up for it so he was running down to the shop by more white stuff more glucose more of a and he's put it in and put it in and said it weighed a kilo so he's got all the receipts from the shop where he bought it it is not cocaine it is saccharine sugar that's all it is he's made it wrapped it all up gone on the meat and the men with the money got away the police coming on caught him with the cocaine but he's not worried he ain't real and they sent it away to analyse but he's not worried he's got 82% through fucks sick now they're fucked because the gun weren't real they've turned up the people with the money got away and the cocaine ain't real so they've got all that surveillance for fuckers and what they've done is I would say to my mate pass that on the MOT oh you're the doorman when he comes in let him in for nothing or when he comes in kick his fucking head in they do that and they go make that 78% and he goes of course and when he goes to court if you've had it checked it's 78% you cannot it's against the law you can't go oh that's not right and they go stop it's been checked in the state and they go nobody will check it I'm not telling you who he was you can't imagine can you I've just done three months on my mind not worried so no one's coming home today and they just went no you can't blame anyone you can't go and have it checked again that bloke said no it's 78% and he's got all the things to prove what he's like 10 year you've been stabbed short nose bitten off what one was the worst I'd like to have had none of them broken heart that's everything else getting your nose bit off that one's he's lying on top of me and when he actually went he was holding my hands we couldn't do nothing and he leaned up on me and went sorry Dave I'm freaking sorry and he went it was on my bone it was on the bone and I was just going my mouth was filling up with water and it was like an electric shock you know when you touch an electric shock and you go for about half a second it was like that for about 30 seconds on my nose I'm going to die of I can't breathe a mass in my blood and I've got to put it out and while his teeth was on my bone he was right as I pulled it right that way to there when there was no bone in the middle he just took all of that bit off his teeth met and all of that that will come off where's my trumpet the thing in the pain of it got my hand out and as hard as I could one thing I pushed it into his eye and pulled him off me on the top and his eye came out on the little bits and that is just stupid I know this sounds unreal not gangstery but when I actually come out on the sticks the first thing that came into my head was I wonder if he can see behind him I wonder if he can go like that I don't know why I thought that I was hurting anyway and as I was breathing it was horrific and as I was breathing in you got that head freeze like an ice cream I was going and I got him off me like that and then he stood up and when I stood up I could see clearly but double so I could see both of you sitting there but it was clear I could touch each one there was no fuzzy bits around the edge and I was like wow you know when you squeeze a spot on your nose it makes a tears water and I couldn't be eyes of war and I couldn't see what one was real and my nose just had a big hole wherever I was going and I could see it was like wow and then it went on and on it went on again and he bit me low but you know it was awful I never fought a man before then at home You speak about heartbreak as well Dave even though you've got the persona as the big loud bubbly man we all struggle in life no matter how tough you are even the toughest men have become the weakest do you look back in life sometimes as well and wish you could have changed a few things I'd really love to say no because there's not a lot of things I've changed because the bad things that happened they're the things that learn new in life the things that actually hurt you losing that boxing match will help Anthony Joshua more than all the ones he's won I believe so and things like that you know getting hurt going to prison although it's horrible any day I wanted to go home what I learnt from going there stopped me ever going back again so you learn from being hurt but the hurt I got from when you lose your wife and a child I lost a child that was murdered and seven weeks after it me and the wife were at such loggerheads we split up that is I'd change that criminal wise because I haven't got big scars down my face I haven't done 25 years in prison I haven't got bullet holes in the run my front doors open, my back gates open because I could say I wouldn't change anything crime wise even the ones I got caught I never got loads of burden so I can see the good in it because I'm now old I can see the long term value of it so there's a few things I would have changed but I'm afraid it would be more heart things family things any man in the world has a bad day night at work window cleaning, windows full out football you get an own goal everyone has a bad day criminal you have a bad day you go to prison so you have tried to have as many fucking least bad days as possible and how you do that is you make sure you're all right with your missus every day I'm telling you a fucking joke make sure that you and I are called every day and once you two are all right every day at least every night make sure you put your cock in even if you don't like it even if you don't like it do that every fucking night even so it becomes habit do it even in two minutes one minute for some people there when I'm just telling you because if you ever get the hump of her they're the days you have bad days when you're arguing with her and not a phone going you can't fucking fuck you too bomb shut the door then you're driving off going to work driving past roads you're meant to go down fucking doing all that on a phone when you're talking to her I forget that you don't need any of them as a criminal you're going to get nicked that day put away and the last days if your missus you was arguing you need to be tight you don't want to be going up don't leave me you know you don't need all so that's your most important thing get her straight and then you can go out and fight the old world sometimes I don't mean that romantically I could fucking kick them up the ass too but your own old woman need a backbone and the rest of the world you can nearly beat them all so going forward for the future for you Dave what's your plans what's Dave Courtney's plans I'm going for world domination I actually fancy me chances against Anthony Joshua now to be gone I'm doing a bit of training I've done a C up the other day I've gone into the entertainment world and it was all going beautiful I've made lockstock on myself and I've made my own film I've made records I've done they've stopped me going to America now because they nicked me for a bullet if you can't mind us you've seen it with them bullets they're not real they've searched them for 20 fucking years so they've said they've found a real bullet and they've stopped me going to America I'm trying to go into the entertainment world I'm a better entertainer than I am gangster I'm a better explainer what the life's about being involved in it now because I want to be it frightened me the whole drug thing ain't the violence let all of it it's just not what it was when I was I'd be no good at it You've ever done comedy Dave I do after dinner speaking all round the world I do a lot of voice overs for documentaries I help a lot of other people out with their books I do books Many books if you're dead sorry I've done nine but I'm halfway through two at the moment these are easy one newspaper I call on that side and then a couple of pages about that newspaper I call on and the rest are autobiographical and I'm going to bring another one of them out called do you remember that day because everyone that comes around although I don't see them a lot they've had one day where they go might have been 20 years ago and they always come around and go Dave do you remember that day that's how it starts a load of stories so soon I ain't got structure for the book I just want to do a load of stories I'm going to do it remember that day Any documentaries do you think you have plans for future? I'm halfway through one at the moment there's one done and they're selling it to Netflix there's another one nearly done and then something happened where one of us has got next and they're about to stop where are they now How would you love to do a documentary on what crime family or crime figure or underworld boss would you love to have done a documentary on tell their story I've got some people if you're going to go and follow someone around I've got some working girls that are the funniest women you'll ever meet in your life and the odd nut that he's got driving around looking after him he's looking after free prostitutes at a time dropping off and waiting there their stories are the funniest she is the most stunning looking beautiful creature you have ever seen in your life looks like it walks off the front of a magazine 19 years old comes from Croatia or something it's just it's like poker hunters with a strap on on it's fucking stunning but I'd have I'd get you some pickpockets some working girls some car fees blinding stories bank robbers in fact you rob a bank for a job doesn't necessarily make you an horrible person crime you just do that as a job prostitutes don't come home and fuckle their neighbours and bricklayers don't run home with a trow in the front room and I don't run around with a gungo it might be too savage it's tools of the trade on site go work and when you come home you're just a bloke don't matter what uniform you have on at work they're in charge she's in charge isn't it you're just a bloke I was doing interviews for the porn awards I was interviewing all the winners and I've seen you floating about a few times you're very well respected and about all there was do you love all that clearly you've got a fucking sex dungeon and how much do you love all that the girls stuff, the orgies and you still I've had it all my life I suppose I am mellowing a bit now but it'd be an odd person to go and find a lover for a normal everyday wife isn't it I have a two or three's up a couple of times a week there's orgies going on here swinging fetish party Friday where there's everyone be shaking everyone in here and that's your fucking steady in the shop as well how bad was your real days Steve don't want to talk about it because I'm having some kind of nuts but that works my job was looking after eight porn stars that went to Hollywood for eight weeks to see if they could crack it and my job was in a Winnie bago looking after them I'm like is this for real is this really and truly and then what was a nightmare that was while I was out there I made a blue a blade of blue for a porn film took the age test done it and they went we guarantee you DB we guarantee you this film will never be seen out of me he went because we're selling it to a hotel chain ring and it's only going to be shown in North America you can't take this film off of the hotel porn you can't take it off so it'll only ever be shown out of you I forgot it two years later I'm in fucking Vegas with my someone else's wedding she went, ain't it beautiful we paid the money and I was getting married in the morning so I completely forgot two years ago I don't know what hotel they're going to put me in for so I got married in the morning and then the afternoon while we were in the hotel sweet and she stuck the porn online on the old vibrating round bed with a smearer on camera old man old man no wonder your fucking heart was all falling to pieces man do you look back in your life David and go yeah it's been fucking way old it's days I've had heart broken I really do and everyone keeps telling me if I was to drop down dead with any bit that goes wrong with art attack and all and everyone goes go up and be careful at least I can say genuinely and everyone going I have had five lives in my life but genuinely can if I had someone going behind me I can smile it as I feel myself going for the winter screen and a crash I don't mind because I know no one could have there's many gangsters in the world you know and I have an every horrible nasty that everyone else is going to shoot with gangsters there's no one round here that you know that knows me has ever said it I've heard I'm a glass and no one has ever said it to me ever I've seen it on the on the farm talking never I've had a mental little life mental little life still plenty more to come how can people watch by your book Steve I think they're all on Amazon my new ones are going to be coming out in Waterstones and all that I'm going to go round and do a bit publicising them myself but you can get them on Amazon you can get all the DVDs on Amazon I've got a website, got a Facebook site you can go and check out I'll go round the world doing shows I'll actually keep everyone informed on the internet which I'm not really up on that social media stuff I do a lot of people I help everyone down here to all their music videos they want bits in the film I don't charge them not for me to be in the fucking thing if they want to end, damn it because I don't know what a touch it is so I'll enter my house I'll do it for you for an hour because you've lit us in your house and you've made us feel so welcome you're sure there's a few things that I've never seen that's because I've got a friend on that side robbing your cut he's got a nice black sexy merc you actually look like you should be as soon as that comes down the road everyone at the top of the road goes they're visiting Courtney guess, by the air cuts you're bald sir and you draw a black merc and you're already going to see one person Dave Follett is into your home and given the time, I know you're a busy man and given the time to speak and come on my show I really appreciate that and your story is unbelievable and all the best for the future if you get a good if you get as many clicks as you do I don't mind doing it for you again yeah we will and I appreciate that