 You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications button so you're notified for when my next podcast goes live. I think the wide out that I say is we're all involved in the modern world, we're all interconnected in some way and we're all doing things, often doing things that are damaging to other people. You know, you work in a pub, you sell in alcohol, we know that alcohol is just such a stone killer in our country, you know, you work in a tobacconist or a corner shop, you're selling cigarettes. I worked in the university sector for a long time and kidding myself that I was doing a good job for people who were coming to me to be told. If you don't mind, you know, you're doing wrong, I always knew I was doing wrong, even though no drugs were destroying me. Why do people continue to do it though? Is that with the condition and is that with the neuro pathways then reprogramming the just becoming the norm? Yes, it's an enormous buzz for people to do wrong. I mean early on, I think, you know, it starts off early doors, it starts off when you're a kid and you're doing wrong and it's a buzz when you get away with it, it's an absolute buzz. And some people get addicted to the chaos. I mean, for me, I don't like chaos. I like older, you know, I like older in my life if I can get it. But for a lot of people, for young people in particular, you can get addicted to the chaos. When you talk to a bank robber about getting hold of a gun, going into a bank and coming out with a quarter of a million pounds and then going somewhere warm and spending a quarter of a million pounds, you do start to wonder what that's like. You do start to wonder, oh, dear me, you know, maybe having a quarter of a million pounds, you're not going to have to work for it. You're not going to have to wait for your pension and lump sum in order to get out of that money. You do start to think and you start to think about yourself. You start to think, would I? Could I? I started to get to make some of the more, if you like, the iconic names that people would know through working in the media, through doing some media work and I did some work in the 90s. I did some BBC work and come into contact with Frankie Fraser. He was a proper villain. He was the real deal. He was the only one I've ever met. There was nothing about Frankie that wasn't to do with crime. Everything was to do with crime. Ben, we're on and today's guest is a good Dick, Cubs. How are you, Dick? Hi, James. Good to see you. Thanks for coming on. Lovely. So, sociology, a professor on sociology, which is human behaviors, society, stuff like that. Yeah, how people interact within society as opposed to psychology, which is inside the head. Yeah. I love all that stuff that I understand in the special underworld and the criminal mindset and so many different factors come into play, but you've just released a new book called The Business. This is your 10th book? That's number 10, yeah. This is different from the rest or the rest was all kind of academic stuff? Yeah, yeah. I've worked as an academic for over 30 years and I produced books. They did well. They were good for my career and they had an impact, I think, on the academic life in some ways on social policy, a little bit on government, just a bit. But I retired a few years ago and I decided that, you know, I banged on all this time about working class people, getting them in university and making open access and that kind of thing, successful to a certain extent, but my books were selling at 65, 80 quid, you know. They were going to academic libraries and they weren't reaching anyone else. So, if a mate of mine said, oh, yeah, you got this new book out, you know, Lush Light 2013, yeah, I want to read that, you know, don't buy it. No, I'm going to buy it and they'd come back and say, dig it's 65 quid. I thought it was £6.50. No, mate, it's 65 quid. And I wanted to write and I decided I wanted to write something that was going to be easily accessed to people that didn't have PhDs, that weren't part of the academic world. So that's what I've done over the last couple of years and I worked on the business. So I've brought together my research that I worked on since the early 80s. I went to university in my 30s in the early 80s and really started straight away looking at criminal life and researching it. And I've brought together this stuff that I've done really from the start and try to put it in a package which will be accessible to people. So with that information, you've gathered over the years speaking with criminals because you've spoke to some very high profile cases like all the London criminals, all the bad boys of the UK basically. But the business here is talking with thieves, gangsters and dealers. I'm fascinated and I must have for those interested in my old line of work that was quoted by Freddie Forman himself. But this is an interesting book. We'll promote us straight away by making people buy this, Dick. Available in all good bookshops and it's a bargain. Walter Stearns on Amazon, wherever there's a bookshop, hopefully it'll be in there. I always go back to the start of my guests, get to understand during why you get into that kind of environment, lifestyle. But let's go right back to the start first and foremost and find out about yourself, brother, where you grew up and how it all began. Yeah, I was born in in Plastite, which is West Ham, East London. And I was born in the early 50s, 1951. I was born in an environment which was kind of strange. I think one of the things that always hit me about the way that working-class culture, particularly London working-class culture, is presented. It's always presented like an episode of Only Fools and Auses, where all jolly boys and singing in the pub and doing dirty deals. It wasn't quite like that, that immediate post-war period was grim. Bombsites everywhere, shortages, meat was rationed I think to the mid 50s. It was tough. But more importantly, the people that were around me, my parents, the sort of life that they had had was really difficult. They had come through in the 1930s with the depression, the economic depression. Then came the war and they were either away fighting, as in case of my dad, he was away for I think five years. He was out in the country. Or like my mum and her family were at home being bombed. It was the east end, it was the Blitz. They were being bombed day and night. And when they came back, got together, got married and started to produce kids, there was a great deal of insecurity. And I hated insecurity. They'd seen death, destruction, poverty. They wanted to get away from all that. So it was a big, big pressure on respectability, not middle-class respectability, not speaking with a plum in your mouth and becoming a bank manager. None of that. This was about doing as you're told, keeping your head down, work towards a job, don't get in trouble at school, work towards a job and do as you're told. And don't get into trouble. There was an enormous fear about the police. The police were not regarded as Dixon and Dot Green friendly chaps, so you could ask the time and the time and their patio in the head and San Jo and the way. The police were regarded as quite dangerous. Don't let them in your house. Don't get near them. Don't mess with the police because it will go wrong. And in my family, there had been instances where it had gone wrong with older relatives and their clash with the police and they come off worse. So there was this great pressure to do as you were told. But it was a very working-class respectability. It wasn't about being passed. It wasn't about being middle-class. And that was the sort of environment I was brought up in. It was very tight. It was very restrictive, very restrained. But I was lucky in that my mum had twins after me, two, three years after me. She had twins and couldn't really cope with three young kids. So I went after my grandparents to her mum and dad. And that was a different ballgame. It was a different culture. It was only down the road. It was only about a mile and a half away. But they were veterans of an even deeper poverty. The old man had been in the First World War. He'd been in the trenches. He'd done all the stuff that his generation did. He was a trade unionist. He hated bosses. He'd been unemployed. He'd been blacklisted by the bosses because of his trade union work. And he knew people. And he'd take me out for walks. Most days, he'd take me out for walks. And when we'd go down, we'd go down Queens Road Market, which is Upton Park, the old market, which was a street market. And he knew people. He saw people. He chatted to people. And it was a bit more easy going. It was a bit more easy going. And there was a group of men that he spoke to, and just outside Upton Park Station. And he'd speak to them every time. And they were very respectful to him. And they were incredibly well dressed, smartly dressed. Trilby hats, big overcoats, dark suits underneath. And I couldn't understand their language, the way they were speaking. I spoke very quickly. I couldn't quite catch them. They always wanted to give me some coins, which I'd gratefully try to grab off of them. But the old man said, no, no, he doesn't need it and everything. And he was connected to them. It was years later when I started to do research. I started to chat to people, find out what was going on. It was years later that I found out these were street bookies, thieves, villains, generally. And that particular part of the East End was a gathering place. And my grandfather knew them. And he was at ease with them. And there was a different atmosphere between his attitude to life and Mum and Dad's attitude to life, which was be careful, do as you're told. Don't get into trouble. He seemed a little bit more easy going. And he had some stories. And over the years, I started to pick up stories from him and my other grandfather and older relatives about boxing, both boxing on Myland Waste, which one of my grandfathers did for Mummy. Bits of ducking and diving, fighting in Victoria Park, coming up against them, pickpockets. And there was stories, stories, stories starting to emerge. And as you, you know, when you're a kid, you just absorb things, you just pick them up, a word here, a comment there. So I started to get this idea that there was a world outside which where everybody didn't do as they were told, where people actually did take liberties, where people took a few risks. And I started to get interested at that point. Meanwhile, I'm sort of timid, sort of very timid sort of kid. And I didn't want to get in trouble because I was going to get a good idea if I got home and got in trouble. But I became interested in those that did. Even then, I can say now that that's where it kind of started for me. So that's, that was the beginning. That was the start of this. So it was always an interest from a very young age of the villains, the people who were kind of trying to fly under the radar, the fancy suits. It's like, it's not a turn on, but there's something about that life where you see it. When I grew up in Glasgow, you see them with the convertibles, the nice girlfriends, you think, wow, because when you're living in poverty, you see that and you think, I need a piece of that. Yes, the wrong kind of people to live up to. Because as the years went on, the majority of them died, they were in prison, their girlfriends end up haggard with all the beatings and all the bullshit because there was low vibrational people involved in a life that they think is going to cure whatever it is. Yeah, they got a short sell-by date. It's a short sell-by date and I was hanging around at school, particularly primary school. I remember there was some big families around there at the time and if you had playground scuffles or fights or anything, some of those playground scuffles could turn into a visit to A&E because these boys were wild. They were fighters. They came from families of fighters and anyone who took them on, if you won or you hurt one of them, then there was always a bigger brother, an older brother, a cousin, an uncle, or there'd be some uncle come out of a basement somewhere, they'd bring him out in chains and let him loose. There was a lot of it and that was working class culture then. It was that post-war era and there was still poverty around, but it was beginning to fade and I think that was the other thing that had a big impact on my childhood and my interest in crime was that for the first time in the 50s, the East End started to look good. The East End ended at a golden age. Previously it had been involved with poverty, there had been racism, there had been all these kinds of things going on. It was a dark place, a place of disease, of illness, short life spans, but there was a brief blip in the 50s into the 60s when things were thriving and it was mainly due to the docks. It's the biggest docks in the world. Stuff was coming and going from the docks. There was work, there was plenty of work. The environment that I was brought up in, there was plenty of work. I didn't see poverty. I saw people that didn't have much, but nobody had very much. We didn't have bathrooms or anything like that, but nobody else had it either. But people had work and they could put food on the table for their families and that had a big impact and people started to spend money and as I got older, I noticed that the pubs were always thriving. It was always noise and music coming out of pubs. People were well dressed. It was a smart culture. I think all working-class cultures, you know, at that particular time, you had to dress smartly and people did dress smartly. They spent their money on their kids. They looked smart. Some it was going on there, there was money there, but there was also an amazing amount of thieving that went on from the docks. As I got older, you came into contact with this. It was always someone who had something to sell or was looking for something to buy. Everyone was at it. As I got older and went into pubs, there was always a corner of the pub where there was a woman with a box of shirts. There was one pub I used to go into. There was a woman there. They used to call it Sally's shirt. The landlord called her Stratford's answer to Liz Tyler because she looked like she had dark hair and there was always a cloud of smoke around. She was always suing about hanging out of her mouth. She worked in a shirt factory. She was always nicking boxes of shirts. If you wanted shirts for your kids, for school uniform or whatever, you went to Sally's shirt and you bought them at a bargain price. She was a bit of a local celebrity. That was quite important. There was another woman down the street that I used to, a mate of mine, lived two streets away. I used to go down there and play football in the street with him. There was a woman in the corner house. I'll never forget her. We used to call her Mrs. Popeye. She looked like Popeye. She had no teeth. She had muscles. She had tattoos on her arm, suing about hanging out of her mouth. There was always cars and vans pulling up outside her house. Boxes would come out. Boxes would come out. Boxes would come out. Boxes would go in the van, go away. It went. It was later on that you kind of realised that she was a receiver. What she was receiving was it was stolen goods, nothing elaborate, no gold bars or anything like that. There was Madison's meat pie factory was close to us. There was always meat pies going in now. Shirts again, clothing and Yardley's perfume because Yardley's perfume factory was down the road at Stratford. The whole place stank of meat pies and perfume. That was what my area was like. A few chemical works thrown in and a couple of abattoirs as well now, I think of it. It did stink. But that was Mrs. Popeye. That's what she traded in. She was at it. Everybody was at it. There was an attitude. It was a kind of city ethic, a street ethic that I later picked up from other big cities, particularly big cities that had poults where goods were moving all the time. There was always someone who had something to sell, something to buy. I started to pick up on that stuff as well. So that became important. Is that a bit of survival mode people just willing to do when it takes to put food on the table and provide for their family? What said, like I always speak about people being a product of their environment as well, like all the bad people, people who turn bad. Everybody I believe always has a goodness in them. They're just certain circumstances, certain bits of trauma that can then trigger things to then lead them down a different path. What do you think about people making their own choices though? If you become a product of your environment, is there come a stage when you go, okay, I'm old enough to make my own choices of the totally programmed brain into thinking and doing what they're actually doing and they can't really adjust to what they're doing is bad? Well that ducking and diving culture was absolutely ingrained. It was branding into the walls of the East End, particularly my bit of the East End. So it was absolutely everywhere. You couldn't get away from it and you wanted to engage with it because you wanted to be smart. You wanted to be one of the boys. You wanted to be part of it. You didn't want to pay full price for anything. That was the idea. You had to buy something. Where can I get it cheap? Who can get it? And you often didn't ask if it was knocked off or why would you bother doing it? A good example of that was, as I said, my family were very straight, very strict, very tight and my mum was a dressmaker. She worked from home and the guy over the road was a docker. I remember being in bed one night and about 10 o'clock there was a knock on the door. In those days, before we had a telephone or anything, you got a knock on the door at 10 o'clock. It was something bad that happened to someone I'd died or whatever. And it was Mickey from over the road and he said, Mary, I've got some cloth for you, like last time. Oh, I don't know if I've won any cloth. What's it like? Oh, it's really good. It's great. You'll love it and it's great. I've got it here. Yeah, it looks okay. It's not knocked off, is it? So she had to get through this. I later on, when I became an academic, learned to phrase a neutralization technique, you take the crime out of it. It's not knocked off, is it? No for a world that it is. And he'd go through this pantomime and he'd say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, it's not knocked off. You know, I got it from the auctions just like last time. Oh, well, that's all right. Then put it in the front room. So people can always neutralize it and always take the edge off of it. They take the badness out of it. But for young people coming through, for young people coming through, you didn't want to take the badness out of it. You liked it because it gave you an edge. And it made you feel, it made you feel like a wheeler dealer. You could look at these older guys who had money. You could look at the guy in the pub on a Friday night who was selling, you know, we had down the road in the docks, we had the biggest cold store in the world in the road docks. And the pub just on the corner of my street on a Friday night sold more meat than juice. It was just amazing to go in there. Everyone got their Sunday roasts or legs of lamb or whatever. That's where you got it. So you could look at that guy and say, oh, fancy being like him. He's got a nice suit on and he's doing well. There was no badness in it. You didn't see it as a bad thing later on. And no one seemed to be getting nicked. That was the thing. You know, when you're a kid, I didn't see anybody getting arrested for stealing things or for stealing and installing goods, being a receiver. Never occurred. Never occurred at all. It was later on that people started to get a nick when you got into my 20s. Then I started to see things going wrong. But those early stages, stolen goods, knocked off gear, all of that stuff, that was just part of life. I do think there wasn't many people getting caught. Was that because you were oblivious to it or because there was not as many people doing it? There was everyone turn a blind eye. I mean, it was the city of the blind eye. And the police weren't so concerned. Mind you, if they didn't owe you, if they were going to nick you, they did nick you and you went away. But it was rare. There was stolen stuff everywhere. There was lorry loads. If you wanted to be at the sharp end and wanted to make a lot of money, it was a lorry load. If you were just an ordinary person, it was a pocket load. I can remember all kinds of things that came out of the docks. And sometimes, remember being in a friend's house and his dad, who was a docker, came home from work. I was playing here at primary school. And he came home and I thought, oh, he's put on weight. He took off his donkey jacket and he took a sweater off. And he took another sweater off. He had eight sweaters on. He had eight sweaters on. And he just smiled at me. All right, it's been a work. That was it. And it was just like normal. And he was a very normal guy, a law-abiding man, a man who looked after his family, didn't get involved in crime, other than, you know, dipping into a crite. Crite dipping, I called it. That was it. My dad used to do that. He used to wear the duffel coats, but he used to steal LPs. Oh, yeah. All the LPs. There was no cameras, nothing in there. They used to dip the towels, stuff like that. It was just survival. But for me, that was the norm. And they were telling those stories. It's all family, men, friends, members, all shoplifters. And it was just normal too. Then you got old and you still think, but it's still somebody's business. It's somebody's going, there's always consequences. And you're saying they take the meaning out of it. Is that because they don't want to feel as bad because they genuinely know what they're doing is wrong? I think as much as anything, they don't want to be scared. They want to go to bed at night and sleep. I think that was it. At this stage, I think that was pretty much it. Can you block that out in your mind that you're doing something wrong and put it away somewhere, but the brain still knows what you're doing? What's wrong about it? It's a bargain. That's how it comes across. You're doing something. You're getting money for, as a young kid, people are getting money. They want to spend it on clothes and drink and whatever, the usual stuff teenagers want to do. For older people, it's, well, you put the money aside and you're having a caravan or the inclined or whatever and you put the money aside and you can have two weeks instead of one week and that kind of stuff. So it was extras. It was born of poverty. It was a culture that people inherited from back when real deep poverty was in the East End. It was. It was an extremely poor place. Every city had these poor places. The East End was London's. And it was a big area as well. In my borough in Borough Noon, which is East End and West End, 300,000 people live there. That's a sizable city. It's big. Take on Tower Hamlets and Hackney on top of that. The East End is a big old chunk. It's a big old chunk. Now, that culture that have been passed on, really from the 19th century right the way through the 20th century and I was picking up on it, I guess the tail end of it, into the 50s, 60s, 70s, that's something you inherited, that way of doing things. I think one of the things you said about it's someone's business and you're doing someone down and you're taking from it. I think the thing with the docks, my dad didn't work in the docks by the way. He didn't work in the docks but most people around me did and we have relatives that did. And the thing with the docks was it was casual work. So you turned up for work in the morning and you didn't know how much work you were going to get. You might get a day's work, you might get a week's work and then you might get another week's work or you might go a week without any work. And this had gone on forever so it was casual daily employment, very, very difficult, difficult to plan, difficult to look after your family, difficult to pay bills. So when people stole from from the docks, they didn't feel they were stealing from an employer because the distance between you and the employer was enormous. They were somewhere out there. It wasn't like working in a factory where you'd see the employer and you'd see the hierarchy, the under manager, the manager and the owner. You didn't see the end of docks. It was a huge area, massive area and you were moving from ship to ship so it always changed. So it didn't feel when I spoke to people since and talked to them about when I used to steal from the docks, it didn't really feel they were stealing from a person. It was just there and you picked it up and took it home and that was it. Yeah, but it made sense. Yeah, of course it makes sense but again it's still somebody's load, it's still somebody's shipment, it's still somebody in the docks who's maybe signing it off and something's went missing. There's always consequences of other people getting bothered, people getting sacked because I know people who sold a mass amount of drugs in their mind they think because they don't touch it, they're not doing anything wrong. I don't touch it, I don't pass it on but you're still sitting there to operate, you're still orchestrating it to then destroy another lives to then benefit your own. I think the wide out, I say we're all involved in the modern world, we're all interconnected in some way and we're all doing things, often doing things that are damaging to other people. You're working in a pub, you're selling alcohol, we know that alcohol is such a stone killer in our country, you're working a tobacconist or a corner shop, you're selling cigarettes. I worked in a university sector for a long time and kidding myself that I was doing a good job for people who were coming to me to be taught but a lot of people that came to me to be taught were quite privileged people. Why am I helping them, why am I doing that? We all make compromises, we all make compromises and they're not good compromises and they can chew away at your head but that's what happens. I think what happened with the kind of culture that I'm talking about which is typical of Glasgow, Liverpool, big cities, big cities, what happened when that stealing culture and that receiving culture, those networks of stolen goods, when that went and when it went it had a big impact because everybody was interconnected, everybody knew everybody, you could have a box of shirts or whatever or you didn't want a box of shirts, it wasn't a big deal, it wasn't a big deal. So you had that, when that went, when the docks closed down it was empty, the lorry parks were gone and lorries, I used to know people who were jump up merchants and they lived in the back of a lorry, that's what they did. When the lorry parks went, when the warehouses went, there was nothing except drugs because when they went, when all of that old economy disappeared, the jobs went, you had people without money again and they've been used to money, their families were used to money, they were used to a holiday, they were made of a car, they might be living in decent accommodation for the first time, they were the first generation but suddenly it was gone, what were we going to do? Where's the jobs going? You can't go down to the docks and earn a decent living and a bit on the side and all the rest of it, that's completely obliterated, that's disappeared. So what are you going to do? And with unemployment came drugs, they came side by side with each other, it just did and the most unusual people I saw were starting to make money, people who were really disrespected as families, families of drunks, families of no marks, never worked, never really had any money, no one took them seriously, suddenly they were making money, all they had to do was pick up a parcel from A and deliver it to B and they had a lot of money in their pockets so suddenly you start to see bars go up on windows, they were buying dogs called Tyson, they had a big car out, a big four by four out the front and they came out of nowhere so you had those families were coming through but also some of the old families who had been involved in lorry loads out of the docks and lorry loads from warehouses and things, they adapted to the drugs trade as well but that mentality of ducking and diving, willing and dealing, they just reapplied it to drugs. Avoid missing something else, they didn't realise the extent, how much in fact, do you think everything's planned though? Okay we'll stop this, we'll bring in the drugs and know how far it will spread and how easy it will spread. No, not got a clue, they're not, they're not analytic. Not them but the people who are pulling the strings to them be shipping that stuff over. They, yeah I think you do see more analysis, I mean when I got through the, my early work was on ducking and diving culture and it was also on detectives and how they dealt with it and how they were affected by it so I was in pubs, in clubs, talking to people, seeing what was going on but as I moved on I started to see people get more professional, you got into the 90s, the ducking and diving, the the sally shirts of this world if you like, they were kind of fading away, they were gone, they moved out of the area for a start, the area emptied out, all these resources, all these smart, sharp people, we did a bit of ducking and diving but basically good family people looked after their families and were part of the community, they disappeared, they moved out of the area, they went and as this new economy started off, this new economy got going, the drugs economy got going, I started to look at other countries as well and I eventually started to look at importation and you could see that there was far more thought going in at the point of, not always at the point of importation, so if you're talking about heroin you're not talking about Afghanistan, there was some going on in Turkey but you saw it along the way, as the drugs are moving through the Balkans, really it's almost a separate deal, a separate enterprise, it gets to Romania, it gets to Bulgaria, it's a separate enterprise, then it moves on, it gets to Greece or it gets to Amsterdam, it's a separate enterprise, they're buying and selling and buying and selling and buying and selling, so at each point people are strategic and one of the reasons they're strategic is if it goes wrong they're going away forever, if it goes wrong they're going to wait for 22 years, 25 years, 18 years, whatever, they're going to wait for a long time, it's not like being found with a box of shirts where you might get a fine in magistrates called, worse wise, it's different, it's more serious, it's more serious, it's tenser, it's tighter, it's not part of the community, you can't go into a pub, I mean several of the pubs that I used to go into, they were like open-air bazaars, everyone was buying and selling, sometimes it was Nick, sometimes it wasn't, but they were open, it was quite open, it was quite open, that changed, that changed, when you're talking about drugs, you're talking about big sentences, people were starting to take things far more serious and it had an impact on the community, instead of walking down the street and you'd know people, suddenly there were bars under windows, people didn't know people, you got movement of, you didn't know your neighbours, you got movement out of the community and into the community, I mean the borrower I talked about, the borrower knew them, just over 300,000 people, a third of that population now churns every year, a third, so you've got 100,000 people coming in or moving out or moving around, they're not staying put, so you don't know your neighbour, you take your kids to school, the kid doesn't know the kids at school, everything became more delicate in a way, it became very problematic. It became more evil then, because you look at the consequences, nobody's going to get life in prison for stealing a shirt or selling a shirt, they're not going to get murdered for owning some of the money or for a shirt or a rack of lamb, but then the consequences of owning some of the money for drugs, the shipments getting caught, people walk right over each other's turf to get more punters, more money, means more problems, more evil, and to the world, do you think that's when things started spiralling then? Yeah it did, there was always the violence. The 70s, early 80s kind of thing? Yeah, by the time we get through to the mid 80s, you can see by then, we are in the UK, we are world leaders at drug use, lager and drugs, we're good at it, it's the one thing we're good at. Why do you think that is, I always call it an escape, but what's your opinion on that? I think it's a scape, we've been a repressive society for an awful long time and we like to let rip, I've got friends who are American, they come over here, I used to work at the University of Durham and I'd take them in a Newcastle on a Friday night and they couldn't understand what was going on, it was wild, wild, wild in the big market, it was wild stuff and it could have been in any city, it wasn't Newcastle, it could have been in any city and we do let rip, you try doing that in an American city, you're going to get shot, you're going to get clamped down on, it's very tight unless you go to New Orleans and even then the kind of looseness is regulated in a way, but when drugs came in, a lot of the old violence kind of rejigged itself, it had always been a violent area, it just had, violence was around everywhere, people got whacked at home, they got whacked at school, they got in fights in the street, it affected everybody, it affected whether you're a good fighter or a bad fighter or whatever, I mean from my point of view, the time I got into I think my mid-scenes, I was quite social, I was good at, I was a nodding acquaintance with the right people, put it that way and I was fantastically quick from a standing start if I needed to be as well at night and I was pretty quick, so you learn to cope with it, it's not all about doing the violence, it's about being aware of it, being aware of the possibilities, a student of mine called it a choreography of violence, how it's moving, is it going off, why are they talking to each other, why are they moving and why are they putting their hands in their pocket, why are they doing it and I got interested in all of that as well early on and certainly in the late 60s when I was starting to go out a lot more, there was a phase that we went through, you'll be familiar with this from Glasgow, of open raisers being used, you know it became quite a popular thing and I became fascinated in seeing, because that's the choreographed thing you put your hand in your pocket, they often had a case and I remember one particular place that was, is when Haronson Jackets at first come out, a nice pocket inside, these guys were taking cases out, taking the raiser out, putting the cases back in their pocket and opening up and it was very elaborate, it was theatrical the way they were doing it, and then they were maiming people in some cases, they were lopping bits off of each other and that went, so I became interested in that and so I saw all of this, but the time we got into the drugs trade a lot of these people who were good at violence and have reputations for violence were able to apply those reputations to the drugs trade, they were adaptable, they wanted to make money, they wanted to make big money, they weren't happy with a box of shirts or a leg of lamb, they were into making big money and if you had a violent reputation that was fantastic and some most unusual people, quite conservative people who were anti-drugs against drugs, thought drugs was a dirty thing, it was to do with hippies or students or people out there, not us EastEnders, us slowly working classmate, they got involved in drugs as well because that was the way to make money. What do you think of the violent mindset? People always ask me the question, do you not get scared interviewing some murderers and bank robbers, but I don't because what I see is weakness, I see vulnerability, I always say this stuff, but there's always a connection, every bad man is here, I've been bullied or abused when I'm younger, for me personally, for what I've learned over the last few years interviewing people, holding a gun or knife becomes a defence mechanism because they're so broken, they don't want to feel pain or hurt anymore, so they deflect it away to try and drill fear into other people because they're so filled with fear. What do you think of the violent man, the one who wants to be angry, the one who wants to hold the gunner, walk about with the open razor and keep the hand in the pocket as if he's holding something, for me the people who shout and scream is a weak man, that's vulnerability, I don't see strength in that, I believe there's a time and a place, like the craze who still get spoke about, which we'll touch on later on then, I feel that they were very well known for their violence, but for me they weren't well organised, a lot of darkness around them as well, we've got families out there who do bigger things, move bigger bits that nobody hears about, but what's your opinion on the violent mindset, can that be something chemical unbalanced or could it be, what is it in your opinion? I think the violent criminal comes to go at several different angles it comes from, without a doubt, a lot of abuse out there, a lot of abuse, when you talk to the older villains now, they're looking back, they've maybe not got long to go, they've had hard lives, they've served every time, they're looking back and wondering how did I get here, and they're normally quite open, I've found them quite open about what happened to them early on, maybe they weren't abused at home, maybe they had really good happy family lives, maybe that was okay, but something happened outside, something would happen outside, I know several people for instance who were stopped by the police, they had jobs or they were doing well at school, happy at home, not rich people, but doing well in ordinary working class homes, and then they got picked on by the police, they got picked on by the police, and once they get picked on by the police they go okay you treat me like a bad man, I'll show you how bad I can be, a good friend of mine Bobby Cummings for instance who went on to have a very interesting life, that's how he started off, he had a job I think in the shipping office, Bobby's the same age as me, he had a job in the shipping office, he was doing well, he was doing fine, and then he got picked on by the police, he got picked on by the police and he got stitched up, they planted a razor on him, and he lost his job, and he thought well I'm going to react to that, if you want bad, I'll show you bad, and Bobby's up, he's genuinely an old man, not a big man, he's about five, five, six, I think something like that, and in no time he's using weapons, and that's quite typical, then you get the family abuse, and you get the hard father, or the father who knocks the kids about, and that's a reaction, it's a kind of I better get him first, I better get my retaliation in first, because I know what it's like, I'm going to get beaten up, I'm going to get hit, but you do get people who like it, it's recreational for them, violence is recreational, it's something they're going to do, and I saw people when I was young, who would go out and to have a fight, that was what the night out was about, that was what it was about, and as they got older, they learnt that that reputation that they got from fighting when they were 16, 17, 18, they could apply that reputation to making money, you commodify it, you take the reputation and you commodify it, it's just like a kid who's naturally talented at football, and dad comes along and says, I'm going to take you along to this club, we're going to make money out of your talent, that's it. The same thing happened with these guys, we're violent, we're violence, now you get a group of these blokes together, we're all the same, and they come through when they're 14, 15, 16, if they're still together when they're 25, 26, they're going to be a force to be reckoned with, because they're in that mindset that everything's going to be sorted out from violence, there's no negotiations, you don't need to negotiate, you just take it. So I don't think it's one type of violent offender, I think they come together from similar backgrounds, but these different pressures are on them, the abuse thing is important, police picking on them is important as well, which is why I'm very wary about this stop and search business, because you do that too often, there's someone that's going to react, but also the recreational side of it, you know, you like it, a huge number of people that I know have got involved in serious violence started off in boxing, you know, this idea about boxing keeps kids off the streets, it does, and it's a good thing, but a lot of those guys started off as boxers, you know, you look at the craze, you look at Richardson's endless numbers of them started off that way, so I think it's quite varied. Yeah, people can go to boxing, they can change their mindset, they can mature them, it can give them some sort of structure in their life, some sort of meaning, same as people go to karate, taekwondo, whatever it is to give, but not confidence, but no matter what you're doing life, there's always going to be two flips of the coin, good, bad, whatever it is you do, but it's just to try and understand and break it all down for people to get, like, I believe any human can kill anybody, everybody's getting good and bad, I know everybody's got us, like, you can have the nicest person on this planet, but if you have their kids in front of them, everybody's got a point where they go, enough's enough, people have a snapping point. What was the fascination though, fascination, fascination for yourself to then go down that route of trying to understand the lifestyle of wheeling and dealing, criminality? Well, I went, I left school with nothing, much, a couple of O levels, I had to stay on an extra year at school to get the two O levels, so I went to work and at that particular point, late 60s, the way to, there was a lot of office jobs, a lot of awful, terrible office jobs like filing clerk, messenger, T-boy, and I went into that as did most of my friends, but we all came out of it, I don't know any of us who stayed in office work at all, and I stayed in that for about 18 months, I did that in different, in different settings, and it was terrible, I hated it, and a lot of my friends had connections, they knew people, they knew people that could get them in, in a building trade, they knew people who could get them in this job, that job, I knew nobody, I was going absolutely nowhere, so eventually I turned towards labouring, I was a dust man, I was a road sweeper, and that was all good, those jobs were good because there was a lot of ducking and diving in those jobs, and I was watching it, and that was interesting, and I did that for a few years, and then I started to go to night school, and I became a teacher, a school teacher, I went back to these then, became a school teacher for four years, but it wasn't enough for me, I wanted more, I'd had a little bit of learning at teacher training course, which was terrible really, I mean, I remember one day, the level at teacher training course was terrible, one day we did face painting, so there was 35 people, adults in this class with painted faces, you know, because we had to do that, because that's what you were going to do with the kids if you went into a class, it was terrible, it was dreadful, but I always fancied proper learning, if you like, as I thought we'd proper learn, I fancied university, I fancied CNF where I could go, so when I was 30, I sort of, I did actually bluff my way into uni, use my teacher training qualification to get into university, and I started to study, and it was odd then, because I was in my 30s, and I had a mortgage, I had a way of life, I had the little luxuries like hot food and clean clothes and stuff like that, and I found that quite difficult, but I went to uni and I started to read, and I found that the way that working class life was presented was not right, it was one-dimensional, I didn't like it, so, and I started to realise that maybe I got something to offer, with my experience and my knowledge of that life, of that world, and my willingness to, I had a great work ethic, still have, I can work seven days a week, after a couple of months I regret it, but I do it, I can do it, and I found I could do it then, out of fear, because I was scared I was going to fail, I was 30-year-old, people I knew locally were saying, you're a bit old to be a fucking student, and yeah, I am, so can we have a chat about what you're up to, have a chat about how you get into a container, and how you see it up afterwards, and can you tell me that, so I started to do all of that stuff, and it worked, it worked for me, and I started to look at, really, what had happened to some of the people I knew when I was 15, 16, but now they're in their 30s, approaching 40, some of them, and where are they now, what are they doing, how has their life changed, what are they up to, are they still ducking and diving, and some of them were, some of them were getting involved in some serious crime, and some of them had done some serious bird as well, so that's interesting, and I came across a guy, I met a guy called Terry Jackson, and Terry, Terry and I got on well, he looked like, he was like Bob Oskine's on steroids, you know, he was a terrific guy, great company, best man I've been in a pub with ever, and I got in with him, and he was a thief, Terry was a thief, and a good one as well, and he started to tell me bits and pieces, and to introduce me to people, and it kind of came together in my 30s, this, yeah, I can do something, and no one else is doing it, no one else is doing it, you know, I love academic work, I love to study, I think it's a, you know, I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to go and to study and to work in that field, it was absolutely great, but I'm also very pleased that I had the opportunity to come up with something different, something new, but it was via people I know, in some cases people I've known for most of my life, in some cases new people that I was meeting, and that's really, that was really it, and I was seeing the East End change around me, you know, it was changing, the Docs had gone, everyone, as I said, you know, everything was changing, where are they going, how are they coping, how are you going to, you know, you've plundered that lorry park on a regular basis for the last 10 years, what are you going to do now, where are you going to go, what are you going to do, and also seeing their kids come through, so I've stayed really close to some of those people for a long time now, for a long long time, since before I was, I became an academic and I've known their, I've known them, I've known their families, their wives, their girlfriends, I've known their kids, their grandkids, in one case the great-grandkids, and I'm seeing out, they're changing and they've adapted, and that's where the drugs things come in for me, it's really quite interesting, you get people who are good duckers and divers jumping in the back of lorries, life and soul at a party, always got some to sell, we've got plenty of gold around our neck, and you know, good old boys and the rest of it, their kids, that wasn't there, the lorry parks weren't there, you know, what are they going to do, and they had problems, you know, they had problems, they're grandkids even more so, and I've seen, I've seen some of these guys with grandkids who are doing serious bird, who are doing sevens, thirteens, inside, for violence associated with drugs. People who move big shipments, I know people who's, just to shift small bits of gear, box here, a few kilo here, and they used to think they were big time players, and I start speaking to people who then shift in 5,000 boxes and absolutely caning it, do you feel as if people, how would people be selling drugs, using the entrepreneurial ship skills to then moving it to something else, do you think they would still have that same business module, same business strategies to be cream of the crop, or is it totally different, because I feel as if it's just the same, tools and techniques to just then replace it with something else, or am I wrong here? No, for some of them it's the same, for some of them it's the same, particularly the people, there was a generation of people who were involved with lorry theft, they were stealing from the backs of lorries, then they moved up to stealing the whole lorry, in some cases hijacking the lorry, holding up the driver, et cetera, and they were well situated, that generation, I guess we're talking in the 90s now, that generation were well situated for bringing in lorry loads of cannabis, they knew about transport, they knew drivers, they knew bank drivers, increasingly they had contacts abroad, Amsterdam became very important for maintenance connections, and lorry loads started coming in, and these were people who when they were teenagers were mini gangsters, street corner villains, maybe selling a few ounces of this, a few ounces of that, and they moved them from there, they moved them from there, within 20 years, that's what they were doing, so that mindset again of ducking and diving and doing a deal became very important, you back it up with a bit of violence, not doing the violence, but actually having it there as a result, as a backup, that became important, because none of these people arrive in the market fully formed, there's a story to how they got there, so certainly when you're talking about lorry loads of cannabis coming in, and then large parcels of cocaine coming in, yeah, I think the skills that they picked up from their dads picking up almost in the air, you know, it's part of culture, it's part of our life, you could apply that too, you could apply, and they did apply it to drugs, so that became important, when you get to the higher levels and you get large shipments coming in, I think it's quite interesting that I did a lot of work with harrowing importers, we interviewed, I had a research team that interviewed people in prison, and it was really interesting as far as harrowing was concerned, it was different, harrowing was different from other drugs, with harrowing it was important to have businesses became important, if you had a business, if you had a business, it could just be a corner shop, travel agent, transport firm, whatever, that became important as a base, so harrowing became important, but also we found with people who were dealing with harrowing, they were far more tight-knit in so much as the people that they work with, it's people they knew, people they were related to, people who came from the same culture, the same country, all of that became important because the movement of harrowing across the globe is quite complicated, you know, it's quite complex, so the harrowing dealers always seem to be a little bit different, they seem to be a little bit different, this is not on the street, this is getting into the country, once it's in the country, hit the middle market, get it out. Why are they different? The punishment if you get an X is huge, you know, you are going away for 18, 20 so it's big, it's a relatively small market, it's a relatively small market compared with other drugs, but it's also the way it looks upon by a lot of people still, you know, it's looked down upon by a lot of people. Is that because of the damage it does though? Yeah, I mean 80% of drug deaths are harrowing based, opioid based, so a lot of people will shy away from it or say they shy away from it because it's still regarded as dirty, it's still regarded as dirty drug, it's not a recreational drug, it's an addictive substance, it's an extremely addictive substance, so that's kind of shyed away, that's kind of shyed away from, but that connectedness, they're pretty tight, we found that those harrowing networks were very tight, not loose net at all, very very tight, whereas the other drugs, you know. Yeah, cocaine is more glorified, absolutely everything like, but dealing with people who smoke weed is totally different, it was always more calmer, people always paid on time, cocaine's a different one as well, like it was always sharp, shifty kind of people, recreational, join themselves, but it was always harder to get the money because then as time goes on, there becomes a major addiction as well, because people don't think it's extreme, I used to do a gambling, I was a gambling addict, but I used to look around and I also battered the coke at the weekends and I used to look around, I used to look down at people who were homeless and maybe full of heroin and I used to think, look at the state of them, if you've got addiction problems for me, it's all the same, it's all battling, what's your opinion on addictions, did you ever work on that? Didn't work on addictions, but worked with a lot of people who were addicted via the trade that they were in. Taking their own stuff. Yeah, taking their own stuff, cocaine was interesting for that, you know, I remember there was one group we looked at, a guy got into a middle-class guy, he was a designer, I'd say, self-employed and he was going to dinner parties and cocaine was being used, he wasn't using it, but they ran out, they didn't have any and he said, well, I met someone on all of these, I think it's a data, I'll just give him a ring, gave him a ring, that was it, suddenly he's in the business, suddenly he's in the business, suddenly he's bought for this little group of people who have dinner parties together and he moves on from there, he moves on from there and he gets a bit more and he gets a bit more and suddenly he's got a network of people that he's providing for and he tries it out and he became addicted, because it was endless, you know, it's kind of an expensive business to get addicted to powder, you know, it really is, which is where crack comes in, but he said it's an expensive business, but he had an endless supply, he had an endless supply, so he was making a lot of money, he was putting a lot of it up his nose and that's where mistakes come in, that's where mistakes come in. If the human means, you know, you're doing wrong, I always knew I was doing wrong, even you know, dogs would destroy me, why do people continue to do it though? Is that with the conditioning, is that with the neuro pathways then reprogramming the brain to just becoming the norm? Yeah, it's an enormous buzz for people to do wrong, I mean early on I think, you know, it starts off early doors, it starts off when you're a kid and you're doing wrong and it's a buzz when you get away with it, it's an absolute buzz and some people get addicted to the chaos, I mean for me I don't like chaos, I like older, you know, I like older in my life if I can get it, but for a lot of people, for young people in particular, you can get addicted to the chaos, it is really, really exciting, you know, it's fantastic, exciting, you know, talk to bank robbers, talk to robbers about going into a bank and doing a bank, it's gone now that world of course, but when they were doing it what was it like? What a buzz, what a buzz, they enjoyed it, they got an absolute buzz out of it, they liked it, it was enjoyable, it was enjoyable and that can, you know, that can become part of you, that can become part of who you are seeking enjoyment, it's like skydiving or something, you know. Yeah they're adrenaline kick, yeah, there's the chemical balances come into play when you're getting a dopamine rush from taking drugs or robbing a bank where adrenaline is pumping and you're feeling alive, like see when that comes back down is that when these men really feel insecure and unworthy and not as important. And they get older, yeah, they get older and, you know, we change, we change as we get older and our attitude to older and chaos so it's very, very hard if you're doing a 10 stretch and you're not getting that rush anymore and you know when you come out your family's no longer there, your house is no longer there, you're 10 years old and maybe you're 50 years old, you can't do another 10, 15 after this, you can't do it. What are you going to do? What are you going to replace it with? There's nothing to replace it with, you can't do it. Some of it, I know some really interesting villains who got absolutely addicted to the life, they loved the life and drugs was part of it but doing crime was part of it as well, guns was part of it, threatening people was part of it, mad, chaos, craziness was all part of it. And then something happened, it was usually a prison sentence, usually a long prison sentence or nearly getting a long prison sentence and they get pulled up, what am I going to do with my life? And how did they change? Well they, a lot of it's to do with ego, they've got big egos, some of these guys, they, if they can redirect their ego, if they can redirect their energy that they've got, real energy, you know, I mentioned Bobby Cummings, Bobby worked with a charity for people who were coming out of prison, couldn't get mortgages, couldn't get insurance, he was actually part of changing, getting the law changed that these people could get it, you know, amazing but he did it by applying that energy and when Bobby looks at you, you know, it's like, you give him the money, he's still got that about him even now, you know, he's come up for 70 but he's still got that about him now. And another guy I know, Joe Baden, Joe was very much part of that life, he runs a, he runs an organisation, a goldsmith, it's called Open Book which takes people from addictive backgrounds, from mental health backgrounds, from criminal backgrounds and gets them started in education. And he's not a soft sober, he doesn't show them lightly but he gets them in and does good things with them but he does that by applying his ego and applying the energy that he had when he was a bad boy. And some of them can do it, it's a hard trick to pull off. Change is hard and which we'll touch on now, like my life was full of chaos for 30 years, I've been visiting prisons since I was as young as I can remember, I'm three, four years old, visiting uncles and stuff like that and when your life's full of chaos, I've totally tried to rewire the brain, stopping the negative things that I think were holding me back but sometimes when I'm happy, I think, why am I happy? Because I'm used to the chaos then I think about something negative and then it feels normal again. How hard is it really for somebody who's been institutionalised for 10, 20 years to then come out and try and make changes? I think it's really hard, I think one of the saddest things that I've seen is you're talking to people who have spent a long prison sentence at a key time in their life when they're in middle age, if you like, and they come out and they've got a choice to mate and a lot of the time they go back to the same mindset that they had previously. Even if they're not actually doing crime, they're still strutting around like they're jack-o-la-lad, they're still strutting around like they're cock-o-la-walk and that's really hard. The people I've seen make it, it's often via education, it's often via education, they start to read, they start to study and they get a sense of worth and well-being really through writing an essay and someone saying this is really good and no one said that they're really good at anything before and suddenly they're like, it doesn't matter what the education is, it doesn't matter what the course is. If they can get into education, if they can read, if they can start to think about, not even think about their own background or anything, think about something different, do architecture, do Italian studies, do housing studies, whatever, it doesn't matter. It's a discipline, it's something they can apply themselves to. It's a hard trick to pull off, particularly usually these people who haven't done well at school, they're not particularly good at reading, writing, whatever, but it is possible to do and the people I've seen have been successful when they've come out, yeah, education's been important to them, really, really important to them. It's quite interesting, I spent some time in his later years with Charlie Richardson and Charlie talks about that, he talks about education being very, very important and he was an interesting guy in some matters, he was an old villain, that's what he was when I knew him, he was an old villain, he was no longer doing villainy, but his attitudes, he was still there, the attitude to making a few Bob and his attitude to, he was interested in it, he wasn't like your stereotype villain who was in favour of the Queen and Old England and all of that stuff, he wasn't like that at all, he didn't like Royalty, he didn't like the aristocracy, he'd done a bit of reading, he'd done some reading on sociology, some psychology and stuff and he was like fervently anti-establishment in many ways and yet in other ways he was very much an establishment figure, you know, he was a bit of me of what a 60s gangster was all about, Farmore and Grey. Knowledge is power though, the brain will only repeat what it knows, so it's to feed it new information, new knowledge, to then question everything, always question everything, I question my methods, my agenda, your agenda, your methods, everybody sees the world differently, not necessarily because you've read from a book that it's all right information, mean you could read your book, you know the business and pick up totally different things night and day, change as possible, always promote that shit, anybody can change but you've got to work tireless to then rewire the brain to then be thinking different, to then create and change the patterns that you've already knew your whole life, which is a difficult thing because the brain will just repeat and take you back, which is the trickery of it but the beautiful thing is it can be done. I'll just say at that point, you know, in my own situation, when I was at school, I was usually at school, I was not good at school, I was told I was stupid, I was told I was stupid at school, I told I was stupid at home, I came, we had 31 kids in a class, we had two exams a year, one in summer, one in winter and I came 31st, I've still got my reports at home, I look at them every now and then, inshallah, I came 31st every year, every exam right away through my school career, except for one and I came 30th and the only reason I came 30th and not 31st was one of the girls in school got pregnant, didn't turn up for the exams so I got a promotion to 30th from 31st but I was always the mug, I was always stupid, I was told I was stupid and I acted stupidly for an awful long time, it took me a long while to actually say that actually I might have something to say, I might have some worth about me, you know, but in the back of your mind there is always that voice, just a teacher or your mum, your dad's saying, who do you think you are, you're a mug? Every successful person I've interviewed, there's always been some that have stretched out their dreams, if they've said to their teacher what about boxer or football player, they say nah you need to get an office job at 95, I've never believed in them, that's why it's important for people watching and listening, people's opinion of you doesn't have to be your reality, you create your own reality, you create your own life, you create your own worth but it's difficult, if you're not in a good place you must dig deep to then find some light which is, it's not impossible, everything is possible but it takes time to then try and register, even these conversations people will still pick up information and go okay that makes a bit of sense but then they'll forget about it but then something, sex won't down the line, it might pop back up again and then they can start making the changes, what came that when you started talking to villains, who's the villains you were speaking to at first? Well at first and for the majority of my career I've always talked to villains who are not big name villains, they're the ones who are in the pub, they're the ones who I was introduced to, they're the ones who were actually jumping up into the back of the lorry and coming out with, God knows what, they didn't know what they were nicking and I just found them more interesting than the series villains, it's only later on. What's the difference between a series villain like even if I say a hot man, they're still getting used, you're up on in somebody's game like all these henchmen stoning next to the villains, everything's like a game, a chess, like these people are getting used so the villain, even the men, I know some serious, serious people, the ones who are proper dangerous, well dangerous, they're not dangerous with violence, they're dangerous here because they get everybody else to do it, they move it like they orchestrate in the chess game and it's the ones who go, he's dangerous, the hot man, but is he real, he's just getting used, so he's a man for me, doesn't really think for himself, that's a man, it's letting somebody else manipulate him to go and do bad things. Well the people that I was interested in were kind of, they weren't being manipulated by anybody, the people I was interested in were, crime was part of their life, but not all of their life, it was part of their life, as indeed it was a classic East End thing, crime was always there for everybody and you could dip into it as you wished or not, no one was forcing you to do it, so no one at this stage was being manipulated, they were robbing a lorry, they were stealing a lorry, I mean one guy stole a lorry and told me what he'd done and told me watch police five on the old Shaw Taylor thing that was on a Sunday afternoon, so I watched police five and there's him driving the lorry because they needed someone, the police needed someone to go and pick the lorry up when it had been found emptied out of all the loot, he was the person who stole it, he was the person who emptied it out and he was also the person who then went and drove it around the track, so it was kind of, it was like ordinary, it was a little bit cheeky, it was a little bit impudent, it was people having to go, people saying I'm not a mug, I've got a shitty job or I've got no job, but actually there's something about me that's all right, so I can get this for you, I can get that for you, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, so I started off with those people and then I got introduced to, I started to get introduced to people who had been successful, who had been successful, who had made some money, who had made some money and invested in it, because most of the villains that I've spoken to, they don't see themselves as villains, they see themselves as businessmen, they say, oh yeah, I did a bit of this and that, that was early on but now I've got a business, you know, I'm legit, I'm legit, I'm just a business man, I'm just a business man, I'm not, I'm not a villain, I did, that was, that was 20 years, 10 years, 5 years last week, you know, that's when I did that, but I'm not really a villain, they don't accept, they don't accept that at all, now I'm straight, now I'm straight, this is, this is what I do, so I'll tell you what I used to do and that's usually how I get into the conversation about what they used to do and then, you know, you meet her several times for a drink, it gets an arm and blah, blah, blah, and it turns out they're still at it, but in a, more minor, in a more minor way, I started to get to, to meet some of the more, if you like, the iconic names that people we know, through working in the media, through doing some media work and I did some work in the 90s, I did some BBC work and come into contact with Frankie Fraser, he was a proper villain, he was the real deal, he was the only one I've ever met, there was nothing about Frankie that wasn't to do with crime, everything was to do with crime, very bright, very sharp, I've worked with him in the 90s on a program and then I worked with him in the late 2000s on a program for a TV program and I always liked talking to him because he didn't try to bullshit you, it was absolutely straight, this is what I am, you know, what do you mean businessman, I'm a villain, this is what I do and I'm really good at it, but he also had that intimidating thing about him, he genuinely was intimidating, Frank was I think 5'5", a small man, but he had something about him, he had an aura about him that was intimidating, right to the end, you know, I think he was in his 80s when I last saw him and he was still, this is who I am, this is what I do, but he loved it, it was, with him it was joyous, you know, when he cut people, he'd sort of have, he'd cut them and he'd do this and do that, you flinch and oh no, yeah, yeah, I did this, I did that and he was this and he was that, you know, he spent over 40 years in prison, didn't have a day off of good behavior, that was him, he was a criminal, it's what he did, it's who he was, it was his identity, there was nothing else about him that wasn't to do with that, you know, that wasn't to do with crime and he had a mine like a trap, he could go back and talk about in 1938 some magistrates called, the name of the magistrate and Jack Spott grasped up someone else in that court and he knew the guy who did it and knew his uncle and knew his relations and he knew it, that was his world, you know, he really knew it and if you said something, I spent a lot of time with him and if you said something that was wrong, you said no, you're wrong there boy, because it was bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, this is what happened, but the intimidating thing, when we went to, we went to meet him, I was doing a radio program for Radio 4 about crime in the Second World War and that's when Frank really started to get involved, you know, in crime and we went to his flat, he was living in the Angel Inn and we, I was with this BBC producer and we rang the entry phone and a voice came, he said, hello, hello Mr Fraser, it's BBC here, hello, this is John Major, he was the Prime Minister, this is John Major and we looked and he said, he really is mad, Franky Fraser, he's bonkers, what's going on? What do you want? John Major, what do you want? Just joking boy, come up, he's gotcha, you know, he's gotcha, that's what propagants do, they manipulate, they manipulate, so he's got you on a back foot straight away and then we walked up the stairs and he was waiting for us outside his flat, now he's five foot five and he's standing with the light behind him, he's got his jet back dyed air, you know, jet back shiny air, he had a smart shirt on, tailored trousers, he was standing at the top of the stairs above us, you know, he knew what he was doing, everything about him was about manipulating the situation, presenting himself in this intimidating way, once we got in his flat he was an absolute gent, he was very good, fantastic but that is who he was, that's what he did and he was a wind-up merchant, the second time I met him, I met him off the Wallworth Road in a pub there and I was having a drink with whom I used to drink vodka and lemonade and he got a bloke dressed up as Sherlock Holmes to walk about behind me and he was dressed up in a full cloak with a big pipe and everything and he was walking around behind just to wind me up, you know, that was it and that was Frank, that's what he did, he was a funny man but he was 100% villain. What was his upbringing? Straight family, he regretted, he said on a number of occasions he said that he was at a disadvantage in the criminal world because his family were all straight, if he'd have been from a criminal family they'd have known what's a cell phone, they'd have known how to do things but he didn't, as he said, he had to find out for himself how to become a criminal and very early on, I think he was about nine years old, he was working for the Sabines, the race course operators, he was working for them as a bucket boy at the race courses, wiping down the blackboards of the bookies and getting paid so he started off when he was just a kid and he loved it, he liked crime, he liked criminals, he valued loyalty, all that old-fashioned loyalty and respect thing which I'm wary of and usually it's a complete con and they're all stitching each other up, he wasn't like that, he was proper old school which is why he ended up doing over 40 years inside. And all we talk about is that some of these men can be intelligent and smart but if you're seven over 40 years in prison you're not that smart either aren't you? Doesn't seem that smart to me but it was a way of life that he chose, it was a way of life that he chose and when you read the beatings that he took and when he talked about the beatings that he took as well, he had the Bert, he had the Cat and Nines sales and he was badly, badly beaten when he was in prison by prison staff and he dished it out as well, it was a way of life, violence was a way of life, 100% way of life, he liked money, he enjoyed money but violence was really important to him and villainry was everything, absolutely everything. They become anti-forty and that's what we spoke on earlier, majority, in fact everyone that I've spoke to has been billed or abused, they get beatings, they get hatred, their certain things can trigger them, they're just, where they have that fuck it button and they just don't want to take it anymore and they snap. What about the craze, like everybody's fascinated, I remember watching the craze film I think in the 90s and I was like wow, bad men respected nice suits, money, there's a lot of darkness around the craze as well, like why do you think they're still, people still speak about them even today, like me speaking about them, why do you think that is? They're a throwback to the 19th century, they're something out of a dark east end, they're something out of Jack the Ripper's time, they're something out of the gothic east end about the craze, they were street fighters, they modelled themselves really on the street fighters who were around Hoxton and Bethlehem Green at the time, whenever young men, that's what they were about, but there was two of them, you got double, you got two of everything with them and I've spoken to them, I didn't know them, I missed them, I was too young, but I've spoken to a lot of people who were around the craze and they said, they've all said the same thing, if you're in a club or a pub and they walked in, you could feel the atmosphere change, it was two of them, it was double trouble, if one was going to hit you, the other one was going to do it, so you've got two of everything, but the other thing was it was the time, they were products of their time in many ways, a lot of these villains that we talk about, we all know their names, the Trame Robbers and the Freddie Fulmans and the Richardson's and the craze, that era who came to prominence in the 60s, they'd all been evacuated as kids, they'd all been evacuated in the Second World War, they'd all been sent off to the ends of the earth to Suffolk, to Devon or whatever, away from home and things happened to them, they saw things and things happened to them, they were not treated very well, they were partly starved, they weren't fed properly, sometimes they were abused, sometimes they were beaten, they would be the cockney kids in the local school, out in the sticks, I think evacuation, the evacuation and the Second World War, the bombing of the Second War and all of that had a big impact on that generation, a massive impact on that generation, as far as the craze were concerned, they came along just at the right time, you know, a pair of street fighters, they were boxers, by all accounts they weren't particularly great boxers, Charlie was the older brother, he was a good boxer, but these were boxers, and then those everybody box, the big, a lot's made about the craze box in everybody box, my dad box, at school everybody box, that generation, they box like we play football, you know, that's what they did, nonetheless the craze did box, they were fighters, but they were also street fighters, they got a local reputation, as young men do, as young men still do to this day, in their area, they were territorial, they had their territory and that was it, but things were starting to change in London, London became quite an affluent city, there was a lot of money flying around, even in working class households, the money was floating around, there was full employment for the first time in the east, never had it before in its history, there was full employment, there was money floating around, and there was opportunities coming up to transfer your violent reputation and monetize it, commodify it to make money out of your violent reputation, and the craze did that, now they were just one of many young men at that era, during this era, all over London, all over any big city who were street fighters, they had their street corner, they had their council estate there, they had their little few streets, that was theirs, and they started to commodify, they started to make money from it, they started to protect your money, going to pub, going to club, going to billy at all, this place is going to get smashed up tonight, if you don't give us 50 quid, 20 quid, 10 quid, whatever it happens to be, they didn't give it to them and the place got smashed up, so that's how they started, if it's absolutely crude, it goes on all over the world, that's extortion, that's what gangsters do, that is the definition of a gangster, it's extortion, you're taking money, threat of violence, that's what you do, so the craze we're doing now, alongside lots of other people, their violence was extreme, they were willing to use weapons, they were willing to use weapons, so they caught the eye of some older gangsters, but things were starting to change again, you had the, I think, when you think about the craze, you've got to think of some key changes in the 60s to the law, 1960, the Gaming Act, which made gambling legal, which opened up the West End to the craze, which is where they wanted to go, so that opened that up and they went into it, the other thing was the end of capital punishment for murder, that had a big impact, they lived out their lives in prison as opposed to being topped, so that was important, and the other thing was the law regarding homosexuality, that it was illegal to be gay, as we now term it, it was illegal, and because it was illegal, it meant that Ronnie Croy in particular had become part of this homosexual underworld, which included members of parliament, members of the House of Lords, aristocrats, and that gave him access to all kinds of things, in particular blackmail, and that made him very strong and very powerful, so it's a weird mix, it's a mix of murder, sexual deviance as it was regarded at the time, changes in the law with the Gaming Act, and you've got two of them, it's weird, it's weird, but they had a, they had a genius for two things, and that was violence and publicity, they were good at public relations, they were excellent at public relations, I mean, having David Bailey, the top photographer of the day, taking your wedding photos, which is what happened with Reg, and taking family pictures, which, I mean, are bizarre, I mean, if you really want to be a villain, you keep your head down, you make your money, and you're quiet about it, but they liked publicity, if they were around now, they'd be on, they'd be in the jungle with Ant and Deck, they'd be on Celebrity Come Dancing, they'd be doing all of those things, quite literally, you know, because they liked publicity, they enjoyed publicity, and that is why I think we're still talking about them, we've got the photos, we've got the photos, we've got the David Bailey photos, we've got those, we've got several films on the craze, none of them are very good, lots and lots of books, of which only about three or four are any good, we're obsessed by them, because they became the poster boys for what we now call organized crime, and that's why we didn't use the term organized crime, it wasn't used. But really that organized people in higher states really keep their cars close to their chest, I don't think they've ever done that, and then they think Ronnie, with the young boy, I don't know if it's 100%, was he not caught in bed with a 14-year-old boy when he gets sent to prison, for me that's a fucking non-slip, for me that's dark where people shouldn't really be respecting that, I get it, I remember watching the film, I'm going wow man that's unbelievable, then obviously when you start interviewing people you realise how dark the fucking stuff went with the craze, I don't know if Reggie was gay, do you think that's where the battle is well, with the anger, the frustration, the violence, because they were gay and they had to keep it under wraps as well? Yeah I think that had quite an impact, I think in terms of what they were, they were local villains, they were street fighters who came along at a certain time, Britain was changing, there was jobs, there was publicity, television, people start to get television, I mean they got interviewed on the BBC, the pair of them got interviewed on the BBC, that clip's available on YouTube, it's bizarre, it's absolutely bizarre, they were absolute one-offs, in terms of the sexuality I think, yeah I think it's absolutely bizarre the way that people idolised them, having been brought up in the East End at the time when they were busy, when they were very active, everybody knew about them, I mean it is very very strange how people would talk openly about them, I would have cries this, cries that, when George Cornell was killed in the blind beggar, I was still at school then, but we were talking about the cries killings, we didn't know George Cornell's name but we knew the cries name and we knew where the blind beggar was, so we were talking about it, oh the cries did that didn't they, did they, yeah that's right, my dad said, oh all right, bang bang me, it was very open, it was a very strange time, it was the 60s and it was a very strange time, the sexuality, the sexual deviance, the pedophilia is something that's, it's bizarre that that's not a blind eye being sown but it doesn't feature enough as far as the story is concerned because I think it had a major role in the way in which they progressed their careers, I really do, I think it was important, yeah I think it was at George Cornell the child and then I think they had a blackmail the, the, some day in parliament but I think the footage of them with a kid got destroyed and that's what I think they got their life sentence because they thought they were getting away with it, that's the information that I had that they had, somebody had judges, fucking politicians had so much dirt on people but the information they had all get bundled, they never had that, I've heard those stories as well but they were a bizarre couple, yeah I can't respect them, they were very, I don't respect any of them, they're just, to me they're just, they're part of history so it's not an issue of respect but I think the question you've asked about you know why do we still talk about them, I think that's really interesting because you know we've got a visual image of them, that's what a gangster looks like, they look like the crateswings, whenever anyone's coming through even now, things have changed so much, they're coming through now, they're compared to the crates, how often do you see they're worse than the crateswings, they're not as bad as the crateswings, they're the benchmark for villains, it's very strange, other policemen say it, I did a big, big project in the, in the 90s and we interviewed top police officers and everything, all they wanted to talk about was the crates, you know these were people, these were people who were in, who were in charge of investigations involving you know tons of drugs coming into the country, the way that crime is getting organised and globalisation and all that, actually what they wanted to do was let's have a drink and I'll tell you about when I met Ron Cray, this was and this was police officers, wanted to, wanted to talk about that so they've become the benchmark, they've become the benchmark and these films they don't help, I mean they're absolutely dreadful, they really, they really don't. Yeah but crime cells, my biggest views are criminals but the people who aren't of you, I'm very well connected now because of the people I interview and what I'm doing, the crates weren't the biggest money makers, they weren't the most violent, there was people bigger, stronger, more organised, but again it's the PR work of the promotion of the crates, again that all comes down to the stuff, the information they had against other people to then promote themselves as that. They made more money when they were in prison than they did out, they just did, it's what they did and they've made the careers of other people as well, who've come out on the bandwagon, in the stripe, from the stripe world you know, that's been important but it's bizarre, I find it bizarre, you know if you compare them with the Richardson's, the Richardson were far more well organised. Yeah they were serious people, they were more modern criminals, Charlie Richardson was a modern criminal, he was an entrepreneur, he was always looking ahead, right so as I say I only met him towards the end of his life but even then he had this about him, that he was kind of thoughtful, manipulative, you know Charlie had this great thing where he was, he contacted several authors and said that he was going to, he had new materials to give him for a new book and the idea was he contacted several authors and told him the same story including me you know, he died before I signed the contract but I thought it was really funny because that's what he did, he couldn't stop himself, you made money but he was a smart guy, he was a smart guy and he always spoke well about education, he wasn't someone who wallowed in being a villain, he didn't wallow in being a villain, he didn't wallow in violence, he didn't wallow in any of that, he was very pro education, he'd educated himself, he encouraged other people to get educated and you know in his later years I certainly had a bit of time for him. It's funny that as until you're a well-educated man now and you've wrote numerous books but yet I speak to murderers and bank robbers and there's a level of respect there where I like them, I know they've done wrong, what is that, how can even though you know you've done wrong and you're trying to teach right and wrong that for you to then like someone involved in a life of a crime and done what they've done and destroyed lives but how can you get that connection when you think you're okay, I try and see the goodness, what is that? I think it's about being humble and just saying that you could be in that position, I think it's about background, if you come from a sort of working class background and you're talking to working class villains, no matter what they've done, you can see why he's in which that could be you, quite easily be you, no doubt about it, you know easily, I certainly go over situations I think, oh lucky I didn't do that, lucky I didn't get caught for that, lucky I didn't look when I was a kid, you know and it starts with that but I like it when you know if you're talking to villains and they're thoughtful about what they've done, they're not always you know they're not always repentant, they're not always saying I wish I hadn't done it and you know some of them are saying I'm glad I did it because I had a real good time, I made a lot of money, I spent it and I just wish I hadn't got caught, I kind of like that as well because it's honest, there's an honesty, it's like he's like talking to Frank Fraser, there was nothing, there was nothing snide or no back dealing with Frank, he was I am a villain, this is what I've done, I can't tell you everything I've done because I didn't get knit for all of it but actually you know it's me, this is who I am and I kind of like villains like that, I've got several really good friends, I mean seriously good friends who come to my home, I go to their home and I've stayed in contact with them for a long long time and I always will and they've done things that that probably wasn't a great idea, you probably shouldn't have done that, you probably did a bit of damage there and they go yeah I did, I think the damage, I did that, but I put shoes on kids feet, yeah but what about this, yeah shouldn't have done that, shouldn't have done it, took a rest there, didn't work out, bash bash bash and they try to make, put it right, they try to put it right, but they're balanced, they don't all say, they don't discuss, I mean some of the interesting guys are people who get religious, I think they're really interesting you know and they've done terrible things but they discover religion when they go into prison and they go on a course, I think it's the alpha course, they go on the alpha course and they come out of different people and if that works for them that's fine, if they're able to you know generate their energy in a different direction that's absolutely fine but it's rare and the people that I know just they acknowledge yeah I did some bad things, did a lot of good things as well, really had a good time, time to move on, time to change, I kind of like that attitude because we're all like that really haven't we, you know we can all look at things we've done and regret it, I won't do it again, actually I enjoy a lot of it but I'm older now, I've got a family or whatever, I move on. So if you're studying these characters and what have you picked up the most of and of you and villains and connecting with them and becoming friends with them even though they've done right, even though they've done wrong, they've done good, they've done bad but what have you picked up most, what have you understood more? I guess I think the attraction, the attraction of doing crime is really something that stands out for me, I didn't like and I don't like now in certain spheres of academic life when all criminals are presented as being abject nutcases who are irrational in their behaviour, yeah there's an element of that, they're over there, they're in that bucket over there, you know I don't deal with them but it's rational to get involved in crime, it is rational, if you're from a certain background it makes absolute sense to get involved in crime, it's not good and it's not good for your head after a period of time, that's for sure, I've seen you know a lot of problems been developed by when people start to think about what they've done and reconsider what they've done but it's entirely rational, it's entirely rational, when you talk to a bank robber about getting hold of a gun, going into a bank and coming out with a quarter of a million pounds and then going somewhere warm and spending a quarter of a million pounds, you do start to wonder what that's like, you do start to wonder, oh dear me, you know, maybe having a quarter of a million pounds, you're not going to have to work for it, you're not going to have to wait for your pension and lump sum in order to get out of that money, you do start to think and you start to think about yourself, you start to think would I, could I, you're not going to do it but I think intellectually that's the way I go is to think about you know what makes me different from them, there's not a lot, you know I say here's breath, that's why me and them, they say here's breath, they say here's breath, the people I interview, I still think fuck, what if I get bang involved again man, the connections that I have to do this, do that, I'm thinking bigger bits, more money, this and that, your mind does go a wandering, yeah, yeah, what is that then like, for you to try and understand the brain, understand like sometimes I can think and argue with somebody and I think oh fucking kill you, you can't, like what is that, you you know you've killed them in five different ways and your mind does that make you say chaotic, what is, you don't act on it but what does that, what is that, well you're not, you're not acting, you're not, you're not acting on it, I think it's, it's entirely rational to go through all the possibilities. Is that normal though? Yeah, yeah, if you're from a certain background where you know where you're expected to hold your hands up, where you're expected to react, where you're expected don't let anyone lay their hands on you, they're the rules when you're growing up, you know, you're from a straight respectable family, don't let anybody do this, you must respond, you must respond and yeah and some people do, some people will actually do those things instead of just going over them in their brain and then calming down and saying right okay that's out of the way, I'll put that somewhere in the bucket over there, that's finished, but some people will do it but are they out there for must, I don't think they are, I don't think they are, the odd people are, I mean Frank Fraser is coming back to him, there was a man who liked violence, who did violence, who didn't mess with ordinary people, he just didn't mess with, he despised ordinary people, they weren't worth a punch in the mouth, you know, he just didn't regard them as being proper people, he hated them, he hated clerks more than any else, he hated people in the war suits and went to work in a suit, he hated those people, he hated those people, you know, those people are different, the Frank Fraser's of this world are different, I think also what's changed is the drugs which are around now, use of cocaine in particular inspires violence, you know, if you have those thoughts when you're on coke, you know, you might do it, there's a better chance of you doing it, if you've used coke and you think I can kill you, here we go, it might happen, it might happen. People in prison and stuff, the majority of people who do murders are intoxicated with something. Absolutely, and that's the scary thing, like alcohol triggers the anger and the frustration in the brain as well, where I believe it's the most glorified drug on the planet because people just think it's a great lifestyle, there's so much shit we can get into in detail, so many different things. For ordinary people alcohol is the big struggle, if I look at the villains that I've known and the people that I've known who have got involved in villain, I don't even call them villains really, these are the ordinary people, people who have done crimes, you know, since I've been looking at all of this and even before I went to the uni, if I think of them now, you know, how have they finished up? Alcohol and tobacco are the big ones, nothing exotic really, the old one or two, but the majority of them is drink and cigarettes and as they get older and they can't climb in the back of lorries anymore, they can't jump over counters in banks, they can't do this stuff, they end up slumped on a sofa with a bottle of supermarket vodka and a big pack of old open and that's the end of them and that's when, you know, by the time they're 50, they're old, 60, not many make it into their 70s, it's a hard life but that's what's happened to working-class people generally and the villains are just part of it. Have you ever spoke to people and thought you shouldn't be even beyond the streets because I speak to people and I think man, you still get that glare in your eye where I can see you still doing a murder? Yeah, I have, I have and it's, I've not been concerned that they can do anything to me. Are you allowed to threaten anyone? I'm the most, you know, to these people, if I say I'm a professor in a university and I'm doing this stuff, to them I'm a complete no-mark, you know, you work in a university, you're some pencil necker who works in a university and, yeah, I'll talk to you, all right, okay, and it either works or it doesn't work when we have a conversation, sometimes it doesn't, usually it does, actually, usually we get around having a chat and it works out, it works out, all right, but yeah, some of the people that I've met, yeah, they are dangerous people and they shouldn't be on the streets, they might not have a criminal record. That's the other thing, you know, we assume that criminals are people with criminal records. No, that's not the case, you know, there's people out there who haven't got records. There's a lot of people out there with records who are barely criminal. You think, well, how did you ever get nicked? The answer to that is it's a lot easier to get nicked now than it used to be. You know, since I started, I wrote my first book in 1988. What was your first book? It was called Doing the Business. Okay, what's that about? It's called Doing the Business. That's about the street, it's about ordinary crime, ordinary people doing ordinary crime, they jump up merchants, the duckers and divers, the people, you know, people I worked with and it's that kind of stuff and some stuff about detectives as well, because I spent some time with them and so when I did that, that was 1988, prison population, I think it was 40 something thousand then, now it's over 80,000. Double? It's double, it's double and it's so easy to get nicked now and drugs has got a lot to do with that, you know, people get involved, they go, oh, yeah, I'll just carry this, can you take this parcel over there, take it over, drive it over to the other side of London, can you take it over there, it built right in this 500 quid here, 200 quid, whatever it happens, yeah, yeah, do it, do it, do it once a week, you're laughing, you're earning a week's wages in an hour, it's absolutely fantastic and then you get stopped and then you get nicked and then you go away and you find yourself facing 10 years, eight years. I've known people and gone through the records as well, I had the prison records to confirm it. I've seen people who have been working, for instance, been working for a guy who runs a club and they're a gulf though, these guys are gulf, they do a bit of driving, they do a bit of cleaning, they tidy up and everything and the governor of the club says, I put something in the boot of this guy's car and he said, let's drive over to such and such, they're driving off and they get stopped right away, Echelon Cox coming through the window and everything, oh, what's going on? The driver ends up getting 14 years, the governor, who the drunkard is, who's sitting next to him, gets two years because the governor has got something to trade, the governor can trade, the governor's going to be out in a year, 18 months and he's got something to trade with the old bill, the golfer, the golfer, he's got nothing to trade and I was going on, he's not going to trade anything, he gets the 14 years, there's a lot of people inside like that, a lot of people who are just remotely connected to the drugs trade but it's give us a serious amount, you're going to go away for a long time and that's what's happened, since I started doing the work in the 80s to now, drugs just and the drugs trade, anyone can get involved, you don't need a background, you don't need a family support, you don't need an uncle who will speak for you or you don't need anyone to get involved in it, all it is is getting together some money, you know, I could go out there and see a mate of mine, how much we got, we got 500 quid between us, right, you go off to Amsterdam and he's back tonight, we're a bag full of pills and we're all international drug dealers, it's as easy as that and we won't get Nick first time but you will get Nick the next time because you're greedy and it's not a good idea but it's easier, it's not like getting together and you know robbing a bank, getting together and even like lorries and that sort of thing, it's different, it's easy but it's easier to get Nick. Yeah but to have an easy life is just to work your ass off naturally, like it all ends in disaster, I know so many people who do so many different things, it's not that they're bad people, they're genuinely not bad people, they're just good people making bad choices that then brings in negative emotions, what do you think Akarma? I'm not with it myself, I'm not with it myself but I don't know a lot of villains who are, when they come out they go well I deserve it, it was it was going around, I'll give you a great example, a good friend of mine jumped up merchant, back to lorries, he always had this to sell, that to sell, lots of gold, great guy, fantastic and he always said I'll never do anything that's nickable and by that he meant I'm never going to do anything that I can really go away for you know and if I get caught and I'm not going to get caught anyway so that's it. As the years went on his health declined, he gets you know he has a cut of heart attacks and things like working out to where we can't climb other walls and through windows, he can't do all that stuff, what am I going to do and in the end he gets asked to get involved in counterfeiting and what do you got to do? Well just pull this lever, pull this lever and it's 20 pound notes, so he's pulling the lever at least 20 pound notes and he's promised, he's promised like I think it's four grand a week or so he was promised, he starts to pull it, he starts to do it, he's in a caravan somewhere in the middle of nowhere pulling, working his lever, he gets so much from every 20 pound note and what he's doing is putting the file on a 20 pound note, this is a number of years ago, this is 13, 14 years ago so he's putting the file down on the note and that's it. He does all of that, he's never been away, he's never got been nick for anything, bit of fighting but nothing serious and he gets nicked, he gets nicked, as he says the biggest old bill I've ever seen in my life come in and nick him, treat him, he said they were gentle when he's old school, he said they were gentle when he's guy, but anyway the case comes up, it's the biggest case account of it in the UK's I've ever seen, I think it was 14 million pounds, this is as a one of 40 million pounds but later on it's been multiplied several times over they've realised that it's much more than that and he gets described in court as being a lieutenant in an organised crime network and he said in court, what do you mean lieutenant, what do you mean, I don't understand, organised crime, all I was doing was pulling a lever, he ended up getting five years. Now he went to prison at the age of 58 for the first time and he's come to terms with that, he cried, for the first month he cried, that was it, what am I doing, what's going on, he came to terms with it, started to do a little bit of reading when he was inside and became a listener and he worked with other people and he became, he came out, he's justified that by saying calmer, he said all them years, I did this, I did that, I'll wait, calm, that's the best thing that's ever happened to me, so he's a justification, he's making sense of chaos by suggesting that it was calmer and he has become a bit of a community resource, he helps people out, he goes to housing disputes and speaks for them and everything, he's got the confidence now to do it, the only qualification he's got is his certificate saying that he was a listener in prison, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it means Sam it's to him. I find that fascinating though that you don't believe in camera, that's a good thing because I genuinely do believe in it, I believe if you do good, you will attract good but it doesn't necessarily your life's going to be perfect, bad things still happen, you're still going to lose loved ones, you're still going to, things are going to trigger you, but I genuinely believe the majority, in fact everybody I speak to when you kind of break it all down, something does catch up with them, that's why they always want to do good, the people who do change because they think okay, the conscience starts growing because the brain's a sponge, it absorbs everything, so no matter if you're blocking it out or placing it down in a wee box, you don't think okay, I don't want to think about that, the conscience might eventually pops up somewhere, at least the most unexpected times when you start thinking, because when I was going through my changes, all the bad shit was repeating what I was actually doing, what I was involved in, and then you start getting sad and down because you think fuck me, is that what I really done? How did you never think of it then? I fear it then that you knew what you were doing, it's because you try and block it out and then it eventually comes to a head and then you think okay, I'm going to start doing good, then I started doing homeless work, then I started doing helping out people who are suicidal thoughts and try to help out as much as I can to try and put good back in the world, do you think that's just you then thinking? No, I think that's unusual for, I've heard older people say that, I've heard older people, after they've done their bird, after they've had umpteen heart attacks, because it's a chaotic lifestyle, you can't keep doing that for everyone, you know, it's absolutely draining and they're old, but at the time they're 50, they're old, usually, they're old because of the chaos of the lifestyle, you know, it does get to them, you know, it does get to them, but you're unusual, what you've said is unusual because for someone as young as you are to stand back and rerun this stuff and to try to change, to try to change things, that's kind of unusual because usually the thing is this ain't working out, I'm feeling bad, I better do more, I better have two lines, I better do a bigger deal, I better take more risk, I better do more, do more, do more, do more, do more, it becomes and that itself becomes addictive, but stepping back at the age you did to rethink your life and to start to do good for other people and everything, kind of unusual, kind of unusual because most of them, they don't get on like this guy 58 when he goes away, you know, he was, you could have made a comedy sitcom about him when it is life, his life was great, being out with him was the best, being in a pub with him was the best, it was always funny, it ended up in a sing song or a fight, it was just good to be around, it was good to be around, but he did a lot of bad stuff as well, we did a lot of bad stuff and it was only when he went away in his late 50s that he started to reassess, he came out and he used the notion of karma in order to make sense of his life, he uses it then, but that's in his late 50s, doing it young is unusual, most of the guys I know by the time they start to get to the point where they could be thinking about their lives and reassessing their lives, they're fucked, they really are, the booze, the chaos, I've done stuff with guys who were wheeled dealers and buying stolen goods and everything and they were up at three in the morning driving to a lay-by off the M1, meeting up with a lorry there, having a fried breakfast, going somewhere else, having six pints of lager, having to do that for 20 years, you're on your way out, they never get to the point where they are able to reassess their lives, it's very difficult, it's why people like Joe Biden, Bobby Cummings, people like that, I've got massive respect for them because they really did, they really did pull themselves out and they did bad things, they did bad things but they do, they do pull themselves up. What do you think of the prison system? It doesn't work, I think we're adding into a phase at the moment under the current political regime where we're going so you're going to see bigger sentences, you're going to see bigger clamp downs and conditions in prisons are only going to get worse. Start to come like a medica here in Israel though? Yeah it is, it is particularly with privatisation in private prisons, even though people tell me they've been in a private prison or a public prison, they say some of the private ones are better conditions than in a public one, nonetheless the idea of people making profit out of misery, out of locking people up is something that for my generation I find that very hard to take, it's living hard to take, it is, it's awful, it's absolutely awful but we're putting more and more people away, we are, you know we're putting more and more people away, we're inventing new ways to to house them, it's just warehousing human beings, whenever I've been into prisons for visits it takes me about a month to get over it, I just you know just going in and seeing people, when I know them, seeing what the conditions they're in, I've never seen anyone come out better at a prison, not really, they kind of, they can make a story up about what happens to themselves in prison and everything and they're reformed and everything but it doesn't, it doesn't reform people, it dehumanises them and I've never seen anything different, particularly when it comes to young offenders, you know we're not talking, particularly at the moment you know what's going on in news at the moment, we're not talking about this enough, we're not talking about young offenders, we're not talking about the conditions that young offenders are held in and the way in which really these are you know young offenders institutions are just preparations for a life of crime, how can it be anything different, how can it be anything different, why it's the way that things are, so yeah I can't see it getting any better. Yeah it's scary but I start a lot of goodness in the world as well, I start a lot of good things that happen, it's just again it's that mindset, everything's for the mind for me, everything's the mind, everything goes away back from schooling as well, like what do you think about also things passing down from generation, addictions, anger, frustration, people on the bloodline, what do you push your thoughts on that? Well yeah given that I've stayed with, some of the people I've stayed with for like most of my life, some of the research people have worked through with research, it's now 40 years and as I say I'm seeing their kids, their grandkids, great-grandkids, in one case great-great-grandchildren coming through and it does get passed on as a way of life. Now I don't know if it's, I don't know if this is, I don't go down the chemical imbalance route because I don't know enough about that, I go down the social route that if you're a boy and dad's coming in every few nights he'll come home or every few days he'll come home and he's pissed up or doped up or whatever it is and he's using a certain language and he's making his money in a certain way, no matter how loving he is, no matter how emotional he can be, no matter if he takes the boy at the football and everything, that idea that's what it is to be a man and it's about masculinity, that's what it is to be a man, to be this tough guy, to be this thief, to be this chaotic geyser who's out of his brain on this or that, that is what gets passed on, that really does get passed on and I see that particularly from fathers to sons and I've seen that a lot, I've seen that a lot, it's very difficult and it's a difficult chain to break because if dad makes it look attractive, why not, if dad's driving a nice car, why not, if dad's taking us away in a nice holiday, why not, and again it's rational, it makes sense to do the same thing. Yeah, kids become a reflection of their parents. Yeah, totally, so the sociology side of things, because it doesn't just come into behaviours and stuff like that, like there's so many different things involved with it, how did you end up getting involved with that? Well it made sense to me, when I went so, I started to go to night school when I was working, I was working as a... Because you've done things prior to that, didn't you, at university? Yeah, yeah. I was not doing law as well. No, no, I was, my only connection with law is I was, I worked in a law department, I was a professor of law for a few years, but I got involved with sociology because when I was going to night school and I was working as a road sweeper and a dustman and working, going to night school and I was doing politics, A-level politics I was doing and that was all very interesting, but I knew a girl who was doing sociology and she'd tell me about it, why don't you come in one of the classes? I went in one of the classes and there was a guy there and he was talking about East London, it happens to be East London, he was talking about East, oh there's this book at East London and all these people are like this and they're like that and they're always stealing from each other and they're like, whoa, hold up, I'm not having this, you know, it's a bit more complicated than that. Oh what do you know, well that's where I'm from and that's not good enough, you've got to read some books and it was like, all right, I'll have a go, I'll show you, I'll show you. So I started to read some books and I started to get involved and it seemed to be an interesting discipline for me, there was bits of politics in there, there was a little bit of psychology, not a lot but there was bits of politics in there and it kind of made sense to me, particularly a lot of the old stuff, you know, first day at university I got there and someone was talking about a book called East End Underworld, oh that sounds all right, so I got older the book, took it home ready, it showed it to my dad and my dad recognised people in the book, oh this is real life, this isn't abstract, it's not so weird, some floaty thing that's in a library, in some ivory tower, this is real life, dad recognises it, dad recognises the streets, I recognise some of the pubs, this is interesting, even though it went back, you know, to early 20th century when they'd know about it, so that really triggered it for me, but housing's got a lot to do with it, you know, the way in which in all of our big cities people have been shifted out, people talk about the inner city, in most places now it's not the inner city, the inner city, people can't afford to live there anymore, they've got to move out, they've got to shift out, it's too expensive in the inner city, they've got to go outside and if you want to know about crime, if you want to know about these crime networks, you want to know how things work, you take a step outside, as far as London's concerned from my point of view, there are certain parts of Essex that you go to which are, yeah, that's where you can talk to people as far as South London's concerned, go to the Medway towns, talk to people around there, that's where things go on, they don't go on it, it doesn't go on in the inner city anymore, it's changed, it's changed enormously, gentrification, price of property, people can't afford to live there. Do you think the pressures of life, living, not having money can be triggered points of people going down the bad route and doing the bad things? Yeah, people don't want to box their shirts anymore, that's not good enough, you know, they turn on their TV, they turn on their phones, they're seeing people with money, with gold around their necks, they're seeing, you know, at the moment, or I seem to see celebrities on exotic islands having holidays, you know, driving me nuts, we can't get out of country and they're on these islands, you know, so it's all about envy, it's all about let's be like them, let's be like them, and that's what kids want, you know, that's what kids want, it's what younger people in particular want, that's what they're after, they want real riches, they don't want a box of shirts, they don't want a little bit of dope to use at the weekend, that's no good to them, they want to make proper money, so they want to be millionaires overnight, you know, that's the way, that's the way to be, and crime is, offers, apparently, an opportunity to do that. What's your opinion on money? Opinion on money, I'm glad I got more than my parents said, because they didn't live well. Why do you think we crave it so much though that is only a piece of paper, do you think we're not sure enough gratitude towards life for what we do have, we still do have a roof over our head, we still do have food in our belly, I know people who get nothing out of the happiest people in the world, I've interviewed billionaires and I think, fuck me man, you're not happy because it's constant hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, and I think shit that'll be draining because people, everybody looks at the world differently. The hustle is addictive, particularly for men. Yeah, it's good to hustle, it's great to hustle because it keeps you alive, you see people retiring and it's 65, 70, they end up fucking dying because you're kind of just stopped, it's good to consistently grow and learn, but the money side of things is an illusion that we crave it so much because yes we need it to survive, of course we do, but it's just the way it is now, but it's not everything to make you happy. It's not everything, but we've commodified everything, you know, I mean just going back to my own experience of going to university, you know, it was free, to go to university for my generation was free, if you could get it, it was hard to get it, it was only 5 or 10 percent, between 5 and 10 percent of the population went to university then, now it's I think 50 percent the go, so things have changed, but it was free to go, now it's not, now it costs money, it costs a lot of money to go to university, you're paying fees to go, which means there's a marketplace, which means the universities are vying with each other for students, they're climbing over each other to get students in the place and they're letting students in who shouldn't go, some people who should go aren't allowed, can't go because they can't afford to go, it's a marketplace, if you create a marketplace about everything, about knowledge, about life in general, if that's a marketplace then yeah, it is all going to be about money and that seems to be what's happened, when I see the kids and grandkids of somebody old jump up merchants that I knew when I was a kid and knew through the 70s and 80s, when I see those kids, they haven't got the skills that their parents had, they couldn't jump up into a battle of a lorry, they wouldn't know how to get into a container, they wouldn't know how to replace the lock in a container, they wouldn't know how to do any of those things, but they desperately want serious money, not money to get by, not money to pay for maybeology or something, serious money and they want to be able to show it, it's no use having money if you can't show it, that's there, if you've got it, flaunt it and that I think has made a big impact and that's where a lot of young villains go wrong, they get money and they flaunt it and they get nicked, they get nicked so quickly it's unsure, whereas the guys who, when I've done these big projects particularly the European projects on drugs and drug markets, the guys who managed to keep going the longest before they get nicked and they usually do get nicked in the end but not always, but the guys who managed to keep going the longest are driving an ordinary family car and they're living in an ordinary house and they are, they are just keeping their head below the parapet, but for young people brought up in a culture where everything's flash, if you've got it, you've got to flaunt it, it's hard for them. Yeah, for me that seems vulnerable to me now, but again I'm still learning and growing, that's where I love these kind of conversations because I'll pick up a lot from yourself, like even changing interview techniques and picking up different things, it's, everybody knows something that we don't, so it's always good to pick up new things, how many different human behaviors are there, is there a limit to them or is there? No, it's evolving all the time, I mean particularly marketplaces, oh yeah we are in a marketplace now, we don't live in a society, we live in a marketplace, we're all buying and selling, whether we like it or not and you know I don't like it, you don't like it but we're involved with it, and that's, as those markets evolve, then market behaviors will evolve as well, and that will lead to changes, I mean I've got two sons, they do jobs that didn't exist when I was a kid, they just didn't exist and I know lots of people like myself and my age it's hard to understand what their kids are doing because the marketplace, the job marketplace, has evolved. So even you're sitting next to someone when studying the human behaviors, is there a limit of different behaviors that people react like when you're interviewing criminals, the way they sit, the way they function, confidence, low confidence, low self-esteem, can you pick up on that? A lot of that's generational, a lot of that's generational. Is that changing? Yeah that's changing, that's changing, I saw it start to change big time in the late 80s into the 90s with body shape, when going to the gym, getting big, using steroids, using a lot of weights, that became marketable and that was going along, there's a reason for that and there were changes that were going on in the cities. Our cities were basically shut down, there nothing was going on in the cities, the industrialization, factories were gone, mines were gone, everything with docks were gone, all these traditional jobs were gone, they were just emptied out. The only way that those cities could function was by selling alcohol at night, so you've got the nighttime economy blowing up and it just got vast in the late 80s into the 90s, it got enormous and you start to see bounces on the door. So if you went to Manchester, I think it was when we did a big research project in the late 90s in the 2000s on the nighttime economy, Manchester was one of the sites that we looked at, Manchester I think one square mile in the city centre, up to a quarter of a million people on a Friday night then, I don't know what it is now but it was a quarter of a million people then and there was like 20 cops dealing with a quarter of a million people, you get two fights and they're all off the street, but there was an enormous, there was hundreds and hundreds of bounces dealing with those people. So muscle became marketable, muscle became marketable and people started to work the door, hadn't worked the door before and it was about getting big. So when I'm talking to that generation and when we did the bounces work and I worked with some really smart researchers, really good guys that I worked with on that, when you're talking to that generation, they are their bodies, they present themselves in a certain way, they are their bodies and they're all about violent potential, that's how they're selling themselves, it's about that. But then you talk to someone like Frankie Fraser, Frankie's dead, I think 2014, 15, but you talk to someone that generation, five foot four, five foot five, you know, I can think of another guy that's about the same size as Frank, oh so why do you use guns? How can you use guns? You see it saves time and I don't get my suit messed up, you know, that's it. So I think different generations have got a different way of coming across, they've got a different way of coming across, different way of presenting themselves, it changes and a lot of that old school stuff that you get from the 60s and everything, you know, when you talk to those people, they've got a completely different way of presenting themselves. Most of them were not big, they could look after themselves because they were street people, they were working class street people, but they weren't big people, get the younger ones, you know, they're all big, they're all big, they're all massive, they're spending a lot of time in the gym and it's narcissism, it's about how big I can be, how do I look, all of that becomes very, very important. Persona? It's about persona and Frank, especially when they're talking to an old guy like me, you know, talking to an old guy like me, then they're going to want to, they want to present themselves in a certain way, in a certain way. So one of the ways of presenting yourself is to be intimidating, be big and intimidating, I don't care, I've been around that well for so long, it doesn't get anywhere, after about 10 minutes, good as gold, they're chatting away and they're telling me actually they'd like to do a psychology course at university, that's the usual way they talk about. So you get that kind of response, but then you get some of the old guys who aren't actually that old, some of the guys who are in their 50s have modelled themselves on the 60s gangsters and that's interesting, they turn up suited and booted, silk tie, slicked hair, very neat, very tidy and they talk about respect and they talk about this and they talk about that and they're selling you a line, they're selling you, because the respect thing really, you know, doesn't exist, good idea, but really, really, makes for a good film, but we've all seen The Godfather, we've all seen The Godfather and he doesn't really work. And on that subject, you know, they talk about The Godfather, one of the big changes in the policing of crime, serious crime in his country, came about in the 70s because of The Godfather, because the British police had a language to use about crime, so there was people going into court, been involved in skull-duggery of one sort or another and the police were saying he's a Godfather and they were using the language from 1973 from The Godfather and they were saying, you know, he's a this, he's a captain, he's a lieutenant, he's a this, he's a that, he's a that and it comes from films, so the police are very adept at selling these stories in the same way that villains are when they talk to you, it's interesting. What do you think of the mafia? What's it, have you ever studied them, their movements, the organization, how well it's run? Yeah, there's a myth that it's run well, it's used, it still operates in a cell. It's still in Italy, is it start from Italy and then move to America? Yeah, well it started in Italy, moved to America, the American model is an American model with links to Italy, I think that that's true. I'm not a scholar of the mafia, but I've certainly used a lot of the mafia studies to try to understand the links between different countries and the way that organized crime actually operates. I think one of the problems we get with the mafia is that the mafia, it's a bit like the Crade Twins, the mafia provides a benchmark for organized crime and it provides a language. So as I said, from the early 70s you start to see the police and other agencies using language that they've got from the film, but the media as well, you know, they talk about they're the Battersea mafia or they're the Brixton mafia or they're the Doncaster mafia. People know exactly what it means as soon as you say mafia and you tag that on to the end of a place. It's really scary, it's really, it's a hype. Then you actually look at these groups and are they really that organized? Are they really that structured? As far as the actual mafia are concerned, they've become far more business-like over the years. Do they impact on the UK? Do they come to the UK? They loan the money through the UK. You know, if you want to know how the impacts of the mafia on the UK economy, you look at the city of London and you look at the movement of mafia money and illegal money that goes through it. Back in 2008, when we had the massive recession, it was estimated by the United Nations that it was only illegal money, much of it mafia, but illegal money generally, that was keeping the banking system, the global banking system going because that was fluid money. They're money out to move all the time. It's coming and going and coming and going and coming and going. So it kept it buoyant. It kept it going. So really this idea of an underworld is a bit of an nonsense. It's an overworld and we're all reliant on it. Look at the amount of scandals there's been in recent years. I have major banks in this country have been involved in laundering of illegal funds. They just have. We're not in an underworld. We're in an overworld. Who was it that somebody not shut the docks down in New York and had to get the mafia releasing them from prison? Yeah, second world board. That was Luciano. Luciano was in exile. He was in Italy at the time, was he? Anyway, it was Luciano who arranged for that because there was an issue about the fascist planting bombs on the waterfront and they wanted to investigate it. So it was the naval security people went to the mob who ran the waterfront. They ran the waterfront. They ran the unions and the waterfront and they wanted to keep a lookout for people planting bombs and plotting against the American government. What it actually did was, when you look at that closely, that actually resulted in the gangsters on the waterfront killing off members of alternative their opponents of saying where they were. They were fascists. They were working for fascist sympathizers. So we killed them or we passed information to the security services that got them taken out of the game. And that often happens when you get these collaborations between official sources and organized crime sources. Organized crime are usually a lot smarter and they'll select the targets for the state to do their dirty work for them. But that's pretty much how it works. What about fear? Why is the human mind? Why is the human being so easily controlled by fear? Like you see these gangsters and you talk about persona, they could be five feet and five and not fight sleep but yet you think, I'm just really scared of them but yet you could probably have a tear up of someone six feet two, 18 stone. Why is that? Like some certain personas you're really fearful. I think it's their knowledge that they're willing to go beyond. Is that what it is in the brain to condition the brain that you're scared of something? It's beautiful. They're going somewhere different. They're going to take a dispute to a different place. They're going to do something that you wouldn't dream of. And one of the things that I've enjoyed my job over the years up to retiring and it's been really good and I've met some fascinating people, some really interesting people. But the only time I've become really uncomfortable is not out of fear because that's never been the case really. But it's when they start to talk, when some of the people start to talk about the violence that they commit, it's not like a punch on their nose or a black eye or nothing someone or whatever. They'll go into details about what it is like to put their thumb in someone's eye and to gouge it out or what it's like to cut someone or what it's like to do this or do that. And they go into detail and they do remember every detail. They do remember every detail and that's hard to take. That's hard to take and that's relentless. You talk about dark places and you pulled it back a little while ago and said, yeah, but there's some good things in life and good things in the world and everything. Well, I think the only bad side of the job that I've had is it's constantly being engaged with bad stuff. It's constantly, it's hearing bad stuff, thinking about the dark side, reading about the dark side, all the books, the reports, the government reports, the police stuff, I get all of it. All of that stuff. This is not bad time reading. This is not bad time reading and that can be quite difficult, but when they talk, when those people talk about it, I remember talking with one guy who'd done a nuns in prison and that he knew that there was a crossover between his wing and the nuns' wing at a certain time of the day and he timed it and he took the guy's eye out. He took the guy's eye out and he described it in such detail and I'm not joking, the detail of that simple thing, gouging an eye out, it went on for about 10, 15 minutes, what it felt like, what it looked like, the aftermath, then what he did to the guy after the eye was out. And when you're with people like that, well, that's hard to take. So who do you deal with that? Because that's what I do as well. I've heard of over 200 people and it's some fucking serious stuff, my mother's shooting stabs, people getting chopped up, people talking about child abuse. So how do you deal with that? Can we get PTSD from that? Yeah, I think so. I don't know how to dramatise it, but I think it is a possibility because you do think about it. I've met journalists who have had similar experiences at all this, doesn't bother them at all. I've known other journalists, investigative journalists who have compared working with these kind of serious violent offenders to being in a war zone. And they're at a constant nightmares and the memories that has. And it also affects you in other ways. You know, I've got family, I've got kids and you're constantly thinking, you know, I hope you're all right. Yeah, you don't get involved in this. You don't know where you're going and who you're seeing and what you're doing. Yeah. I think when my, certainly when my boys were younger, I was I was very, very protective and did all kinds of things. I weren't going so to just to check on them. I just did. I just did because I had a very, it gives you a very pessimistic view of human nature. Yeah, that's a scary thing because like I said, there's so much goodness in the world, but the stuff that we dig into, if we're constantly hearing that, if you're constantly watching the news, if you're constantly in the newspaper, you think the world's a bad place? You don't. When you get close to people as well, some of the people I've got close to, well, quite rightly, they'll use you as a sounding ball when things go wrong. So, you know, I've had someone go, I've got to talk to some, I've got, I need to talk to you. So, yeah, come round. And they come round and their faces all cut up and, you know, their nose is in another place on their face from it was yesterday and some it's gone wrong in a family. It's been a family dispute. This hasn't been like a, on the cobbles outside of pub. They'd love all that most of them. They'd love it. This is different. This is, it's a family dispute. It's a son has done it to them or a cousin or a brother and they've done summits at them and the brothers in hospital and what am I going to do? And you get the tears and you get, you know, you get that side of it. So, you act as a sounding ball for them and you end up talking to them about what they might do and calm them down and that kind of stuff. So, I've found for some people, not for everybody by any means, but for some people, you know, I'm someone they can go to or have been in the past, someone they could go to and talk about this stuff, which is fine, which is good. I'm glad they trust me enough to do that because everything that I do always anonymized, no problem. No one gets damaged by this. I change everything in order to make everybody safe and they know that, you know, they know that I wouldn't let them down. So, I'm glad that they trust me that much, but it can be wearing. It can be wearing. It can be difficult. They just need to protect yourself. So, breaking it all down then. What's your reflection on it? Always a certain trigger points for people who turn into different people down different routes or is there a certain thing that sticks out in your mind where people go down the addiction route or becoming angry? What's your run down and everything you've learned through the years interviewing people with the kind of criminal mindset? I think... Or is everybody just totally different? No, there are types and I think one of the big things is this thing about markets, the way that markets have emerged that when the markets that I started off with when I was a kid, looking at when I was a kid and understanding when I was a kid, when those markets were relatively benign, you know, ducking and dying, the boxer shirts, the Lego Lamb, this and that and the other. Yeah, there were serious villains and they did damage to each other but it didn't affect ordinary punters, ordinary civilians and you could get involved with it and then walk away from it. You weren't joining something. You didn't see it as a career. Most people didn't see it as a career. Some did but not many. You know, it was just something you could do. The way in which we've changed society, the way in which we've made the inner cities impossible to live in for ordinary people, the way in which we've marketized everything and everything's got a price on it and the way in which the young people in particular are sort of desperate for goods, for glossy shiny goods and to show how rich they are to have the car, the watch, the jewellery, the holiday, whatever, the way in which we've done that I think has been really, really damaging and I've seen that, you know, from through my lifetime, I've seen that those changes take place and I've seen a breakdown of the way, a breakdown of the way that people live, that they don't live in communities anymore. I don't want to shine up these communities. It's not all like EastEnders and World in the Power of Having a Sing Song away. It was never like that anyway but there was an element of looking after each other. There was an element of looking after each other and bad things happened in that but they didn't dominate. Nowadays everybody's in an island in their own house behind bars, behind locks. It's very, very difficult for people to live and I think that's damaged people's minds and damaged the way that they see life. In terms of addictions and in terms of people's engagement with this kind of world, there's more to be addicted to now. The commodities which have come into the country have made social life, everyday life, markedly different. You know, we had alcohol which we've never been, it's the coat within this country at all. We've always had a problem with alcohol and that's not gone away but now we've got other drugs which are coming in, constantly coming in and constantly mutating as well, constantly changing. These drugs are constantly changing which makes it very, very difficult for people to cope with and they create markets in their own. They create markets in their own which are very easy, it's easier to engage with that marketplace than it is to actually deal with the commodity. You know, you take this parcel, there it is, take it over there, I'll give you 50 quid. You know, if you're a school kid you're going to do it. You're going to do it. You don't have to be false to do it. You're going to go, yeah I want that 50 quid because I really want to put it towards a new set pair of trainers because all my mates have got them. It's that kind of world. So family structures have broken down, that's the reality and the breaking down of family structures means these very little shapes of people's lives and the main shapes of people's lives is engaging with markets, it's trying to get money, it's trying to get rich, it's trying to appear even richer than you are. And as you say, I'm looking at you, I'm trying to say something nice, say something good, I can't. But do you think that's your condition yourself because you're surrounding yourself and looking into so much negative behaviours? Yeah, I think it probably is. I don't know many people that it's gone right for. I don't know many people who have engaged with it. I know lots of people, the majority of people that I know have engaged with this world in some way and if they've stuck with it for any period of time, it's gone wrong for them. They're not living in a six-bit room mansion out on the sticks, a bit of Mock Tudor and a driveway and a carp in the pond. It's not worked out like that. It really hasn't worked out like that. Those who have made a few bulb and are living around the ages, they're nervous, they're worried, they're concerned, they know how they have made a living. I mean, one of the worst things I've seen is I go out, I have a drink and I'm with a group of people and some of them are villains, some of them are straight people, most of them are a little bit above. We're having a chat and it's all very interesting and we're chatting away and we're all of a certain age and then someone will say Billy's grandson or Billy's son, whatever, he's on the gear and they go, people are slumped and don't know what to say because drugs have brought a kind of a cloud over people's lives that there's no coming back, there's no coming back from it. It's very, very difficult. So instead of having like a family life when you say, yeah, my grandson's playing football or he's doing kickboxing or whatever, you hear those words on the gear and the conversation changes and it gets pretty dark and it, yeah. So that's what's inside of me. What about for anybody watching that's maybe still involved in our life, I think? You've interviewed a lot of criminals the same as myself. What advice would you have for them? Well, I'm not going to say get out because people that have been naive, but be realistic. I think be realistic. A lot of guys I know have been involved in crime are delusional about their chances of getting away with it and their chances of, their chances are the big money, if you like. It's rare that people get away with it. Some people do, yeah, that's it, but be realistic and be realistic about what's going on when you get nicked because prisons are not a nice place. I wouldn't wish it on my, well no, I would wish it on my worst enemy, but that's all. They're difficult places and the criminal justice system isn't fair. Justice is the last word to use to describe the criminal justice system and you might get more than you're bargained for and that's it. Again, that's part of that dark place. I can't see a way around it. You might get away with it, best of luck, but you might not. Yeah, there's a very high chance that you won't and that's the thing. I'm just going from what I've learned from people who I speak to, they never really get out outside of it and up here as well. They're still battling the fidget and the people they're sure that you can see some sort of trace. Even if they're described as a businessman and they've been out of the game for 10 years, you know, is something going to creep up and bite them in your arse? Is something going to go wrong? Am I going to meet up with someone? Is someone going to suggest this? So what if my kids find out? How do I explain it to them? It's a very difficult world, you know, and even if you accept that, right, you do this and I'm only going to do this and make so much money and then I'm out. Good idea, hard to do, but even if you do do that in your head, you know what you've done and your family might find out and your neighbours might find out and how am I going to deal with this and also you might start to remember things that nearly happened or maybe did happen and you've tried to put out your mind and it can come back and bite you. The guilt, the shame, the regret, the embarrassment are so many different factors. Would you like to finish up on anything brother? No, I'd just say I've really enjoyed talking to you and it's kind of, it's a weird, it's a weird sensation to look back on my career, if you like, and look back at some of the people, not going into a lot of the details about individual cases, but they're in the book and I hope people get something out of it. And make sure people get the book, the business, I'm going to leave the link in the description. Dick, if I'm coming on today and telling your story, I've thoroughly enjoyed that. Thanks, James. I'll take a lot from this myself but I like these kind of conversations, just seeing where they go and picking up new things because you're kind of on the same, kind of like the work that I'm doing, but I'm seeing, I kind of see things differently that I see the people. I don't know, I was trying to put a positive light on when I speak to criminals for some reason that I don't see, we see the bad stuff, we touch on the bad stuff, but there's always some sort of goodness there, they've still got that something about when you think, man, you're actually alright and do you think how they ended up doing that life? But again, that's just, I always enjoy, well, I always enjoy, a lot of the time I enjoy their company because it's the same background and they're, but for fortune, we could go. So, and that's always in the back of my mind, but just to finish up, I suppose the best nights out, some of the best nights out I've ever had in my life have been with some serious villains and I don't forget that. I've got to be realistic about it, I don't forget it. Thank you again, brother. Let's thank God bless you and good luck with the book. Thank you. Take care. Cheers.