London’s Most Notorious Bank Robber Noel ‘razor’ smithTells His Story.

am events glasgow limited is a family-run business that specializes in the creation planning and management of events whether that be weddings charity and corporate events right through to the celebration and party events we pride ourselves in customer satisfaction and have our clients at the centre of all that we do our best boat services allow us to bring your dreams to reality we offer our services from the smallest of detail to taking on the full event releasing the worry from our clients and strive on exceeding expectations our showroom is open daily please pop in to discuss how we can help [Music] make sure you click the link to subscribe to my youtube channel and also click the notifications button to be notified for when my next podcast goes live you can also follow me on my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest is i hope you enjoy this week's episode thank you and we're on today's guest we've got no razer smith how well you know look bad how's yourself yeah really good thanks first of all thanks for coming on the show um you've got a very interesting story spent over 30 years in prison 200 banks you've robbed um but while you're in prison you taught yourself out reading right you've come out won all sorts of awards for publishing articles now you're doing great things you're 10 years out which is your longest stunt ever out of prison but we'll go right back to the start kind of where your life began and where you grew up and stuff well i suppose really uh i was born in london my parents were irish immigrants from dublin they came over in 1959 and i was born in 1960 in cherry cross the old chariot cross hospital and really grew up until i was nine in in north london um and we kind of moved around a lot as a lot of families did in those days and north london were still suffering the effects of the second world war i mean seriously there was like bomb sites everywhere houses pulled down all over the place and um we were just really normal kids you know we just rambled on the bomb sites and uh done the usual stuff and then when i was about nine there was a big problem over in where we lived because obviously the streets were full of derelict houses and pulled down houses um and there was like four families living in a house i suppose a bit like glasgow you know in the 1930s in the tenements and that and they were mainly irish mainly irish immigrants um so we lived in a house we lived on the ground floor at the basement rather and there was another three families living on each floor another three irish families and one of the families had a newborn baby and left it outside the house in the sun um in the pram one day and came out about ten minutes later there was a rat in the in the pram biting the baby so the local papers got involved you know me mother and all the people off the um there used to be a television program used to be on in the evening called today with raymond andrews and it was like i saw a regional news program and they all went on it about hollingsworth street which was where we lived and all the families told how bad it was down there and everything and what was the council took notice decided to demolish the whole lot and they gave us all the choice of moving out so most of the people that lived on the street moved to places estates in north london but my grandad was living in south london at the time so we accepted a place over in south london in bellum and it was really strange because the first time we ever had uh the house we lived in we were in two rooms so it's the first time we ever had hot running water um and heating actual heat and was a gas fire in the house attached to the wall we couldn't believe it yeah the enemy was unbelievable luxury to us um so me and my brother had a bedroom and his sister had a bedroom and my parents had a bedroom and but we lived on the top floor of a block of flats and you know i found south london a bit different and um we eventually fitted in over there and uh it was pretty good is that when you started life i cried very early 13-14 yeah i was 14. um and i you know it's like saying i started a life of crime it was more a bit of fake really that that brought me to a life of crime i never set out to be a criminal in the traditional sense i wasn't really one of them kids i nicked a few apples out vultures and stuff like that and uh nick the odd mars bar out walls woolworths and um you know but i was never really sort of i used to like ticks in the dark green and zed cars and i probably had a bit of respect for the police even though my dad was a he was like he had no respect for the police at all he was a hard fighting hard drinking irishman a proper dubliner and um he taught us how to fight really me and me brother and when we first moved to south london our main problem was we moved on to an estate where there was a load of kids the same age as us and we're the newcomers so we had to fight everybody on the estate yeah before we were accepted had to run fast and yeah but kind of get a reputation see when you got you got your first the jail first when you were 14 yeah but did you get beaten up by the screws well before that even happened i mean what happened to get me into jail in the first place was the fact that me and me mate were bunking to school one day were playing truant and uh what we used to do was because i went to where uh one of the toughest schools in south london this wholesale secondary modernist pulled down now it was eight floors of uh glass and concrete and it was a boys school eighteen hundred boys all taken from the catchment area brixton stockwell really rough areas of south london so it was a bad bad school you know i had a bad reputation by the 70s and the teachers there was a thing on the news uh at one time that the teachers had to be escorted to their cars at the end of the day in case the kids attacked them i ended up um trying to punch a teacher out the first floor window so there was loads of fights and stuff going on in the school there was no learning really as such you know and um so we used to play truant so me and me might make her up in a place called gypsy hill in south london one day just you know when her school uniforms walk along messing around we had an idea that we were going to go up to the museums and try and pull a few girls you know i mean girls schools used to go on trips up there so anyway we're walking along and all of a sudden the van pulls up alongside us an old comma van and uh about three or four big blokes jump out and work close never really took no notice and they come around and gathered around it suddenly we're grabbed hold of and dragged into the van so we don't know what the [ __ ] going on so they get us into the van and they start slapping us about in the back of the van the van drives off and one of them is grabbed my hand he grabbed me by the wrist and another one got me finger and twisted my finger until it snapped so i became unconscious at this stage they brought me around again but they're still doing me mate as well brought me around and uh one of them tried to break my other finger you know break his other one break the other one so what they were they were a local burglary squad who had a bit of a reputation at that time around there in the 70s uh for violence and fitting people up we knew nothing about it we were school kids but what they wanted us to do was to admit to burglaries so they could get off the day you know they'd been to the pub at lunchtime and thought well we get a couple of lightly lads to admit a few burglaries that's that's done for the day so by the time we got to the station we were absolutely terrified we'd never been nick before it's the first instance of um dealings with the police i've got a broken finger we're in [ __ ] me mate's got a black eye we were willing to admit to anything i i was willing to admit the sink and the titanic start in the second [ __ ] world war anything you know so they got us um they got us into the station and they got the big book out and we cleared up 62 burglaries for them every one they put down we said yeah we've done that because we were terrified we were going to get killed so we were 14 and what em was my mother come up to pick us up because obviously they couldn't let us go on her own and when she saw my injuries she went into one obviously and when what happened and the police told us that me and me mate they'd found us on top of a wall trying to climb into a house to break into a house and when we saw them and tried and they chased us we fell off the wall and that's how we got their injuries so anyway kind of long story short about three weeks later we appeared in the juvenile magistrates called we told us alyssa the duty so listen we've never done any of these burglaries don't know anything about them so lucky we had a magistrate then who was willing to listen you know in the 70s magistrates courts were police courts but we had a fairly decent magistrate so she ordered an investigation she was wondering how two fourteen-year-old boys were doing burglary some of which were done at three o'clock in the morning and antiques were stolen grandfather clock was one of the charges we were you know two jobs yeah what the hell were we gonna do with grandfather club we didn't even have a watch between us so anyway she ordered an investigation after the brief explained everything and gave us bail and lucky enough they ended up dropping all the charges and we were advised to sue the police now i don't know if you've ever tried to sue the police even these days it takes forever you know you're going for years and in those days it was worse in the 70s so when we tried to sue the police it wasn't actually us doing it it was the solicitor doing it for us obviously but after that we became targets every time i left my estate the police would pull me into the back of their car give me a few slaps once they found out we were irish that was another thing against us as well this is the 70s you're talking about when the ira were active so it was um you know they punch us up they like get me in a car and twist me nose or pull me here or whatever you know give me a few slaps and then they started doing it to me brother um and telling me to drop the charges this was the idea that i would drop the charges if they harassed us enough and um eventually i decided that they kept raiding my mother's house early in the morning claiming they were looking for stolen goods and um you know in the end i had to think to myself when i thought you know i'm not doing any good here i'm bringing the police down on that house my dad hated that he hated the police um so i decided to run away from home and i decided to live on the streets at the age of 14 i thought it was a way of protecting my family from the police um and once i was living on the streets i had to think again and i thought you know what the only way to live on the streets is to be a criminal so if they want a criminal that's what i'm going to be and i knew a fellow on an estate across the road from ours and he uh i was living in an old car by the way on the estate triumph herald if anyone was interested in 66. but um i know this fellow who had a motorbike on the on another estate and he knew how to hotwire him so he taught me how to hot wire motorbikes and that became my thing i would go out every day i had absolute freedom i was 14 years old i was living in a derelict car i could go to bed whenever i wanted do whatever i wanted so my game was i would go out and steal motorbikes and drive around with no crash helmet looking for the police cars because this is this was my war on the police i wanted to get my own back on them and i'd pull up alongside the police car with no crashing kick the door and get a chase and i knew all the backstreets all the ways through the common and nine times out of ten they'd lose me but that was my fun and then after that my next move was to get into the back of police stations police station car parks and steal their own bikes these are still on the police bikes he used to go mad and i'd run the bikes into the ground then dump him into the pond up and clap them common so there was a kind of war going on all the way through 1975 between me and the police eventually i got nicked and um they gave me um what i've got nick theft of motorbike uh free motorbikes and uh driving without license and all the usual stuff and they gave me what they called the short sharp shock which i don't know if you've heard of that but back in the 70s that was like government policy for juveniles if you were aged between 14 and 17 you could be sent to a juvenile detention center for three months or six months and the game in the detention center and they what they've done was they recruited all the worst horrible screws from around the country they actually said if you want to you know if you're violent if you're a strict disciplinarian this is where we want you teaching these kids not to come back to prison again and commit crime so it was like the short sharp shock was like a [ __ ] nightmare from the moment they picked us up underneath the call i'm sitting in the court with me leather jacket on with me collar up thinking i'm a bit of a lad just been sentenced to three months bit terrified inside but trying to put on the front smoking a cigarette and all of a sudden the door opens two big fellas come in they're not allowed to wear uniform because we were juveniles but they bought these big long black raincoats with uh hmp epileps turned over that was their kind of uniform and they come into the cell when they went to me uh one of them said to me what's your name so i just looked up and i went no bang punches me right in the jaw jesus so i've just kind of come off the floor and i went to sit down again bang he's hit me again so i've gone down i'm thinking what the [ __ ] was that for so he said stand up he said stand up when you speak to an officer so i'm standing there so he said no what's your name so i said i went to say no bang the other one hits me from the other side in the head i'm wobbling around the cell so he said don't want to know what your mommy calls you i want to know what your name is so eventually i get it so i said smith so he said smith what so i said just smith bang another one in the stomach this time when you talk to an officer you say sir whenever you say anything you say sir straight after this was the start they took me out into the van there's another two kids in there one was about 14 one was 15. and they're taking us out to surrey in the van to this detention center and all the way there they're telling us what they're going to do to us when they get us down and they're probably enjoying themselves probably say this you know we were terrified us kids so we got to the uh detention center and the first thing you have to do is run the gauntlet they open the doors there's about eight screws there four on each side shirt sleeves rolled up kick you out the van and as you go past you get a slap or a kick or a punch and then they got us into the reception and um they stripped us basically we um we had to stand there for um i think it was an hour and a half naked 14 year old boys and a 15 year old boy in reception with nothing on whilst they went about their business screws come in screws went out and every screw that came in and went out reception made a disparaging remark you know look at the arms of them like bits of nutted string you know what i mean you sure he's not a girl and all that turnout you know just humiliation and what it was i found out afterwards it was like them setting out their mark showing us that this is what we were going to get and if we rebelled against it there was going to be trouble stop that i thought at you yeah so we were kind of terrified and they started everything with when i say go you do this and they'd give you the order and they'd go go so the first thing they do to us is bring us into a bathroom there's two buffs there's about six inches of lukewarm water in each bath and the screw said to us me and the other guy he said when i say go he said i want you to run in there jump into them baths and scrub your stinging bodies and then get out go and when he said go i got into the bath the other fella took him at his word he ran jumped into the bath came down broke both his elbows and that was him finished he was out the dc they took him away in an ambulance but that's how terrified he was he actually took him literally at his word and jumped into the bath um and that kind of taught me something i thought you know this is madness how is this happening i've nicked the motorbike and nicked a few motorbikes and all of a sudden i'm in hell uh meant obviously yeah oh it was it was terrible they had to close them down in the end people died kids died but they the things they would do is after about a couple of weeks the thing was this you're all in there after a couple of weeks you've got a common enemy which is authority so you know it's them and us so at night when the lights go out in the dormitories if you're talking you're all talking about what you'd like to do to them screws and you know what you want to do when you get out so we all banded together in the face of this kind of threat and after a couple of weeks there's new people come in you kind of got a bite you know i mean the screw might go to hit you properly seriously last week when you were new would miss you now because you'd be able to dodge the punch you know i mean there was still a lot of nasty [ __ ] in there i mean they'd make you scrub the corridor with toothbrushes and you know you always like the bed packs you had to square everything off and uh cleaning out the toilets with toothbrushes and all that kind of [ __ ] [ __ ] anyway after about three or four weeks i'd made contacts in there where in my area i was the only one who was really a bad little kid i met other kids from other places in london and outside london who are also little bastards like me so one of the guys i met we're talking and we're talking away and just what we were talking about was how to get money and and what sort of criminals we'd like to be because by now we're criminals you know we we've we've done the crime we're in the place where they're beating the [ __ ] out of us every day um so we know that when we get out of here all we've got to look forward to is more of the same i think you did that as well also because of the hate and your rage you had with them putting you through that the police and the screws and theirs have to say [ __ ] this i'm not taking any [ __ ] no doubt about it by the time i was 15 i was so anti authority it was unreal i you know at 16 i was punching the screws up in the air that's how bad it became because i couldn't take no more um so they give us a terrible beat and i met this geezer he was from north london and his brother we were talking about armed robbery and he said his brother had a couple of guns and he might be willing to sell one to me so at the age of 14 i'd get out of dc and about a month later i get the money together about things about 40 quid when i've seen this guy i'd make the contact with and bought off him a single bell stephen shotgun with no ammunition and a luger um with no magazine and the barrel was bent but we didn't care they were guns you know we're going to do an armed robbery and we need guns so i found a couple of fellas who uh who are pretty much at the same mind as me they wanted a bit of excitement and they didn't give a toss i'd met him in jail in the sharp shock and we all got together and decided to do a robbery so what we picked out was a record shop jesus christ we had only seen robberies in films obviously so that's how we planned it we had everything we had pliers to cut the phone lines we had the hooker and the shotgun we had rope to tie up the people in the shop we had masks we had overcoats we had stocking marks on underneath the mask gloves and it was middle of summer drawing attention to herself we had the getaway driver sitting outside in a mark one cortina with a ski mask on and a big bulky jacket swept pouring off him and we went into the shop to do the robbery and it turned out that when we got up to the counter and i've pulled the gun out on this geyser um the first thing i could think to say when i pulled the gun and it got cold in my coat where the shotgun had been sworn down it was kind of like an edge on it a burr and it got caught in a line under my coat and when i pulled it out there was a bit of red lining sticking on the end of it like a fake gun with a bang coming out of it yeah yeah yeah so the guy being on the counter just laughed he's standing there looking at us too and he he laughed so i went listen mate i said don't laugh i said stand and deliver which is all i could think to say stand and deliver i was cursing myself oh that's the embarrassment of it so anyway we told him a bit it said give us the money so he's he's like he's open to till took out a ten pound note and dropped it on the count i said where's the rest of the money he said he went to the bank at three o'clock oh so that's what we got left so i said being a bit of a fatty merchant as well and having planned all this i've grabbed the tenor and i said right and we made when should we tie him up and i went no but i said listen mate this is a grown man talking i'm 14 years old i said see that roof over there we've got a sniper on that roof he said if if you leave this shop or touch that phone in 10 minutes he's going to shoot you straight in the head he went all right i was just loved filming that sort of stuff so we watched loads of films about heists and whatever and we thought this was about to do it ocean's 11 with frank sinatra but anyway so anyway we got this 10 pound and we're on our way out the door there's a record wreck near the door and just out of i don't know why i grabbed the bundle of lps out the rack as well we jumped out got into the gateway car got away so our first robbery we got three pounds something each um and i ended up with about 22 copies of the basic rollers greatest hits made me popular with the local kids my sister and all that she loved the basic role as today i wanted a copy of that but and the other two guys were kind of like a bit disappointed but i wasn't and you know why i wasn't because i realized it wasn't the money i was doing it for the excitement to be in control of something rather than all the time i've been beaten by adults uniformed adults and and when i was doing a robbery i felt as though i was in control i actually had control so i wanted to do more i'm pulling the cow and do more and we did we went and done about five or six more and eventually we've done a rent office and nick 200 quid which was a lot of money in those days um and then we done one where we've done a sweet shop where an asian guy fought back and we might hit him over the head with a bottle of lemonade smashed a bottle over his head and then the police really were after us so we we ended up getting next to me pal and uh got reminded in custody for the first time by now i'm 15. um and we're going to latch me a house he mates the guy who done the fella with a lemonade was 18 so he went to ashford an older prison so the police we admitted the robberies in the end you know we pleaded not guilty for a long time and then decided well let's just stick our hands up and get what we're going to get so my brief told us that me mate because he'd been at boston before would get another postal sentence and i would get six months youth custody um he said he'd do a deal with the judge so we're up at the old bailly at the age of 15 i'm up at the old bailey when we mates are all in juvenile court and um go in front of the judge and the judge says no he said i'm not doing any deals here he said this is atrocious he said for someone your age to be doing this and he gave me a sentence under what was then and still is uh section 53 of the 1933 children and young persons act and the wording of that sentence is that they were allowed to give someone of 16 or under a larger sentence if it would have warranted if the charge would have warranted 14 years in prison but not more if it had been committed by an adult he said that's how they've done it he said as far as i'm concerned you're an adult he said you go to prison for three years which was a lot of time in those days so i'm 15 i've got three years he might got three years as well and uh i've come out the old bailey at the time in the old bayley when i was in the cells there was a lot of guys were up like the wembley mob people like who were proper armed robbers you know proper grown men and they kind of took me under their wing in the off bales hill they're all sitting around the table playing cards smoking all in like really sharp suits you know and giving the screws all that i screwed go and get me a cup of tea and all that and the screws are standing there these are my heroes i'm sitting there looking and they've seen me over in the corner little skinny fella called me over here come over here where you up for so i said i'm robbery they're all giving it out he's at the heavy already how old are you it's a 15 ah [ __ ] great kid yes yeah so they give me tea and roll-ups and everything you sit with us and when the screws come to pull me and say leave him here so i'm thinking wow this is the life i just want to be i want to be one of these guys i think that's the first thing you were accepted as well yeah together importance yeah yeah because if you're getting talk you're no good and beating all the time it does break yeah and it does and then you get that and it's like an affirmation that you're on the right road and you're doing the right thing so i thought you know this is great but i didn't realize i mean i got into the prison that night with me three years uh giving it a bravado as i come through i've already done dc you know it means i'm a hardened criminal by now at 15. and i get in there and i'm in um a special unit in ashford for juveniles on the top floor uh for violent juveniles and i'm swinging the shoulders as i come in my little skinny shoulders and that and the screws are all like yeah he's three years on robbery so i think i've made it got into the cell that night and when all the lights went out that night because they used to turn the lights out at 10 o'clock i just burst into tears missed me mother you know it was it was terrible and i was thinking myself wonder how many of them fellas who are in the culture they'll be in themselves crying tonight you know what i mean because they're all coming down and going what'd you get ronnie oh i've got a 12 hour you do it on your head yeah yeah and i'm thinking jesus so um so yeah so i got to i then realized the next day when i seen the governor that the sentence that i'd been given meant that i had to do every day of the sentence there was no remain time taken off no no you could only get out by gaining parole and you were given parole um you were allowed to go off pole after two years and then after two years six months and then on the three-year mark they'd let you out so not even half no and they had nowhere to put us but there were so few of these section 53 sentences of juveniles that they had nowhere to put it so they had to put us in with the other juveniles in the ball still system now in the ball still system you got six months to two years but your date was nine months most people went home within nine months so i'm doing three years i'm going to last about four balls of sentences so they they found a ball still for me called dover um and they put me down in dover and i just went into one like almost from day one i just didn't want to do this sentence you know you don't human beings are not mentally activity you know especially kids you know when it gets to about seven o'clock on the summer's evening they're trying to bang you up in a cell and you just want to be out playing football with your mates and you know the disappointment of all that so i turned into a mad thing i used to try and fight the screws every opportunity i got i'd try and organize all the other geezers to have riots i remember one night there was a we used to have to go to bed at uh nine o'clock in boston there was lock up time and i remember in the 1970s a thing come out a program to fill out dallas was in it and he he played a guy who could turn into an animal i can't remember he could turn into any animal and this was a new program that was coming out equipment or something i can't remember what it was and we were all seeing adverts for on a telebet it started at nine o'clock and we had to be banged up at nine o'clock so on this particular night it's on i went [ __ ] let's let's barricade up the television when we're not go you know let's watch it so we did about 40 of us barricaded ourselves in the telly room to watch this show but we never ended up seeing any of it the screws are outside you know they're screeching and shouting telling us we're going to get beaten and all that and we're giving it back to them yeah we'll come and try and take us down and it ended up in a big battle when they turned the telly off from outside anyway because the switch was in the office so we never got to see nothing but it ended up in a in a terrible battle and i got shipped down to the block um and i was down in solitary confinement for about a month and then they let me back up again and i had a fight with a geezer as soon as i was coming back up out the block someone looked at me funny you're looking at bang you know i mean we're rolling around the floor together so back down the block i go and this time i start threading the screws down the block and it's an underground block and every morning the stone floor of stone flags every morning they put a bucket and a scrubber and a cloth into your cell and you're supposed to scrub the cell floor so of course i went i'm doing three years i'm not bolster boy i'm not dead when i put the bucket in first i just kicked it over so they went well you have to scrub the floors i'm not scrubbing the floor end the story i said i'm not doing anything you say i'm doing three years i have to do it or what are you gonna do and then when we tell you what we're gonna [ __ ] do and they went away and about 20 minutes later about five of them came into the cell beat the life out me held me down and ejected me in the ass with something next yeah seriously yeah what was it do you know it was like actual i found out afterwards it's like what they call it in prison is slow me down juice it's a heavy heavy um antidepressant and kind of uh psych psychotic drugs enough what yeah they what they say is um you must have been ranked naughty no matter that i was i was a wild kid but i mean they held me down and injected me with that i'm out and i wake up and i don't know how long has gone by but suddenly i'm in another ball store seriously in a padded cell i wake up in a padded cell so a guy comes to the door opens the next morning i have a clue where i am and all i've got on is a pair of shorts and i'm in this padded cell and the door opens and there's a trolley there and there's a fella and a white coat and he's giving out medication another fellow with a thing and he went here take that what is it he went never mind what [ __ ] is it he went take it swallow it well i'm not swallowing it he said don't make us come in there and force you to swallow he said because we will and he's pulled a whistle out of his pocket he said take it so when i'm not [ __ ] taking it so he went all right it's a close slam another objection yeah sure enough oh how late i need a feet coming thinking what the [ __ ] they've come flying into the cell held me down bang injected and he put the pillow yeah [ __ ] hill so i'm in this and the next time i wake up i'm in the same cell the same pad itself but i've got a straight jacket on pair of shorts and a straight jacket now the worst thing i'm still claustrophobic to this day because of it the worst thing about wearing a stray jacket is that immediately your arms are incapacitated same with the body belt your face starts itching your head's itching you can't scratch it it's a nightmare so i'm sitting in the corner in this body belt in this uh straight jacket and the door opens same fella comes in again in a white coat this time he's got a filler in civvies with him who looks a bit kinder so he's the doctor ah smith how are you i'm not good he said well if you behave yourself he said we'll take that jacket off here later once a day he said and we'll feed you are you going to be good so i thought i'm going to [ __ ] lose out here so i said yeah i'll be good so they come in about lunchtime took the jacket off give me a bit of scran and another pill so you said you take the pill so i'm looking at the pill and thinking [ __ ] it oh i can't be done with a straight jacket so i've took the pill so anyway i'm in this cell for about three days and there's a little kind of gap in the padding i've noticed by the door so i'm playing with that fiddling about with a padding and i've pulled it and it's ripped and i've managed to rip a whole section of it off so i think [ __ ] me this is great and there's a wool inside there or some kind of [ __ ] gear quite itchy it's like um asbestos so everywhere i'm now trying to rip the whole cell apart you know i mean when i open the door there's all this asbestos all over the front of me sitting there smiling at them so i said your pills don't work he said the pills are not to knock you out he said you've had the injection the pills have to stop the side effects i went [ __ ] up so anyway they've took me out of that cell and eventually they put me in a strip shelf now so i've got a hole in the floor for a toilet and i've got a what i used to call a zoot suit which was like a shiny vest and a pair of shorts which were supposed to be unrippable so i've took the top off and i'm playing rolled it in a ball and playing football with that i'm in there 24 hours a day they open the door three times a day and pushing food age was this i'm 15 [ __ ] hill yeah so i'm in there and and eventually they let me the governor comes and he says if i let you out the strip cell will you be over yourself and take the medication so i said yeah you know i've got to say anything to get out so they've put me in a normal cell in the hospital all right so i'm there one day i'm there for about a month and one day i'm looking there's a hatch in the door and i'm looking out through the hatch and there's a fella over talking to another fellow through his hatch on the other side of landing in a white coat so i assume he's a doctor so i said here come here i said what's this medication you're giving me i don't want to take it and he went like that don't tell anyone don't say anything so i went what he said don't say anything he was a prisoner he got out of his cell had the white coat on him and his pal were planning to escape he was going to get him out of the cell hold the squirrel hostage get him to open the door and take him out and the white coat never was going to walk out as doctors he said i'm not a doctor i'm a prisoner i went fair enough so i'm not let me hatch like that and he's gone to the to one of the screws he went officer sansa he said can you come down here and open this cell door please don't plan when he comes down that he was going to grab him and take the case and he went get back in your [ __ ] cell hawkins he said where'd you get a white coat and how did you get out so i thought this place is full of lunatics yeah yeah yeah so they let me out on association for the first time this is after about eight weeks and there was a big room there was a table tennis table in the telly and i've gone in there and there's about eight prisoners all kids 16 17 18 sitting there like that dribble hanging out their mouths unfortunately that's what's like one floor of the cooker's nest i don't realize that this is what i look like as well i haven't got clue so there's a guy in there i know from dc a black fella called vince kennedy so i said uh vince has come as well and he's he's walking really slowly i went vince where empty yeah so he went they give me that injection the large actual i said they give it to me as well but it hasn't really affected me i don't realize that this day i'm going oh so he said do you want to game a table tennis first time we've been out to self rages i went yeah so he said i'll get the ball he's gone about 20 minutes to get the ball in the office so he comes out he said i'll serve throws the ball up the ball's over there on the floor it's already and he's bringing his back back to hit the ball and i went i'll get it 15 minutes this gear was unbelievable so we we became zombified really in this in this hospital so after a course of this this medication they said right they called me in to see a psychiatrist because i was in there for mental observation and he said look he said we'll take you off the medication he said but you're gonna have to take keep taking the pills for the next i think was the next month he said otherwise the side effects can be pretty bad so i said well am i going up to a wing he said yeah we'll send you back to the wing so they sent me a place called sea wing in rochester which was a brand new wing out the whole ball still and it was escape proof it had been made it had been built two years before to hold all the people who tried to escape out of other ball stores so they put me in there um so i'm still taking the pills and then one day i thought i'm not taking the [ __ ] pills no more i've taken them for long enough so i'm by now they're not watching me so much i'm spitting the pills out so i'm sitting there and all of a sudden my neck starts going and i swear to god i've never had anything like it this for not taking the pills the side effects start kicking in and i'm looking around and all i want to do is see something red i can't i need to see something red and the arm starts going and my shoulder starts going and i start rolling up into a ball i'm actually cramping up and they've had to get them down from the hospital and two screws had put a broom through my arms and lifted me like that and kept cause all my legs bent over i was in agony yeah i was cramping up so they took me over to the hospital give me another injection and it loosened me up within about 10 minutes anyway they took me back to the wing and i was that was um for medication that was me i took the pills then to the end and they told me if you ever kick off again in this place you'll be going straight back into the hospital and you'll be getting the large actor again and the walk that the people used to do on on on when they run like axel is known in prison as the large actual shuffle but seriously the large echo shovel i didn't realize until i see other people doing it that i was doing it but you like that but you think you're normal that's the thing and everyone else is is like that so is that like does that numb your brain but you you're active you know what's happening yeah but you can't move fast like you're reaching for a company like that so i've gone back to this escape-proof wing and met up with a couple of guys in there who wanted to escape and so did i so i said right we'll we'll play an escape out of here then please escape proof there's got to be a way out and sure enough we found a way out and the way up was that the weakness was they'd given us they'd made these wooden cell doors with a slit an observation slit so they could look into every cell as they went past and they had a bolt on the outside obviously that they shot every night and the lock and we discovered we got hold of um uh half a pair of scissors which are somewhat of that on another wing to stab someone but we made it we ended up with this half a pair of scissors and what we've done was we unscrewed the cups this was their big weakness was where the lock went in it was screwed into the wood so we unscrewed the cubs in my cell and bent away a bit of wood cut away a bit of wood on the inside so it could be seen from the outside that night christmas eve it was my birthday and i thought the plan was i'd get out myself at night do the night watchman wrap him up get his keys we didn't know he didn't have any keys open the cells of all the other guys and we'd all head for the wall we had something like that frequent in real money we had civilian clothes tucked away everywhere we had a rope ladder that we've made on the wing which wouldn't have probably held our weight but um anyway so what happens is the night watchmen they lock us up for the night i'll put my foot against the door when they come around to check and the knight watchman has gone like that on the door he's put the bolt on and uh he's gone like that on the door and as i've got my foot against the end of the door and i'm leaning over like that it feels solid to him all right and off he goes checks everyone else's dot now when he's gone downstairs and all the screws have gone off i've just pulled out the paper out of wood i can see the lock so there's no lock all that's holding me in is the bolt outside and we'd already done undone all the screws on the slip window so i pulled that out coat hanger out through the slip window undone the bolt this took me about 20 minutes undone the bolt helped me thought i'm out so i'm out and landing on this little sperm i'm out lads all yeah [ __ ] great we'll be home by christmas day loving it so i'm talking to me mate at the door i said right i'm gonna go down and do the night watchman i said what i'll do is i'll creep up on him down there and like do it from behind and tie him up i said i'll get his keys and i'll be up to and with that i can hear someone coming up the stairs so i can't hang about and i've gone into the recess at the end of the landing the top where the toilets and showers are and i've hid in there it's dark so i hear the night watchman coming past singing so he walks past goes down to where he has to key his uh his clocky key and as he's coming back instead of walking past the toilets he walks into the toilets what are the odds i'm thinking jesus so i'm standing over in the gloom and buy a load of buckets and steel buckets and mops and he's singing so he's having a piss in the urinal so then he goes to wash his hands and he's looking in the mirror and he looks in the mirror and he sees me and i see his face go he can't believe his eyes to somebody standing there with that i've grabbed one of the buckets chased him out of the toilet hit him on the head with it and knocked him out one of the steel buckets so he's down on the floor but the guys can see this out there hatches he's on the floor there's blood spreading out from his head when i've done it i'll get his keys and open it they're all going don't over me i don't want nothing to do with it nobody wanted nothing to do with it now you've killed him is he dead and i'm going well he's not breathing nothing to do with it don't open my door so when right [ __ ] it i'll do it myself so i've gone downstairs to the office to look for his keys and it turned out he was just playing possum i've heard the bell go i thought the alarm bell i thought what's happened here i've come running up the stairs and he's standing there with blood coming down his face a big smile on his face with his finger on the belt and he went you're [ __ ] dead now and i thought no so now the night watchmen the patroller on the night are coming over to this all i could do is stand there there's nothing i can do they've come in they've beat their [ __ ] helped me there's about four of them not only for what i've done to win for getting out the cell you know i mean just the fright of it for them me out of an escape-proof cell and they probably give me a hide and i always remember they then held me one of them held me hands behind me back and went to the light watchmen give them a few in the belly you know but the night welsh movement was so weak from loss of blood that was hit me and i weren't feeling it but i was kind of giving me a bit of satisfaction enough i went down the block and i was down in that solitary confinement for nine months in an underground center and this was old age before they just sexting yeah yeah i'd be 16th birthday down there [ __ ] man how did that mentally [ __ ] me it done me completely seriously for such a young age i used uh the thing was there was rule of silence in the block as well we were juveniles so there was there was no talking no singing nothing you only spoke when the screw spoke to you you saw the screws three times a day they'd come and put your meal in that was it uh you were allowed to shower every two weeks you were you weren't allowed to exercise in the open air at all so there's no jams on nothing no exercise and your window in the cell was like a bit of perspex that had been there since 1906 or whether and everyone had scratched on it so there was very little light come through and i couldn't read it i couldn't read them right at this time and the only thing you were allowed was they had an old cupboard with a load of old books in and every day you were allowed to get a book and change your book your bedding came in at um nine o'clock at night and went out again at six o'clock the next morning and you're left in a bare cell except for a piss part and a book so because i couldn't read i used to take my socks off roll them up kick them around play football with me socks you know and sometimes i used to stand in the corner and i used to sing into the corner of the cell and right into the gap but they'd hear me bang bang bang smith shut up right and then i'd wait till they'd go and then i'd act out all the films i'd seen because i've seen loads of films hello i'd play all the different parts on beyond standing there in the corner of the cell you know tough guy yeah oh yeah james cagney yeah all that sort of stuff yeah do you think that's what kept you seen as well it was try to play act it was actors in there and just try to take your mind off of things that you're locked up in a [ __ ] cage you had to do something and i couldn't read but what the thing was it they never tell you they didn't tell you how long you would have to be in there so i'm bored of visitors which was to visit magistrates so they can lose me unlimited bird but i've got no bird to lose i've got to do my whole sentence so they said why are you two year pro you're not getting it i wasn't getting it anyway you know what i mean but what they done was they kept me down the block for nine months and every day they go this was the torture every day you had to stand by your door to attention you sell out to be immaculate like the floor scrubbed and everything and the governor would come down and he'd open the seat they'd open the cell door number to the governor and you go smith uh pj2679 and he got under governor cove good morning smith how are you here you go fine governor and and no this is what you're waiting for all right you can go back to the wing today never came every day i'm there standing to attention every day i'm trying to get out that'd be nice to do what they'll say and jump through the hoops yeah after that then so that was your first three year sentence yeah and you get parented a big boy yeah yeah yeah so what happened after the three years did you get out are the jig yes certains get killed in [ __ ] i learned that years which was a good thing yeah in that block afterwards a priest the catholic priest used to come down and he used to look through the hatches every day and see that everybody was okay so one day he looked through the hatch and he said to me why are you why are you kidding the book he said why are you kicking that book around i said i can't read that's disgraceful i could read a little bit but i couldn't you know really understand reading and writing so he he made it his job to bring me in easy readers and like janet and john and all that and he would help me with words and and he asked them if i could have a pencil and a and a pad and the governor said he's not getting no pencil he's sticking and offers his eye we can't afford to for him to have a pencil he never had and he'd have crayons so one through 16 down the block would be crayons it was terrible but i went mad down in that block i really did before i learned the red um i started getting paranoid and down there everything echoes and i could hear the screws talking in the office and i convinced myself eventually he was talking about coming to kill me and coming the worst thing was i got in the idea i didn't be had they were talking about going to kill me mother so i could hear little bits of things and put them together and i said did they mention my mother so eventually what i've done was i was allowed jeans by then i ripped the tag off me jeans off the zip sharpened it up on the wall and cut my wrist right pulled the [ __ ] veins out of my wrist because i went mad i thought they were gonna kill me mother so i've ended up back in the hospital again um this time lucky enough they didn't dose me up and after as i'd spent nine months in the block they let me out into the proper ball store and i ended up doing the full three years how was your family's reaction to you doing all this did they know have to have the stuff you got up to no no i mean my mother was great i mean that was great they'd come and visit me when we when they could but you know i kind of did i wasn't one of them kind of people who wanted visit visits just reminded me of home you know when i just i wanted to do me a bit of bird and get out and get away from it sort of thing you know i mean i didn't but my mum and dad come up me brother and my sister visit me on a quite regular basis i'd say about three times a year how was your mindset then coming out after that three years because that story there itself and that three years is unbelievable from loony bin's putting in with the adults um cutting your wrists hearing voices all the medications all the beatings yeah by the time i got out i was i was 18 and nearly 19 and i was just ruined for a 19 year old i knew too much you know it's like i probably had post traumatic stress disorder and didn't even know it you know i mean i'd had beatings all the time and i hadn't settled down at all i'd fought them all away so for me getting out it was a chance now to get my own [ __ ] back you know i mean they haven't got me anymore and they're never gonna get me again was the idea and i come out and nobody expected me after that all that time to actually go straight it was like accepted that i was the kind of criminal of the area and that's who i would be even my family kind of you know my dad tried to you know talk to me about getting a job and all that and and um yeah yeah yeah but really i went back and found a few of my mates who'd been in boston and we went out feven again and that was it you know i ended up becoming a proper armed robber and um over the years robbed many and many many places and worked with different gangs they say over 200 places they're according to the flying squad i mean they say i've been involved in 200 armed robberies but i was a working rubber so every time i was out i mean we were robbing a bank every week sometimes we'd rob two banks in a day i rode three banks in one day one time and lost money how did you work that one out i [ __ ] lost money but um you know i i was always at it and people knew i was games so if i was forever there was no mobile phones in those days people would pull up outside your house knock on the door listen we're going down to a post office and sorry defensive how much is my weight four grand yeah i'll have some of that you know it was one of them so i would go to work with anyone so i was involved with all different gangs um until i put my own gank together and decided to uh you know to really try and smash it and get enough money to retire on and that didn't really work was that what you're trying to do get your own fund try and get some cash what were you doing with your money wasting it the the bank robber's credit is this don't let them any thief don't let them catch you with the money spend the money because if they catch you with the money you've done the crime you're going to be doing the time and you ain't even had no benefit so spend the money as quick as possible i spent the money on suits i was a teddy boy i used to go out and buy like [ __ ] 500 pound suits get made for me any styles i liked cars i didn't have a driving license i'm 18 i've got about 30 cars you know it was absolutely crazy not not great cars not like secondhand nothing like bentley's or anything like that but mark two cortinas and things like that and it was like i don't know we just spent the money we went out every night and we we just you know the money was nothing to us because if you nick 10 grand a day in three days time you might you know you might might come around and say i'm down at me last grand you fancy doing another one and i'll go yeah come on let's go so you're still craving that buzz with a robbery gives you that high i'm in control because you've been beating up so much i need to do this and that gives you that energy that adrenaline kick that i feel alive that's what i wanted i wanted that that is what i've done it for i mean the money was great don't get me wrong but for me the real thing was the buzz and i didn't realize how common it was until i actually spoke to other people in adult jails about armed robbery and they all talk about the same thing that did the adrenaline rush you know that you get of being in control of something for a change if you take over a bit of pavement if you're doing a van you own that pavement when you're in the banking premises you own those premises people have to do what you say but i was never one of those kind of although everyone probably says this but i was never one of those bully [ __ ] who you know people would i would terrify people don't get me wrong that was my job i was the frightener that was my job in the game but i was never one for gratuitous violence we our way of thinking the people i work with was this if you won't have a fight and hurt somebody go to football saturday or go down a pub saturday night friday night you better get in the tear up if you want one if you're out robin it's a professional job you don't gratuitously shoot at people or stab them or even touch them i was told by a professional armed robbery i met an old guy early on he said the best thing to do he said when you're doing stuff like that he said don't let anybody get within arm's length of your gun he said because when they get within the reach of your gun that's when you might have to shoot them because they might try something grabber yes i always ca and i always done that always kept people at arms length for you over there as soon as i used to come in i was the growler so i'd send people up the end of the banks and [ __ ] like that had many you know many strange experiences as well doing this because doing all that as well when you say you did free in a day that's [ __ ] it takes some balls as well to do that but everything has a ripple effect as well because it does affect the people who are behind the counter it affects everybody so when you're doing that as well what was the when you got your big sentence which was 27 years what robbery did you do then i've done a series of robberies um with a mate of mine where we were kind of they were i wouldn't say really vicious robberies but they were traumatic robberies i mean i was working with a guy who kind of his idea of of getting people to open up because i don't know if any bank robbers ever told you this but there's times when you're going to rob bank you don't get nothing you know i mean if the count if the staff will drop down behind a bulletproof counter and refuse to give you anything not a lot you can do you know you've got to swallow and walk out and we used to always say well there's a million more banks to rob out there so you know we'll just go to the next one but i was working with a guy who kind of used a he had this habit of grabbing customers if they tried to not um give us the money he put a gun up to the customer's head i wasn't really i didn't want to get that close to customers you know i mean but that was his way of working and it it was kind of vicious it's terrifying for the people it happens to because they don't know that he's got no bullets in the gun and he's not going to kill him you know i mean um did you ever get done for once that you never done because you did that many they just threw a couple at you that you never done loads of times yeah when you get nicked they go i remember one time that i got nicked by tower bridge flying squad and they said um they said we've got you for um i think it was 11 robberies they said we're gonna throw three more in as well which we think you may have been involved in and i was nowhere near any of them but i'm pleading not guilty so i can't say well i've done them but i didn't do that you know i mean they've got you it's okay too but um then was when i got me 27 i i got that got cut to 19 on an appeal and then i was a recipient of a bit of good luck i'm in um albany prison on the isle of wight when it was a dispersal gel and there was a ruling made um in law i can't remember uh regina vida governor of wood hill prison uh not what it was another prison but anyway what happened was is the prisoners hadn't been given people their remain time when they were nicked on multiple charges and they hadn't had bail so you were just starting your sentence from the date but the high court ruled that everyone had to have their remind time back so during the 19 years i'm suddenly eligible for parole i've done 10 so all of a sudden they're coming to me and say like that parole so i've thought i've tried it you know i mean so i went for pro and and i was granted pro in 1997 i couldn't believe it 11 years he did yeah and and i'm the worst part of it was i was still a b cat so i'd gone from an a cat to a b cat and three months before i wanted to to to be three months before they offered me to practice it come out the blue i'd ask my personal officer who's supposed to do your paperwork for you if he could try and get me down to a c-cap so i could get to a c-cap prison i wanted to escape from the secret be easier you know i mean i wasn't doing the sentence i didn't want to do them so he said i'll try for you now what he didn't realize was they gave me all the paperwork back and i i actually got his report back as well and he said i would not recommend this man for a c-cat in a hundred years you know i mean he definitely wants to escape and he's still a dungeon of the public so i got refused to see cat when i got the parole they called me down i'm playing cards with a couple of guys upstairs i get called on the tunnel i come down to the office there's about six screws in the office including me personal officer and the governor and they're all looking grim faced i'm thinking someone's [ __ ] died outside so i've come in smith uh i've had a notification from the home office from the pro board i've forgotten about oh have you yeah um you granted parole you'd be leaving on thursday they got it yeah they were absolutely sick i turned around to my personal office i said see they seek out stick it up your ass they were like they were terrible you know can you imagine you got your c cat and then you escaped and then [ __ ] two days later you're getting released anyway would have been worse but i got out and went straight back at it yeah you know but i didn't go straight away no i decided this time though it was actually about um i think it's about five weeks i'll stay straight i've got a job as a road closer cleaner do you try and change our life then yeah so i thought to myself right i don't want to go back to prison straight away um and and really let's try something else you know i had a family body and i had kids so the kids are growing up and i'm thinking to myself well you know let's try something else so me brother worked for the council for lamb of counsel and he managed to get me a job as a road sweeper on the estates and my take-home pay was 90 pound a week 90 pound a week i used to spend it on petrol get into a [ __ ] bank of robert so i'm living on toasted carpet and copper soup and [ __ ] and i'm living in a bedside that cost me 50 pound a week and i'm just like but i'm still trying you know it went on for a couple of months and i'm out sweeping the estates and then one day i'm in a bad mood and i'm sweeping this estate up in um stockwell and there's a brand a dirty old rundown council estate and there's a brand new i think it was a mercedes sports parked in the car park and i thought i bet that belongs to some [ __ ] gangster or a drug dealer on this estate so i've swept the round bum bum just about well away i'm looking at the car the guy comes down clicks open the car gets into the car glances at me takes a load of rubbish out of car just throws it on the floor i thought i'm not [ __ ] having that so i've gone over i said yeah mate i said uh i'll clean this estate i said i've just swept there i said and put this stuff in the bin i said you just found out your car he went so what he said you roast with a [ __ ] off and that was it all right stand up he's cut out the car he went what bang nutting him he's gone down stamped on him a few times broke me broom over his head and then left me trolling there walked off got on the phone on the way back in the phone box found out me mate and said any work about anyone yeah he said 10 grand you'll buy tomorrow if you carried a gun i went sweet i love it and that was me back into the room do you think that's because you never had the power and the authority it's like being back in prison again well people were being cheeky and never seen you as because if you're doing banks if you're hanging out with the bad boys people are going to give you that authority and that would be a power that you are something what you think is respect yeah i mean that's that's what i was saying yeah a lot of people it is courses yeah but a lot of people think it's like it's a respectful thing and all that and you know people are disrespecting now and i was a bit like that and i thought i'm not you know what i'm wrote sweeping again but i've just become another monk you know i mean for these people they're just it's just people want to abuse you all the time before i'm not having it i'm not having it so crime was the way for me and i formed the little team then um eventually the flying squad nicknamed us the laughing bank robbers um and that was uh it was over um when was we robbed the bank on christmas eve we used to do food we used to enjoy our work you know we we'd try and have a laugh while we were doing it as well even though it's horrible i know now no i'm laughing but i know it's not funny but because you're saying it so calmly and christmas eve and i i know i shouldn't be laughing but i find it funny because it cause of the extent and it's funny on a different level it's kind of when i think about it it was [ __ ] crazy yeah but we're robbing this middle and bank on christmas evening birthday i think if i can't get a bit of luck on my birthday which i didn't when i was trying to escape in 77 anyway so they the banks are open till one o'clock on christmas eve so the midland bank and that was our favorite because there's more money in the banks at christmas hey there's more money in their banks yeah yeah banks are paid their christmas and this one we've done this one because it was in clapham and the last time it had been robbed that we could find out was by charlie wilson who was one of the great train robbers he'd done it before the great train robbery and he got away with about a thousand pound or something back in the 50s so we thought yeah we'll do that one so we've gone in there but as before we've gone in there's a guy outside and he's selling santa hats on the pavement pound each so i said it's free at him we had a gateway driver and three of us were going in so i think he's free in the mats so when we put a ski mask on we put the santa hats on over the top of them went into the bank giving it all out you know they're terrified he smashed the screen through jumped over the counter and nicked the money coming out with her sacks merry christmas and all that as we're going out at the door we think it's really funny so then next and then and the flying squad nicknamed this in the paper to laughing bank robbers so we thought what else can we do that's funny so i mean powell went listen they've got a training school in hendon police training school let's go over and do the hate to do the midland bank in hendon which is their bank so we said yeah so we cho over there and sure enough we robbed the hender in middle and bank and the police will come out to college in the shirt sleeves chasing the car up the road to try and catch us but um yeah that was quite you know we used to do things that so we could have a laugh as well even though we're terrifying and trauma like traumatizing people we you know at the end of the day we didn't care we were greedy lazy [ __ ] who just wanted the money and we just wanted to laugh but you think we knew that we weren't going to kill them do you think that was your way a coping relief as well with all the trauma and pain you went through yes a coping mechanism as and people might not understand that but people deal with things differently because the angriest men also are the weakest the fear we can portray fear and that keeps people away because we are hot the trauma are we having demons that doing that stuff is kinda we're surrounding ourselves with people who's got the same pain you've probably noticed now that the people who did the banks we've probably had the same trauma that you had yeah do you know what it means for that's like open mechanism we had to keep ourselves laughing because as you say it's the fear as well you know if you're going out frightened to do something you're going to make mistakes and you know so you've got to be calm and the way we've done it was with you that was our coping mechanism you know we we we're all good friends we're all close friends and we'd have jokes and that when we were out there you know like we went and robbed the allied irish pranking cricklewood broadway because i was going to dublin to see my family and we all went in with belfast accents and the funny thing was this we're calling each other number one and number two and number three have you got that down number one get that down for the cause and all that this is what we're saying that cashiers when i eventually get nicked for these robberies about a year later some of the witnesses that come up the old body two of them from the ll irish bank two women said in their statements that number one who was me was definitely from a certain part of derry because they recognized the accent i'd never been to derry in my life but both of them two separate women recognized an accent from i think was south dairy or somewhere and they weren't adamant about it so i'm thinking that's my way out i haven't got a [ __ ] dairy accent you know i mean it didn't work but but yeah i mean um what's the craziest robbery you've ever did like dressed up wise and masked like uh you ever dressed up as some some like women or anything to get into a bank no i'll tell you what i was for a while though the newspapers when i was doing them on my own when i was on the run they were calling me the city jen because i used to dress in a suit you go boss suit bowler hat carry a briefcase and go in and just a pair of glasses and just open up your briefcase on the count take the shotgun out and go right fill the briefcase so in the papers they were calling me the city gent but the funniest some of the funniest things happened when you're doing robbie did you cannot account more i was doing one one day and my mates fill in the bag and i've got about 20 people up against the wall of a bank and i've got a shotgun and i'm like hurry up hurry up a mast there right standing in front of him and i noticed that one of the fellas who had his hands up had a really nice watch on the rolex so i've gone to him boy so he's looked over me yeah they're rolex so he went here is when is it a real one he went yeah well let's have a look and he's got to take it off and when don't take it off i should just show me it so he's turning around and he's trying to i said i don't want your [ __ ] watch mate i need to rob the bank you know i mean i don't know when you watch which i didn't you know i thought i wasn't there to rob people i was there to rob the experts i don't believe it bastard said that yeah other says no yeah but another funny one i've had loads of funny ones i've walked into um a bank up in fortnite when i've done the three in the day and i went right everybody on the floor everybody went on the floor about like 10 people and one guy's still standing there black fella still standing at the counter like was i'm on the counter looking at me i went did you hear me mate i said get on the floor he went my yardy should i don't get on the floor for no one just walked up i went get you on the [ __ ] floor i'll blow your head off and he went oh i didn't think he was serious another time i've walked in on my own again pulled the shotgun out and pulled out a plastic bag threw it towards the counter and went filled out meaning the cash is there's a guy on the other side on this on my side of the counter a customer takes the bag and starts emptying his pockets into it and when not you for [ __ ] give it to the cashier when i get the money away and i pull the bag out there's a coma bus ticket like three pence in change and all sorts of weird [ __ ] another time i'm robbing on my own again up in stratton i walked in at the shotgun i had a rifle a 2-2 rifle cut down overcoat on i walked in i went right and i'm trying to pull it out my coat is cool with my coat everybody up the end of the bank so about 20 people have gone to the end they're quite far away and it was all marble floors so i've eventually went like that and as i've pulled it the gun slipped out my hands and the rifle was slid all the way across the floor they're standing there like that and it's landing that geezer's foot and i don't know what to do now i'm standing like that and i went kicked that back and he went all right he's kicking straight back never picked it up yeah i've picked it up and i went right now and another time i've got i've there's so many of them i've got in banking quarter and i've got all the people up against the wall and all the cashiers have ducked down beyond the counter so i'm shouting to him through the through the hatch through the the hatchets and i'm going if you don't come up here and start putting the money up within the count of three i'm going to start [ __ ] killing your customers one by one and i've heard from all the customers and i've looked over them i went like that and they're all like that looking at me but these can't see me the cashiers they're down beyond the counter i said one two and the customers are all like that i went free i said see you like you're a bunch of [ __ ] wankers and i said see you lat i said don't bank with these people no more they'd let you get killed for free granby on the counter and i just walked out but what's the best you've ever had a bank um i think it was 48 grand we used to do a thing called the um the reserve game we knew someone this is why we rode midland banks because we knew someone who had a relative in the middle and bank who was giving us information but they didn't know they were giving us information if you know what i mean and they told us we found out that what the midland bank done instead of robbing the security van which most people do wait till the security van delivers and the cash goes into the monthly cash goes into the cashier safe underneath the camera because the vault's on the time lock and that has got a key so if you can get them to open that you know you can get the money out of the camera that's what you used to do wait for the event to go straight in who's the head cashier now they're not expecting it i am open that [ __ ] safe under there and give me the money they're shocked that you know boom you're getting packets of money out sealed up that's just been delivered by a security court was there any were there any jobs you look at and think i'd love to have been on that job like the great training world were there the brinks or you'd like to have been involved in they all kind of ended in in sadness really i mean when you look at all those big jobs that that were committed the bigger the job the more challenge of getting caught exactly except for one one job that was absolutely fantastic it was planned by billy hill you used to be the king of the underworld 1952 it's called the east castle street post office robbery roy shaw was involved um he got away everyone got away they rubbed the post office van of i think was 238 000 in cash in 1952 which is the equivalent of about 17 million pounds a day and they got clean away they had a fight with the police got clean away and the home office like winston churchill was home secretary and every day he wanted a report on what was happening with his east castle street post office robbery nobody ever got nick for it you know what i mean and that was it it was the biggest robbery ever and no one even got it it's only now these days that people know who was on it you know i mean nobody knew at the time but that was billy hill he's a master planner yeah you know it's got to be well planned it's not just the case so you've kamikazed if you yeah where you've and yourself why did you do a lot yourself i've done them because i loved the buzz and it's i'll give you an example i came out in onesworth i've done three months in onesworth um for possession of a bullet they found a bullet in me uh in the house so i've done three months and i'm getting out and and they said i didn't have no money so they said there's no discharge crime for you so i said why and they said well paperwork's been [ __ ] up you'll have to go down to the social security which is just down the road so i went all right so i walked into social security you know and i went listen i've just come out of prison there's the paperwork i said they've got no money for me and he went uh he said you only live up in brixton i guess beyond again i said yeah he said well you discharged quant he's like they get you home in there he said he's on your bus right away when all right keep your money walk that side swear to god two doors along there's a bin with a mcdonald's bag in it i take the mcdonald's bag out empty out get me scarf wrap it around me face put me end in a mcdonald's bag walk into a building society that's on the same road anyway give me the money boom they put seven grand on the counter off i've gone happy as larry but i had this thing where i had a real sort of need to do it if you know i mean i needed to affirm that you know that i was actually in control of things well i wasn't my life was spiraling out of control all the time but i had to believe that drink are drugs involved that's this thing never we had this thing amongst us like that we would never commit a serious crime whilst under the influence of drink or drugs it wasn't professional you know i mean we kind of classed ourselves as professionals well it's kinda like a professional because a lot of people don't do anything sober majority people i know a lot of bank robbers and and people like that who would have a nip or a snook yeah to get that buzz because it's a fear in it they're scared and the majority of people who i've spoke to has been in prison were wrecked we're on something more intoxicated we were going to a robbery one day and we had a guy with us who was a new fellow who we hadn't worked with before and he's in the back of a car with a mate man i'm in the front mates driving and suddenly i uh in the back of the car i've looked around he's snorting coke overnight what are you doing he went uh he said i'm just having a bit of a livelihood he said you want one i won't stop the car get him out he went what that's gets the [ __ ] gun back piss off laughs yeah don't want him on the right what if he shoot somebody i'm going away for the rest of my life you know i mean you cannot put your life in other people's ends without some sort of element of control and that's why i was always after an element of control i never had no control of my life so to me this was a false control you know i mean i could if i could do certain things that i could stick to like a routine then i was okay it's been like being autistic but i am a psychopath so it's kind of i've been diagnosed as psychopath so i suppose it's part of that you know i mean it's part of you need a routine then you you're ruthless you don't really yeah so for the after the 27 years you did a living you're trying to change your life you get back into crime but then your second straight rule where you eventually got life yeah what robbery was that uh that was a serious that was the life in bank robberies the christmas yeah we i got done for eight armed robberies and um eight lots of um possession of firearms and ammunition um i was on my own the rest of them never got caught and i got caught down who um and you know i'm not lying planted dna that's the only way they could get me and that's a fact well i didn't even wet the gloves they found supposedly with my blood on them i didn't even wear those gloves they weren't my gloves though and my pals you just knew it was you no how they done what they done was this they knew i was at it yeah but never done probably still now but so they're keeping an eye out everywhere and they know we're mooching about and i'm mixing with other people who aren't rubbers so what they've done was when they've eventually nicked me they nicked me on another kamikaze one a couple of your pals went out to costa rica i decided i'd go down and rob a local bank um in the summer walked in got an exploding dye pack didn't realise come out said like it's exploded and said lie to me and they called me down to that now what happened was they they got me for that but i had an excuse for that which is the only the only defense for robbery is duress and that's the defense i run on that they wanted me for the other seven robberies they knew i'd been involved but i couldn't prove it so what they'd done was i said in my brief when i first got nicked i said they're upstairs in my flat i said like i had hair then i said make sure they don't take my comb and plant evidence because like ski masks were dumped after some of the robberies so he went no i'm on that so they come back to the police station and they said um um we need to take your dna it had never been taken so i said they said you want to take a swab of blood so my brief went he'll take blood there was no blood on any of the robberies wasn't when he took blood so like that so they took the blood anyway about eight weeks later they come up to belmore's prison charged me with the other seven robberies i reckon they found a speck speck of my blood inside one of the surgical gloves that was dumped after a robbery in cleveland uh along with a gun and that it was eight hundred thousand one that would that it wasn't mine there was one or however they work it now i knew it weren't my blood they and it took me ages to figure out how they'd done it and then i met a fellow insider who was in a murder and he'd been nicked by the same copper and i said we're chatting away and he i said how did i get he went he said this funny thing he said they got a speck of my blood so me and him are thinking how the [ __ ] are we both nicked on the same evidence by the same copper and eventually we worked out what they'd done was when they come to take the blood they clean out the the bin in the police station sterile bin doctor comes in he takes your blood he does two um parts one that you are allowed to have tested one that they have tested and then he throws the syringe into the bin and off he goes and what they do is they come in afterwards take the syringe out and there's obviously a little tiny bit of blood that might expect that they can then plant onto something and i met six or seven cases in jail over the next five years who'd been nicked by the same police squad and had the same evidence against them i thought this is their bastards yeah so they they got me by that and i pleaded not guilty because i thought yes i've done the robberies but if you get a cheap mate then i ain't going to stick my hands up to him it ain't happening so i had a trial at the old bailey and um the first trial the jury couldn't agree the police come in and they were proved to be lying about nearly everything and what happened was when did you the judge called the jury in after four days and he said look he said if i was to give you until friday this now wednesday he said could you reach a verdict on any of the 16 counts he said just answer yes or no and the full moon went not if we stay until christmas and the judge went a simple yes or no would have done so he said what i've got you said i've got dismissed the case he said um and charge a retrial so i thought great you know the evidence is absolutely crap i had me re-trial two weeks later like an idiot instead of waiting a few months for the dust to sell and by then the police had ironed out all the kinks in their evidence never called the cop as they called the last time and um i got convicted within i think it was i think it was 20 minutes the first jury were out for five days a second jury were out for 20 minutes and the second jury were 10 middle-aged women and two geezers who never looked up in the whole time of the the trial never even looked at me but here's the funny thing there was a bird on the jury who looked the image of fred west what i swear to god i thought it was fred west and she was sitting down the front now i noticed they're looking at me and the trial went on for a while so every day used to come in and wink and smile at her and she'd wing and smile at me so i said to me brief i've got a bird on the jewelry he said all you need is one more you're walking so every morning it was are you doing right here then you know white tape and everything that was a bit of a catch and this bird was all anyway come the end of the trial they said uh have you got foreman for a person is that i think oh my god so she stands up so he says on count one any count i'm going to prison for life on count one do you find the defendant kill what you're not guilty she went guilty and then it was guilty for the whole lot for the whole 16 so i've got eight life sentences and eight lots of ten years concurrent for the foreign [ __ ] hell how long did you serve it with that then well it was brand new at the time it was two strike what they called the two strike life and i got the highest two-strike tariff given out ever um which was 12 years and i appealed against him briefly i've sat down with me qc under underneath the old bailey and i've known him jim sterman since since i was a kid you know since he was junior barrister and i said him jim be honest i said do you think i'll get out ever on this he just looked at me he went to be honest he said no i thought he said not with your previous he said i can't see he said it's a new sentence i can't see you ever getting out he said this is your life they thought you were in forever yeah he said you've got a 12-year tariff he said even if you do the 12-year tariff he said you're gonna do like at least eight or ten years over that he said look at the age of you now so i said all right thanks for being uh honest with me he said but i'll tell you what he said if you do get a hearing he said i'll come and do it for nothing even if i'm a judge in 10 years time and he did he stuck to his word fair played with but um i thought my life was over that was it you know and and i i i said prison is now my life a jigsaw yeah i cut off my tires with everyone outside so hard for you to speak to people yeah you can't live in prison and outside at the same time i always tell people that if you have connections with outside them you know i love my family and i love my kids but i didn't want them being dragged into prisons especially prisons like belmarsh and white moore where they really sort of humiliate families in some cases you know make them strip and all that or turn them away and say like the dog sat down on you when it's obviously not true so i didn't want none of that but i still kept in touch with my family by phone by now prisons headphones you know you could use um i ended up two years in bel in belmarsh and uh then they shipped me out to white mall which was like it still is i suppose the most top security jail in europe um and i'm in whitewater for a while and this is what really made me change my life this was the whole that the whole crux of my story is this um i'm there for about a year and in 2001 um i've done i've got sentenced in 99 so i've done a couple of years anyway i'm cut whenever you see a priest or or any man or a you know a vicar or whatever in general on the landings you know there's bad news for someone and i'm coming back from tea one day with a big uh drug dealer big jewelry drug dealer called bud and me and him are having a laugh all going under the spur and i look up and i see a priest up at the end by myself and i don't think he's at myself and i've gotten a bad someone's him for a bit of bad news anyway and off we've gone so i've walked up there and he's waiting outside myself and he went here you know smith and i went nut and i've gone in and said i don't hear what he's got to say i know it's bad it can only be someone's diet outside so he said you are noah smith he said i've got some news from outside some bad news too i went listen go away from me i said don't talk to me go away [ __ ] off and slam my door on him he went and got the screws to open the door and they said look we have to tell you um your son joseph who was 19 was found dead last night outside i said no i said i'm not having it i don't believe you [ __ ] off a weight myself or knock you out and eventually after about 10 minutes of bangor i thought i've got to get on the phone and see if my wife is knows about this they're obviously trying to play head games with me get on the phone is true i was devastated um yeah it kind of brought it home to me you know i mean i i i'm sitting in a prison and and i'm helpless you know what i mean so anyway they said they said they'd let me go to the funeral whip is kind of a standard thing that let you go to your kids friend or a close relatives funeral even though i was a lifer in a category a prison and i was carefree and um eventually the vicar that the priest said yeah he said i don't see there'd be any trouble you're going to the funeral and everyone was all coming down and like commiserations and all that and i went up in front of the security governor the next day and it turned out the security governor i knew the security governor from ball still i'd actually broken his mate's jaw another screw when they were younger screws and he didn't like me at all and um i had to stand in front of him and they said uh you want to go to your son's funeral i said yeah and they went we'll beg for you i mean what he said beck so i said look i want to come to my son's funeral can i please go and they went no he said i couldn't he said i wouldn't let you out anyway he said but i can't take the risk of having you out there with all your family he said my officers might get up blah blah blah your cat griez and um i was just devastated i just went back to my cell and i just i didn't know what to do and eventually i made a mind a dublin fellow dublin drug dealer who was doing 20 years come down and he went listen he said he said my wife died about three years ago he said you know they have to take it to the chapel arrest he said it's a legal requirement if they don't let you go to the funeral so i said i didn't know that so he's gone come on with me gone up said listen i want to go to the chapel to rest and the governor couldn't refuse he had to let me go so they got eight screws threw me in a van took me down to malden took me into the chat lucky enough my wife noah was coming and she had the other kids there and i had to go in chained to a screw um to see my dead son uh in the funeral home is that this first time you'd seen your family as well yeah and i bent down to kiss his forehead and the screw tried to pull me back up again i've just pulled in it was just so disrespectful you know i mean i eventually went back to the prison and and the guys at the jail and a lot of odd men you know probably really [ __ ] faces come to me and says out of water not letting you go to funeral jeffrey archer's just gone to his mother's funeral he got sentenced three days ago seven years didn't even have handcuffs on um so there was a plan then to like in white more prison that we were going to get our own back on the screws and they were going to bash their screws and it was going to be a right situation and i thought yeah good but think you know about it overnight for i don't want to be the legacy my son leaves behind you know i mean me nicked again and end up like charlie bronson you're not getting no yeah i'll never get out yeah so do you think that was a tunneling point then it was it was not right yeah over the next couple of months i really had i've grieved a lot and i had to work out in my own head what i was going to do and i thought to myself you know just for once i'm going to try and find rehabilitation in prison let's give it a chance and see if it works because i'm thinking i've lost my son he's 19. i've got other kids out there why one of them dies you know i mean so i looked around and the only rehabilitation i could actually find in the prison system was a prison called grenden in buckinghamshire which is which is based on therapy group therapy and you have to volunteer to go there and they have to test you to see if you've got the iq to understand the therapy in the first place there's no point giving you like a couple of years of therapy if you don't understand it so i applied for that i had to see a psychiatrist you know and uh have drug tests and and i had to do an iq test and eventually they accepted me and granted and i went down and i ended up spending five years in there doing the like intense watching on yourself yeah is that the first time you accepted that okay i need help it was yeah yeah and i mean i've resisted it even there for a while you know there was still part of the old prison head in me that grendam was like a weaklings nick it was for people who were like giving up and you know people in the system would take the piss out of it it's a lot are you going forth there is it's a lot of ego that they don't think or you're weak but that's strength anybody who wants to get help anybody who wants to change is strength yeah and my in my eyes so when you eventually started working on yourself because i know we've had a laugh and we've laughed at some stuff but yeah you've robbed 200 200 banks you've spent over 30 years in prison but let's not take away the fact that you [ __ ] changed you learned how to read and write in prison and now you've wrought seven books seven books yeah do you know what i mean now you're working now you see your family you're doing good things after all those years will always see it no matter how old you are no matter how [ __ ] up your past is people can change your prime example with that so when you started changing and started making the moves to better your life and get a better understanding that listen what you did was wrong it was not taken away from the fact that what he did was wrong but when you started changing how did you house your mindset then did you start to feel better did you start to distance yourself from the friends who you were in prison with no at first i mean the first say yeah i felt worse because i did distance myself from from people in prison i was still writing to a few people you know because people were happy for me to go there whereas some people would have got a lot of stick for it in white wall when i told people i was going to grind and i was going good luck something happens and so but what happened was the the first year brought up a lot of really bad share me i mean i never kind of took on the notion that i had victims of my crimes we're all armed robbers are the same they get together and they say well if you don't know anybody you're not doing anything all you're doing is putting like a penny on interest rates [ __ ] the banks they've got plenty of money you know i mean you're not killing anyone i'm selfish yeah you're not robbing old age pensioners or fiddling with kids so you kind of build yourself up into this kind of like as though you're a folk hero like you're yeah and you never see your victims that's the thing is when if when you go and do stuff like that people are cardboard cars you make them into cardboard cars because if you thought about them as human beings you wouldn't be able to do what you're doing so ordering people around at the point of a gun sharing of people and all that and threatening people is easy if you don't see them as human he said the nazis got way of it you know i mean it's kind of the same mindset you look at them as just people in your way in the way of what you're doing and they don't really matter and this is what really done me i had no empathy and my first year in grenada was all about victims and they kept on at me how many victims do you think you've left behind to me i'm going i haven't left no victims behind i haven't shot anybody i haven't like hit anybody over the head with a cosh i haven't stabbed anybody in the banks but then they it kind of got to me that how many and people started saying what about your family they're your victims they've been years without you they do the same things but yeah and it started coming into my head and i was sitting there one day and i'm thinking i just tried to work out how many people were in all these banks that i'd robbed over the years and i just couldn't even count them i'm thinking in each bag there's about 20 people and about five cashiers yes thousands you know yeah and i'm thinking how the hell am i gonna make amends for all that and i can't and i finally accepted that i'm sorry i think they called psycho drama i avoided it for three years and psycho drama is really a powerful tool if you get into it and you reenact scenes in your life and the things you like that bothered you and things that changed you you're in a child yeah and i've really enacted my getting beaten up by the screws when i was a kid i re-enacted you know my son's deaf and and everything around it that's the first time i was able to really really grieve for him but probably had a breakdown but it took me five years grenlin is supposed to be 18 months you know you stay at grenada will be 18 months and you should if you're a normal sort of criminal be able to grasp sort of the intricacies of what you've been doing and and how to change by then five years it took me i couldn't stop i was you know it was like that become your drug yeah yeah i started thinking i was a therapist by the end of it i'm starting to work people out when new guys are coming on i'm looking after people and i'm i'm working out people as they're talking to me and i couldn't stop doing it it was someone to go to me they had certain buzz words in grenada and all therapy i think how does that make you feel you know that was the the moment how does that make you feel and you get sick of hearing it but people always say or i'm in a bad space what the hell does that mean i'm in a bad spot i'm in a bad space at the moment and i don't want to talk about it but like i started thinking i can work people out now i because i'd been worked out and i'd seen how they'd done it i started thinking well i can do it with other people you know i'm thinking i'm a [ __ ] therapist i'm not a therapist at all i was just a guy i went through therapy and it worked for me and i liked it so it sort of gave me such a buzz that i really wanted to spread it around to people and even when i got out i was still on the therapy buzz and i'm talking to people as though i'm in therapy and people outside they don't want to hear that crap they don't want to hear how does that make you feel what space you're in they're like let's go down the path and have a drink shout out yeah but a lot of people are in denial yeah you've you've faced all your fears and demons and it's took you five years listen you'll be facing your demons and fighting them to the day you die do you know what i mean but the fact that you did the fact that you did face them and work on them and looked at that trauma and looked at those things were getting buried in the loss of your son you faced it and instead of suppressing your feelings and emotions especially in prison with some of the most bigot the biggest criminals in the world not just the uk the world they don't they're not going to say look i feel sad or i feel weak or i need help they ain't going to [ __ ] say that the fact that you did do that and the fact that you did get help my heart i take my heart off you because it's massive massive respect and the fact that you you learned how to read and write in there as well how long when you did your life sentence did you do when you get out then well i i appealed against the 12 year tariff and they cut it to eight years and i ended up doing 12. so i got refused parole four times but the the good thing that come out of therapy was um one of the things that you had to do was write your life story as a kind of a pointer of where you went wrong and and sort of you know that sort of thing you know i i wrote this i started writing and i couldn't stop it was just flowing out of me i ended up writing something i think it was about 900 pages of an autobiography over about three month period six hours a day every day and myself typing away on a manual typewriter people used to come to my door and go you're coming on an association i can't know i'm loving but can you put me in your book yeah of course i can don't worry about that bum but i was just it i had to get it out of me it was like and i put it all in there and when i was friends with will self i'd met him in 97 when i was out and i've gone to a dinner party with him and john mcvicar and i helped him out on the book he was doing so he he sort of took an interest in me and he would come up and visit me in belmarsh and he said look he said if you ever wrote him right he said i'll be your agent he said but i am not helping you unless you give up crime he said there's no point in me getting you a book deal and then the next week you're out robbing a bank and making a mug of me he said so when you're ready to give up crime tell me and i will help you with your writing and i did after i'd written this i'll give it to him and i said look and it was my i'll tell you what it was when my son died i was really embarrassed as well as well as everything else because his funeral was quite expensive and my in-laws paid for it and i hated my in-laws right at the time not so much now i don't i'll get on a while but it was a bit of that old tribal stuff because was from a place called porter down in ireland which is mainly loyalists sort of paramilitaries they're proper you know and our uncles are all in there march and all that turn out and my family were sort of low-light republicans from the south you know they didn't really care about like so it was alive yeah and and it was mainly with her family because her family was staunch loyalists and i'm a tag so her according to them so they didn't want her with me in the first place now years later when my son dies and they pay for the funeral that hurts me i've been robbing banks all my life i've had all this money i've wasted it and i can't even put a penny to my son's funeral so when i wrote the book i said will i say look there's take that i said if you can sell that i said try and get me about three or four grand so i can give to my son to start and pay them back for paying for my son's funeral and within about two weeks penguin had took the book for quite a lot of money more money than i'd probably nicked and i just carried on writing from then you know and it just became it became a drug for me and i was writing for this paper inside time the prisoners newspaper from prison yeah and i had loads of stuff published i had a lot of poetry when i started out short stories and stuff like that and gradually learn the craft of writing in journalism and i took a course with a london school of journalism and done proofreading and uh editing and eventually i went up for problem will self came up um to give evidence to the pro bowl for me in plantar house and saudi jonathan aiken who i'd met in prison the ex-touring minister and looked after him in jail and um you know he kind of come up and and give me a good report and stuff like that eventually after the full time of trying they gave me pro yeah how are you feeling the day come out it was kind of an anti-climax to be honest with you i mean i got out and my dad and me brother were delighted obviously you know they wanted to go out and go on a piss and i didn't really feel like drinking or you know i just felt like just standing in brixton knife street and just taking it all the way enjoying your freedom for once yeah yeah and eating something that wasn't like a week old bread that wasn't hadn't been in the freezer for six months and stuff like that i mean little things really bite to live with me mum and dad's they probably to me mum and dad so it was a bit kind of strange as well um and eventually i moved down here after a couple of months because the life that you've had the life before you have 16 is enough misery and pain for anybody to last a lifetime but the fact that you've came out the fact that you've become a successful offer and the fact that you've won awards for writing columns for the garden the independent and even the big issue yeah that's unbelievable do you ever look back and go okay i had a [ __ ] mental life but i'm doing well for myself shall i give yourself the appreciation that you deserve to for making the changes and now help other people sometimes i i kind of find it hard you know i i think to myself if i hadn't gone all through everything that i did go through then i probably wouldn't have nothing to say you know who knows where i'd be but then i think to myself well you know i've been through all that and i'm able to come out of it and do something with it and that's a bonus because let's face it i mean a lot of my mates have went to jail for long sentences you'd be surprised how many people end up getting nutted off and end up in mental hospitals just through having a long prison sentence and they don't know what to do with them because people go a bit mad you've got 20 years to do and you're waking up every day looking at the same walls and looking at the same people did you lose a lot of friends in prison oh yeah yeah yeah just old age oh man murder at one stage the british prison system uh the murder rate was seven times higher than it is in the outside world so you know what they went out in prisons like albany and parkhurst and that you know you didn't just fight people you put people out they came with hot water and sugar or stabbed them many times and the violence you see every day it kind of you might as well be in a war zone yeah i'm just about to see that i've lost a lot of friends and and i lost a lot of friends to madness as well they actually went crazy and yeah and after they went i mean one guy come out of his cell one day a really lovely fellow i'd known since we were kids come out of his cell one day wrapped up in a sheep with a bible and a table leg saying he was going to punish all the sinners ended up in a mental hospital yeah you know and this was the kind of thing you're dealing with every day yesterday yeah yeah and you're all stuck in a cage it's like gels like white one they call them spurs but they're nothing but big cages with 70 cells in and you know you're all in there in single cells and they open the doors in there and you can wander the cage but the screws are outside the cage kind of thing if you know what i mean who came that who was a maddest person you were in prison with oh charlie brothers i love charlie a lot of people don't like him but i found him very very funny i'm still in touch with him to a certain extent today but he he was kind of the reason i like charlie bronson um back in the early days not so much now i mean i still like him he's a nice guy i wouldn't like him living next door to me that's for sure but and i've had him living next door to me in a block in ireland but um he was kind of like where in the 80s where the screws had complete control of the prison system before strangeways jails like ones were from brixton the screws were brutal and i mean absolutely brutal and to see charlie bronson strolling through a prison with eight screws running after him and him just marching along like within him opening the doors and trying to get out of his way before because that's what he's doing just a pair of boats and a prison raincoat he was kind of our guy you know i mean he was our not i wouldn't say hero but he was our tool against the prison system you know he was actually knocking screws up in the air and knocking them out and and if when we've done it we was getting half killed you know i mean so he was kind of a bit of a hero how much could how through is that that he could fight he could scrap charlie he could have a good route yeah yeah i mean i i wouldn't say with superman you know what i found in jail is um a lot of people who you think might be sort of invulnerable or they've got a reputation of being so hard you can't even they're not really there i mean everybody's human everybody's got their own weaknesses yeah i used to see but i used to the bodybuilders used to hate me i was not in stone at one time i was in training all the time but what i used to do was all the bodybuilders we used to call them buddy syndrome because they stand in front of the mirror in the gym looking at themselves in that and you know the worst way to hurt them you said oh yeah i told you how are you doing yeah you lost a bit of weight and that's it they're gone yeah what do you mean lost weight from where and frighten the life out of them you know i mean but yeah i was um you know prison wasn't it it was hell but it was kind of hell with islands of boredom if you like and and a few times when things weren't too bad but on the whole it was just like it was a waste of life it really was it taught me nothing and that's for anybody watching and listening that as a leafy cream doesn't pay it doesn't mean it's a misery it it goes with it all round not just the families who are the victims but it's also your own family but the fact that you have changed your life and the plans for your going in the future because you're saying you're and writing a little two books just now is that correct yeah yeah i'm writing two books at the moment i'm writing one with me mate andy and um it's called green bloods which is and it's about the sort of irish influence on criminality in england uh since the potato famine and it starts off actually with um the birth of the hooligan the word hooligan actually comes from an irish fellow settled in southwark a family called the houlihans but the english called them hooligan and they would go about bashing people up and like causing uproar everywhere so we go from there right up through everything billy hill uh the british brothers you know criminals that people maybe haven't heard so much about as well like eddie the german uh jimmy the danger burn the [ __ ] said to the germans he was my cousin yeah what uh he was one of the biggest uh buyers of stolen goods and suppliers of firearms in this country at one time and stolen cars these cars used to go to class go everywhere ringers porsches and stuff like that he's dead now but um you know people like that jimmy jimmy the danger said i'm another funny one he's been a millionaire a thousand times he got his name because he was a gaelic football player and he was nicknamed the danger and they reckon if you've got a score against him like you you've done well to do it but i mean he was a massive drug smuggler he was just one of them guys who used to wear glasses on a bit of string around his neck he was like an old teddy bear but cross him and and that was it but a funny guy as well you know everybody's funny in my own crazy way i guess but now you know you're not licensed just you're building license for the rest of your life yeah how is it how is that affecting you because any sort of breach because you've been out ten years which is fair play to you that's the longest you've been out since you were 14 yeah um the are you a good place i am yeah i'm i'm a bit content yeah i've got married since i got out the only the only thing is i've i've seen so many deaths since i've got out family and friends you know all the old two years after how did it heal that i was really pleased that she had a chance to see me out because it was always a wish all for her life she was always like you know you've got a scout and stay out and i used to tell her when i got at least on mum this time i'm out you know that's that's it i'm finished and and after about a year and i hadn't gone back she's kind of started believing me and i'm glad she kind of we had a chance to have some time to get you know my dad's still alive um but i've lost a lot of friends since i've been there and i also have kind of blanked a lot of people who i used to have in my old life you know because you can't really afford to be hanging around with people who have still got those negative attitudes the only way to really sort of consolidate any sort of um rehabilitation is to keep away from your old life don't go back there i mean i get the same thrill that i used to get out of walking into a banking or with a shotgun from writing you know that's the good thing about it writing has filled that void for me i write every day on the paper you know and and in the evening when i come on them writing two books so you know it's it's uh focus your energy on something positive yeah to keep going but yes this is probably one of my best podcasts if i'm honest no yeah it's been [ __ ] phenomenal it's been phenomenal from your life or what you've been involved in you know the story before you were 16 i've never heard a story like that really yeah never heard and i've spoke to some [ __ ] dangerous people your story is um is phenomenal and it's the bridge it's one of the best podcasts therefore it's um for what you've been through and what you're doing now to make changes do you go to prisons and speak no i do yeah i heard that yeah giving people advice and trying to give them this tools and techniques you always talk to them about writing i love talking to young offenders about writing as well because it's something they can do while they're in prison and prepare for when they get out it's no good going in and talking a lot of kids say things like this i'll say the first thing i ask them what you win but how long are you doing so you get a kid i'm doing five years i mean dealing cannabis or whatever why should i give up crime that's what i always say i earn two grand a week when i'm dealing cannabis i'll say how much you're earning now seven pound a week and how long you're going to be on the network five years mate so you know do something different with your life change now because everybody's an entrepreneur even if you're selling drugs you've got the entrepreneurial skills to make money let's just try to focus that and doing something productive yeah put it into something because i've clearly got those skills so is there anything you'd like to finish up on no yeah i mean i'd like um really my my main job on the paper is is really to so i do interviews with people um every issue with people who've got out of prison and have kind of stayed out and made something of their lives and i think that's a good thing we need more encouragement for people in jail more rehabilitation and education which is the key to rehabilitation which i found myself but i'd like you know people inside not to give up like i give up for 20 30 years and just thought that was my life it's not your life mate you can do what you want to do you know what i mean i'll say that to my kids now as well you know it's kind of like you know if you've got the will to do something with your life then and you get enough breaks then you can do it and you know i hope people take that sort of face value and don't think i'm trying to preach to them but you know prison is no good to anybody everyone thinks that a crime is a life of glamour and to a certain extent it is for about 10 minutes but it's not glamorous when you're laying in some punishment block with like blood coming out your ears and you're covered in vomit and you're in a straight jacket you know then it ceases to be fun and i think people should realize that and you know realize that they can do something else you're not a loss just because you've been to prison you can do something yeah because you're in prison as well you've got a diploma yeah yeah yeah yeah london school of journalism i've got an a level in law and i got that in order to fight the prison system so i know what i was saying so i know what i was talking about did you think now it move on you you kind of released all your pain and anxiety and kind that to accept and kinda it's difficult as well but to release and kinda forgive i don't know i i i've got no hatred of the police i've got no hatred of the the prison system i have got hatred of the system itself yeah because this feel yeah the staff um i met some decent staff in jail even though the majority of the staff i met in there were probably dogs um i mean there are some decent people in prisons trying to make an improvement some decent people in the police who are actually doing a good job and um you know i i think if i hadn't i have got regrets you know obviously everyone has regrets um but i think as you can change you can change and i'm a bit like a i suppose i'm a bit like a war horse if you like i still walk past security vans and um i see a security van i'm looking at me watch to see what time they're delivering you know it's just a habit right here here in the bugle again but i've got fine for me it's finished you know i see it for what it is and it was a mugs game in the start in the first place and i carried on with it too long because obviously nowadays you've got cameras you've seen there's cctv everywhere everything jump over forever um but for coming only they know it's been some story it's been one of the best that i've had on my show um but you've got your six seven books out sorry yeah how can people buy those books uh you can get them through penguin or um john blake is the uh publisher i'm with now as well or amazon or the internet you know they're freely available rocket 88 books does me book about the teds and the punk gang wars so if you're interested in that you can get it from them yes read these books you've heard the story it's phenomenal and i can't wait for your new books coming out and for the future i know i wish you all the best brother and again i appreciate you coming on the show and telling your story thank you all the best thank you very much

Channel: Anything Goes With James English

Views: 406,372

Keywords: gangster, banks, robbery, crime, prison, guns, sad, funny, change your life, family

Id: CniQVAGUels

Length: 109min 1sec (6541 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 23 2019