I am Max Brandrett, master forger, and I made over 500,000
pounds forging art. This is how crime works. In those days, you didn't
have the technology to send them up to the lab to be tested. Today, you would never get away with it. They can tell you the day you painted it, the color, how old it is. The canvas has got to be right. You know, you can't forge. In my day, you didn't
have all this technology. From '60s, '68 to the '70s is when you could still hit it. But not today, no way. We used to buy what we called potboilers. Potboilers are old rubbish pictures that, somebody who'd be an amateur, but as long as the canvas
at the back was right. You couldn't do an old picture from the 1700 or 1800s on
a canvas that's mitered. You had to do it sort of
when it's looking the part. If you did it on a -- the auctioneer would suss it out. If they've got a bowl of
flowers on or a landscape, you rub it down, you sand
it down to a flat level, prime it, gesso, gesso primer, undercoat on top of that, white undercoat, do the sides, and then do your painting. As for starting, do the sky, get the drawing system done. With your Brolac undercoat, hair-dryer, then you'd just sketch it out. So that was the preparation. I think that's where the
experts couldn't work out, "Hey, well, if this is
a fake, he's got -- " I can match the color. It's just there. It's just, I see it, and I think I would know
the color straightaway, what to use, you know? If you use oil paints,
normally with oil paints, it takes probably about
three months to dry, right? But my little way of doing it was I found a quick drying process. Brolac or any house undercoat, you know, white undercoat, and then you put that with your paint, you put your hair-dryer over it, and it'll dry probably in about two hours. That's why we could do so many. And that was it. So the aging is a whole new world. What do you think happens when you've got a picture in a frame for years and years and years? So, when it's inside the slip frame, it will be clean, won't it? And all the dirt will show. So we used to age it. Fake it up with a walnut scramble, like dirty sort of tea stain color, and then get your turps and run your finger down with a cloth all the way around, so
you've got a neat line. So when they said, "Oh, it's been in the
frame for years and years," put it back in the frame, that was it. I wanted to crack the pictures, hence a very magic thing which somebody showed me years ago from an old guy that used to restore. He said bee glue is perfect. Bee glue is a Scotch glue, it's called. It's used for woodwork, well,
you're too young to remember, but it was always a
smelly sort of gooey look. So I bought 2 pounds of this, I put it in a sauce bin,
he told me, overnight. Next morning it's a jelly. Then you think, right,
put it on the stove, bring it up to a varnish. If you overdo it, it goes too thick, so you just got to get it right. Get your picture, right.
You get your picture. You give it a coat of this varnish, this bee glue varnish. You take it to a heater. It has to be an electric heater. Can't be dry heat. And you circulate the painting, like that. And you think, "God, it's
cracking. It's working." And you do a bit on the top of the sky, and you look at it. You can
actually hear it cracking. Wash off the bee glue with
warm water on your tap. And then, all right,
you've got water cracks. Empty a Hoover on it.
Rub all the Hoover in. All the dirt, all the
cracks fill with dirt. And then, after that, the nails that you've had in the garden for six months in a tin, because you put water and they rusted, make sure that the nails go
back in the place where it was. 'Cause they'll suss you out. Tap it all back, under glass, white polish, back in the frame, talcum powder, because
it smells after a while. It takes off the bee glue stink, and it rots, to be honest. And then hence, you've got it. So, there again. On there, looking good. Auction room, Saturday,
three or four of those, boom. [Censored] had the
finance in the beginning. He would buy the canvases.
He would buy the frames. He gave me light money in the beginning, till we got started. I was in Portobello Road. [Censored] would come along, and he said, "I'll have
your paintings, sir." He said, "I'll give you
200 quid for the lot." Came to have a drink with me afterwards. So we went to the pub,
just on Portobello Road. And he started talking about,
we want to do this big time. Yeah. I could have done it
on my own, but not as well. We would go in as father and son. Like, you know, he was 45. I was 19 years old. So, the first auction
we hit was Lots Road. We got into the auction
room, and, you know, if you sort of make them
look, they're very important. We would say, "Morning, governor." They'd go, "Yeah. Morning." "So, got some smudges in the car. So would you have a look for me?" And he goes, "Yeah, bring them in." He said, "Just there, fine." Said, "Dad, bring them in, will you?" So we bring them in a bloody bin liner. And he goes, "What's that down there? That looks interesting." This is the very posh guy in the desk. This is how silly it was. The auctioneer would
go, "Hm, Albert Darby." But what he didn't know that Albert Darby used to sweep
floors in Brighton in a pub. And I thought, when I
was painting these fakes, [censored] said, "Nice,
what are we going to do?" I said, "I know. A
friend, a old fellow I met was in his '80s, called Albert Darby." He went, "Yeah. Do that." So I put "Albert Darby"
on this fake picture, went into the auction, and he told me he's a listed painter. I went, "Yeah, right.
That's how much they know." I thought that was it. And then he said to me, "What's the other thing there?" "Oh, it's some cat picture, sir." Said, "Did you not know what this was? It's a Louis Wain." "Who's Louis Wain, sir?
I thought it was Batman." Sorry, sorry. And my, [censored] would go, "You see, son? This
guy knows all about it. When you've got respect like that, and the knowledge he has is incredible. So you look and learn." But, again, to make that
auctioneer feel like he's got the knowledge
and you know nothing. Then, the big thing was the auction rooms. When you go into the auction room, you've got to be careful. The guy on the desk doesn't go into the auction on the night, because he spots two of
you bidding for the bugger, then you'd think, "Hold on, why are they bidding
against their own picture?" Sometimes we nearly
bought the buggers back. And what we used to do,
you'd have a preview. So on the day, you would
have people coming in to look at the pictures, to
see what they wanted to buy. We used to stand next to
my pictures or two of them, and you'd pretend not to
listen. You'd go, "Oh." And the other guy'd go, "Hm, Albert Darby. It's interesting." Said,
"It looks pretty good to me. You gonna have a pop at this?" And you'd mark it down,
thinking, "Right, I've got him." [Censored], he was in one side, I was in the other,
and we used to ring it. So my sign was for when
we were bidding up. We used to get to 2 1/2 grand, and I'd either do that, that, I'm out, and he would carry on. And I used to do that twice. If you're going to overdo it, you buy the bloody thing back yourself. Yeah. So we hit the [censored] and -- oh, don't say it, don't say it. We hit Bond Street Gallery for 45 grand, and we got 25 in readies,
then the rest in a check, which we cashed immediately. There you go. That's the other way. Mostly dealers would buy. They would buy for reselling. Oh, you get privates, you know. We fooled a lot of people with ours. But we had never had any comebacks. Never once did they
suspect that they were -- well, how do you feel about this? You got a picture, you listen to all these
people talk about it, it's four weeks old, and it's dated 1797. So, you know, who knows? It just goes on. Somebody legged it. Somebody crossed us up, and they raided us one
night when I was in Fulham. Found all this bee glue, old paintings, stretchers, everything. Then they charged me with
forgery and deception. [Censored] got off. I didn't. I got nicked. And I had a single cell,
'cause I asked the governor. I asked the governor for
oil paints, he agreed. And then pencils and paper
and things like that. And so [censored] came to me, and we'd be visiting in those days. So, what'd he used to do? He used to bring the paper in, and he'd have it up his sleeve. And he used to slide out some paper that he used to nick from the library. Flip clean pages. The pages were really old, 1830s. So I could do Samuel
Palmer drawings in my cell, put it in my Bible, next time he came up, I was to roll them up and
roll them up his sleeve. He used to take them back home, frame them up, shove them in the auction. So when I came out, I had about 4 grand. So I was forging in prison. If I walked into Christie's or Sotheby's, a bloody bell would ring. 'Cause I'm on camera, aren't I? Well, I'm banned from auctions. I'm banned from every auction. In the old days, if
there's a bang on the door, I was halfway out the bloody window. But I don't have to do that now. I just feel content with my lot. Born in Buckingham Road, in Brighton. Basement flat, five of us. And it was poverty. It got so bad that they
decided to take us away. So that was the first place, was Barkingside, we're
into, the children's home. I did all that, came back to my mother. I ran away to London, and then I thought the only job you could
get was in the circus. So I went up to the
circus in Chipping Norton. When I left the circus,
I hit Portobello Road. Saw lots of paintings, I thought, "I can do those myself." And so I did about five or six pictures. Then off you go. Portobello Road, here I come. Do I feel remorse? To be honest, I just felt
it was survival, you know? I didn't sink. Perhaps if I was that
age. I was only 19 or 20. My book is called "Max Brandrett, Britain's
Number One Forger." And it's not about how to fake a picture. It's my real, my life story.
