#322. Armed Bank Robber on 35 Year Prison Sentence - Noel 'Razor' Smith

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1:19I mean, it gave me a buzz. And it becomes like an addiction. You can't stop it. I was on so many robberies that they all become like one. I was mentally ill, there's no doubt about it. Got diagnosed later on as a psychopath. I got arrested at gunpoint. First I got three years, five years, 12 years. Then eight life sentences. Eight life sentences? 35 years behind bars, you know. I went into the system as a wild, lunatic kid. I became manic. And then what I'd done was I ripped the zipper off my jeans. And ripped out my veins in my wrist. My God. Did you ever come across Charlie Bronson? Yeah, I love Charlie.

1:52He's a good friend of mine. He became our sort of hero because he was our one weapon against the system. I wanted to fight everybody. I wanted to fight the system. I was involved in a riot the first day I got to Dover. People would know you for who you are and what you did, and they gave you a lot of respect. Yeah, they weren't really respect, but it was fear. Prison runs on paranoia and violence. How do you look back at that and think, I've spent 35 years behind bars? With great regret. If I went back into prison again and they gave me a sentence, a big sentence, I would.

2:26Welcome to the Eventful Lives podcast. I'm your host Dodge and I'm the founder of Bournemouth Sevens, the world's largest sport and music festival. On this podcast I speak to proper characters of all lived eventful lives. Do us a favour and hit that follow button and be sure to check us out on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at Dodge Woodall, where we've now had over 100 million views. Razor, welcome to the show, mate. Thank you, Dodge. Nice to be here. Yeah, lovely, lovely, Peter. I've been waiting for this one for a long time. The amount of messages that have come in going, you've got to get Razor on, you've got to get Razor on.

2:57And they've been talking about this for the last three or four years and you're finally here. Blimey. Happy days. Yeah. Let's roll all the way back. How did you end up becoming Britain's most prolific armed bank robber? Well, that was a bit of a long journey, to be honest. It wasn't overnight. that. I got nicked in the 70s for when I was juvenile for something that I didn't do and ended up getting off it. It was a load of burglaries that the police had beat me and my pal up and made us admit to. And in the end, it sort of turned me where I became, I was very childish and very immature. And I thought, well, if you want a criminal, I'll give you a criminal 24-7.

3:35And I just went at it. So I ended up in SEND, which was a detention centre back in those days, a very terrible place. The police are investigating it now as it happens. They were in touch with me a couple of weeks ago. And in there, I met a guy whose brother had a couple of firearms for sale. It was a sawn-off single-barreled shotgun with no ammo and a Luger pistol from the Second World War with a bent barrel and no magazine. But they looked the part, so I ended up getting them off him and set out at the age of 15 to do a few robberies, like what I'd seen on the telly. Unfortunately, it wasn't, you know, I think we nicked 30 quid in our first.

4:18No, we nicked a tenner on our first robbery. So that was£3.33 each. And the other guy's got disillusioned, but I never did. I just loved the excitement of it, of being in control. That was the thing. I'd been bullied and I'd been, like, beaten up by the police, beaten up by prison officers. And for the first time, when I had a gun in my hand, people listen to me so it gave me a sort of feeling of control and uh that was what i loved and i became addicted to that all for my life and and that's how i ended up doing so many robberies and i was i was one of those guys who people would turn up at my doorstep like a little firm and say we're doing a post office down in surrey or something's your fancy coming in and i just drop everything and say yeah i just love to go and rob and um it led to me spending a lot of a lot of years in prison as it happens over three decades because I was never never a very successful criminal that's the thing and I think you find most of the people well nearly everyone in jail is they're not successful criminals it's as simple as that they're rubbish at what they do and they end up serving bundles of years like I did and it becomes like an addiction you can't stop it until something happens to you that you decide well that's it for me where was it when you actually started going into proper bank robberies?

5:35You started off like robbing post offices, but just so the listener and the viewer out there can understand, what was the post office robbery like in the 80s would you say? To be honest with you, I've never done a post office in my life. Okay. Okay. But I started out robbing shops. The first one was a record shop. This is amateur stuff when I was 15. When I started going into it a bit more professionally, it was rent offices. in the old days. Rent office, what's that? Yeah. If you lived on a big estate in the old days, they had an office in the middle of the estate where they would deal repairs and you paid your rent there every week.

6:12Okay. And they kept the money in a safe. They've done away of them all now. And we used to go in, jump over the counter, fire a gun up in the air and then rob the safes. Um, and that was quite good money. That was like, I went from robbing shops for a tenner to robbing rent offices free 400 quid. Okay. And then from there, I went on to bigger things. I started robbing building societies. Then I started robbing banks, security vans, post office vans. And it became kind of like an everyday thing for me. You know, I'd get up in the morning and think, do I need any money? Yeah, let's go and rob something.

6:49But yeah, I became absolutely addicted to it. It was stupid really, and it really, am I allowed to swear? yeah man yeah it fucked me up for the rest of my life to be honest with you um i had some you know some funny experiences doing it over the years and you know i've written books about it and and it sounds funny when you're reading it but when you're actually doing it it's a different kettle of fish yeah i mean i the reason why i was so successful i think of not successful but at crime itself about robbery, which was my game, was the fact that I was a very frightening man. I mean, look at me now.

7:27I'm about 12 stone. In those days, I was 18 stone, and I was a proper, I could proper shout out, you know what I mean? I could proper growl. And I wasn't afraid. Robbing places never terrified me. It gave me a buzz. and um i remember we we went for all the uh um the security uh stuff that they put on over the years like i remember the first time we went to rob a post office van and the guy i was working with said to me bring an axe and i thought what bring an axe i said i'll bring the gun he went no bring an axe and he wouldn't tell me why so we've gone we're plighted up waiting for this post office van up in Tulsa.

8:08It pulls up, guy gets out with a box. And as he's walking across the pavement, put the gun up to him, bomb me pal, drop the box. And as soon as he drops the box, legs shoot out of the box, telescopic legs. So they're like, they're made out of sort of rolled steel and they come out about 10 foot long in each corner. So you can't get the box into a car. Ah, okay. So that was their security. Okay, okay. So then he would get the axe and I had to chop the legs off. Yeah. I had to chop through these legs on the pavement, spark flying up everywhere, yeah. So then I realized what the axe was for. And you had to face that sort of stuff.

8:44Like they had lockable doors at one time. If you went into a bank, the doors would close behind you and they could press a button on the other side and you wouldn't get out. What we used to do is take a breeze block in a holdall and just drop it at the door as we went in so the doors couldn't close. Oh, okay. They had shooting screens at one time. I don't know if you've ever heard of them where the screen shoots straight up. Yeah, I remember that. What year was that roughly? What decade was that? That was about the 80s. Okay. So straight up what you're saying, you're going over the counter, put the gun on and the presser, but bang.

9:12Yeah, the screen went up. Jeez, yeah, I see that. And they done away with him when a mate of mine went in and done one and he had his head over and the screen lifted him right up and nearly broke his neck. So they said, we won't have them no more. You know, everything that they brought out over the years, we combated. So it's kind of like, it was like a real job. You had to see what they were doing next, and then you had to plan accordingly. I was never a great criminal. I weren't great at planning. Other people had done all that. Basically, I was a thug with a gun. Okay. I was too lazy and too selfish to work for anything.

9:48I wanted everything now. So that's what kept me going. I kept getting nicked, going into jail. First, I got three years. Then I come out. I got five years for possession of firearm, done that, got out. Then I got 12 years for armory. Then I got 19 years. Then my last light at the Bailey was eight life sentences under the two-strike act. Eight life sentences? Yeah. For Robin? Yeah. Yeah, the two-strike act. They've done away with it now, but it was your second strike. You were going away for life. I was up for eight robberies, got found guilty, got a life sentence on each robbery, and 10 years concurrent on each fire hose charge.

10:30So eight lots of 10 years. My God. How old were you then when you got that last lot? That was 1999. I was just, I think I was in my 40s. 39, 40, something like that. And I thought that's it. My brief actually, my QC said to me when I got downstairs, he said, that's it for you. He said, because the sentence was brand new. It had only come out in 97. And he went, we've done that. these sentences work but it looks at the moment that if you've got a lot of previous you're never getting out of prison it's a life sentence so i kind of resigned myself to that and um been in prison loads of times i ended up in belmarsh for two years then white moore for three years and my son died when i was in white moore and that was the spur i needed to stop me to change my life if like but because i'd been at it for so long it was very hard yeah and prison even though they talk a lot about rehabilitation they don't offer nothing really they don't silly courses where you go on you do two weeks you take a few boxes and that's you done you you know that's about the strength of it but there was one prison in the whole country called grendon i've heard that's brutal right no no is that good is it it's the best prison in the country but isn't it isn't it Aren't you mixing with like every type of naughty person?

11:53You would think a lot of people get the wrong impression about it. Okay. It's 210 people the prison holds. Okay. So that's only 210 people. Child sex offenders who go there do a different type of therapy to normal prisoners. So they do it on a wing where we're not. Oh, I see. I thought everyone mixed together. They do. Okay. But on exercise and stuff like that. But you'd have people on your wing. Say I was on C wing. There'd be the likes of me, Ray Bishop, Tony Argent, you know, loads of sort of normal prisoners, ODCs, ordinary decent criminals. But you'd also have people on there for rape. You'd have people on there for battering kids, you know, not sexually, but like there was a guy in my group who killed a baby by punching him in the stomach.

12:40And people who bash up old grannies and all that, they're the kind of people you got to sit with and listen to their stories. and you know it does your head in mate seriously you're there day after i was five years in there is that is that out that there's no choice in that no it's voluntary it's voluntary i've heard it before okay why did you want to choose to go and put yourself in that situation i'll tell you what it was i'm serving eight life sentences right now i'm never getting out yeah and my son died when i was in white moore prison so i looked around and i thought you know what i've got to changing my life.

13:13And I couldn't see any prison I could go in order to show them that I was fit enough to be released, except Grendon. Someone said to me, go to Grendon. I went, what? You're joking. But my brother-in-law had been there three times. He's a lifer. He's been doing his life sentence since 1986 and he's still in. He's still in today? Yeah. Yeah. He killed a geezer who interfered with his daughter. And every time he goes up for parole and they ask him if he's sorry he done it he says no dig him up i'll kill him again so he's you know he doesn't do himself no favors but what's his name uh tony tony hogan and um so he's done 39 years yeah yeah and and out of principle he's saying i don't regret that yeah and he's happy just to carry on staying in there yeah he's institutionalized by now obviously but um yeah i was there at the murder in 86 but I was out then, but different story.

14:08He had been to Grendon three times because he was a lifer and what he was in for, they tried to test him by sending him there. And I spoke to him in private and he said, look, it's a really good prison. He said, it can really help you. He said, it couldn't help me because I won't, you know, I won't say, yeah, I'm sorry, I've done my crime. He said, but I go there. So I applied. You had to take an IQ test to see if you could understand the therapy. And then you had to go for a selection. period. And then when you got there, you were on a F, I think it was F-wing for 12 weeks while they watch you before they let you go into the actual prison.

14:44A lot of people get shipped out. But through going there, I got into therapy and spent five years there and eventually was sort of on my way to release. But I mean, that was my last sentence, the early sentences, which I'm actually writing a book at the moment. I'm writing my first novel. I've written about seven or eight or nine true books. I'm writing a novel about my time in a sentient detention centre, but it's fiction, but based on fact. And, I mean, back in those days, prisons were unbelievable, seriously. I mean, what do you want to know about them? Well, I'm intrigued to see what the prisons like back in the 80s and 90s to early noughties, to how they are today, how it's changed they bear no relation i mean i first went in in 1976 and um in those days it was uh it was you got beatings straight away when you come in through the door you got punched in the face you know this is juvenile jail yeah and uh you got absolutely mullered seriously you're stripped naked you're 14 15 years old and they leave you there for two hours while they all come in and out laughing at you.

15:59And then everything was done with a slap or a punch or a kick. So by the time I was 15, I was already deeply, you know, inert to violence because it was every day they would just punch you in the face casually. But what it done was this, they thought it was an official government policy. It was called the short sharp shock. And what it was, it was designed for juveniles under the age of 18, usually a first offense, and their game was to treat you so brutally on your first stage of prison that you would never, ever commit crime again. It didn't work. What it actually done was, and I can go around top security prisons today and see the faces of guys that I'd done send with in 1976, and what it done was, it gave us something to rebel against.

16:51in the quiet of the evenings in the dorms, we would all be plotting up mischief, crimes we were going to do, and screws we were going to kill when we got out. And so we became sort of a cohesive group against the screws, and it taught us to be anti-authority. And when we got out, all we wanted was a bit of payback. We wanted revenge on society for what they just put us through as kids. So it didn't work, and they abolished it in 1982 after several children had died. And my first taste of the old Bailey was at the age of 15 as well, just after DC. So you just come out of there juvenile? Yeah, I come out in November.

17:32How long were you in juvenile for? Three months. And then I was back in January. Why? Because I was just a basic criminal. Just at it again were you? Yeah. I mean, sin don't teach you nothing. And once you've been there, you can't get a job. You're a 16-year-old and they go, what have you got in your background? and you've just done three months in the juvenile detention center, you know, you're not going to be the best pick. So I kind of got out there and met this guy, his brother, and got a couple of guns off him, went to work doing robberies. I've done about six robberies. And we robbed a sweet shop down in Bellum, me and my mate.

18:10He was a year older than me. And the geezer put up a fight and my mate done him across the head with a bottle of lemonade. so we was nicked for GBH armed robbery I think it was five armed robberies two attempted robberies processing a firearm so at the age of 15 I'm going up to the Old Bailey for trial for sentencing and I think I'd just turned 16 went up to the Old Bailey and the judge said they told us beforehand if you plead guilty to so and so so and so you get less of a sentence they said I was going to get a ballstool sentence and my mate was going to get another whack of ballstool because he'd been already and we believed it.

18:48Pleaded guilty and the judge said, no, don't make deals. He said, you'll go to prison for three years detention and you'll go to prison for three years youth custody. I didn't realise what the sentence was and it was a sentence under Section 53, Paragraph 2 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 and the wording was, if a person under the age of 18 committed crimes that would warrant 14 years imprisonment or more in an adult, you can jail them for detention. Now, detention, you didn't get none of your remand. I'd been on remand for five months. That didn't count. You got no remission and you got no leaving date.

19:31You've done the sentence. And after two years, they'd look at you for parole. I went into the system as a wild, lunatic kid, already been up the old Bailey and 16th from Robbie and GBH, being convicted and just fighting everybody along the way. I just didn't give a shit. I didn't want to be in prison and I hated the screws. And they sent us to a unit, me to a unit in Ashford prison, old Ashford, which is pulled down in Middlesex. Yeah. And there was about 10 kids on this unit. It was right at the top of a prison wing. And they're all under the age of 18 and six of them were in for murder. And the rest were a couple of pals of mine who I'd been on remand with, who also got detention sentence.

20:15There was 10 given out that year, I think. And we had a guy who was supposed to be IRA, making bombs and shit, but Pat McGuire, he was exonerated later, but he was in there doing 12 years. And we just fought against the screws all the time. It became that sort of place. And eventually they shipped this all out and they shipped me to a ball store called Dover and got the Dover ball store. And I was just wild. I wanted to escape. I wanted to fight everybody. I wanted to fight the system. I was involved in a riot the first day I got to Dover. And then I ended up battering another kid over something.

20:59And they put me down the block in Dover, which is underground. It's up on top of a cliff. and what you had to do down there, it was all stone walls and stone floors and every morning at 8 o 'clock, they'd bring in a bucket, a scrubber, finger carbolic soap and a cloth and you had to scrub the cell. So I'd done this the first day, done it the second day. After the third day, I went, why am I doing this? I'm not doing ball stool. They can't lose me birds, you know what I mean? I've got to do me sentence. So when they come in the next morning, screw come in, put the thing in, I went and take that out.

21:35I'm not washing I'm not scrubbing the floor he said you fucking are I said oh yeah I said fucking watch me and I just laid on the mattress so he's gone out come back about half hour later with three other screws open the door right scrub your floor so the bucket's at the end of the mattress and I just kicked the bucket and it went over and water went all over their boots and that was it they dragged me out beat the shit out of me and um put me back in another cell and then come with a bucket and water again in a scrubber. So now I've been beaten through it. I ain't having it. Picked up the bucket, threw it at them, water all over them.

22:12Um, and that was the last thing I remember. They all jumped on me. Um, I remember being held down and it turned out they injected me with Largaxil, which was a psychotropic drug in those days. I'd never heard of it. And I woke up three days later in Rochester, Borstal hospital wing, under observation for mental health. I was 16. Yeah. So I thought, fucking hell, where's my life going? And I was in the hospital there for a long time and on Larkactyl. I don't know. Larkactyl is - What's the equivalent of that? It's a terrible drug. Okay. I wouldn't know. What's the feeling you had on it? You turn into a zombie.

22:54Okay. Seriously. Okay. You think that everything is all the right speed and everything is going well. Yeah. But this is how it works, right? They call it the LARGACTOLE shuffle. You walk like that with your feet going, because you think you're going fast. I'll come out. They let me out once on the wing for association. There was a mate of mine, Vince Kennedy, who I knew outside, and he was on there as well, and he was on LARGACTOLE. So we met up, and there was a table tennis table. So Vince said, do you fancy it came to table tennis? So I went, yeah, this is what LARGACTOLE's like. So he said, I'll serve.

23:30so he's threw the ball up in the air the ball's rolling over there and he's still bringing his hand back to serve he thinks the ball's still coming down and then and i went it's over there and he went i'll get it he was gone for 10 minutes going over to call it to get the ball and in the meantime i was just looking at the light and wander away see a telly and started like thinking things and wandering it's like ketamine it's mullet yeah it kills you it wipes out sort of You can't move fast, even though you think you're moving wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like a fog in your head all the time, and your body is affected by it as well.

24:07So you sort of make stiff movements. They're like actual shuffle. And they had me on that for a long time. And then they said, listen, we're going to let you go up the wing if you behave yourself, but you have to keep taking the medication. They used to give me these pills, injection once a week, and then the pills every morning. And you're still 16 now still? Yeah. My God. Okay. So I said, all right then. So they let me up on the wing, gone up on the wing, and I've decided not to take the pills. So they come in every morning, give me a little cup of pills, and I'm launching them. After about four days, I'm sitting there one day by the pool table, and all of a sudden my body starts cramping up, my legs, my arms.

24:46I'm like that. I can't stop it. It's just like I've turned into a ball. And two screws have had to carry me. He put a brawl handle through my arms, carried me over to the hospital, and the doctor went, you haven't been taking the pills. He said, that's the side effect. They gave me another injection. I didn't have a clue what they were giving me. They never asked or anything, you know what I mean? Eventually in Rochester, they put me on C-wing, which was kind of like the top security wing, if you like. It was the newest wing in there. And of course, I found a way to escape out my cell. And Christmas Eve, which is my birthday, we had a plan on my spur that was about 10 prisoners.

25:23I was going to break out my cell Christmas Eve, break them all out, do the night watchman, nick his keys. We had a rope ladder made. We were going to get over the wall, nick a couple of cars, and we'd be in London by Christmas Day. That was the plan. No. What happened was I've come out and I've managed to – what I'd done was the doors were wooden doors, and they had a slit to look through, plastic, plastic slit, and they had a bolt on the outside and the lock. and I noticed that the cup for the lock was in a wooden jam, wooden door jam, whereas in most prisons it's steel pole. So I managed to nick a pair of scissors out of the craft room and worked it so that the cup that the lock goes into was now out and you could only see it on the inside of the cell.

26:11So what I'd done was that night, Christmas Eve, I've got a coat hanger ready to do the thing outside and I've got the scissors ready to undo the screws on the strip. Night watchman comes up, nine o 'clock, comes along and he checks the doors and puts the bolts on. So I had to stand with my foot up against the door because it wasn't going to lock. And he's tested it, saw it was okay, put the bolt on and walked away. So after about 20 minutes, I've undone the, the lock's already undone, and I've undone the slit, the Perspex slit, took the Perspex out of it, put the hanger out, and unhooked the bolt on the other side.

26:47So I thought, great. So I'm out. Now everyone on the spur's all looking out there for things, and I'm going, yeah, yeah, they're all going, yeah, and I'm going to keep it down. We'll be home by tomorrow. So I go out along the landing and look down, and the night watchman is in his office. So I thought, right. So I've gone back, and I'm talking to my pal through the door. I said, listen, what I'll do is when he comes up to do his next key run, I said he'd be caught on the landing. I said, I'll jump him, take his keys. I didn't even know he didn't have any keys. I never had no keys. I take his keys, let you lot out and we're off I said alright, yeah, yeah all of a sudden I hear him coming up the stairs he ain't meant to be up for another 40 minutes so there's a recess, a toilet and shower at the end of the spur and I go in there, it's all dark in there, the land is all lit up so I'm in there and I'm standing up against the wall at the back and he comes along whistling, turns his key comes back, I thought he's going downstairs at that moment he wanted a piss so he's coming, he's had a piss I'm still standing at the back of this room in the dark.

27:48And then he's singing away to himself, and he goes to wash his hands, and he looks in the mirror, and he's like, and he can see me, the eyes at the back of the room, right? With that, he's gone, oh my God, and gone to run out. I've picked up a steel bucket, come out after it, crashed him straight on the head with it, about three times. Now he's laying on the spur, blood's pooling out of his head, and I'm out with this bucket. And everyone else who was going to come with me went, I went, I'll get the keys. They went, no, no, no, I don't want nothing to do with this. I think you've killed him. No, you're on your own, mate.

28:20I'm thinking, fuck's sake, it's my birthday on Christmas Eve. So I'm there on the landing and I'm going, what? You fucking mugs. And I've gone back into the recess to put the bucket in. When I come out, there's a pool of blood leading out and he's gone. I thought, where the fuck? And then I've heard the alarm. And I've gone around the corner and he's there with his finger on the alarm, blood all over him and he's going, you're fucks now. And all the night patrol come, grabbed hold of me, bashed the shit out of me on the spur so everyone could hear and then got him to give me a few things. He was weak from loss of blood.

28:55I was going, oh, like he was really hurt me while they was holding me. Took me down the block. By now it's Christmas morning. Took me down the block, put me in a strip cell, which is a cell within a cell where you have no clothes. You have a zoot suit, which is terrible. shorts and top and left me in there. And then the next morning when the staff came on duty for Christmas day and they heard what had happened, three or four of them went, let's go down and do the gun. So they've come down and beat me up in the fucking strip cell, proper kicked me all around the strip cell. I had two broken ribs, broken finger, boot mark across my face.

29:37But no one was ever going to see me. I was stuck in there. Yeah. So they left me in that cell and about, I'd say at least once a week, screws who had been off would come on and come down and bash me up. They used to do all the usual shit. They'd bring the food to the door, spit it in front of me and go, here, I'll enjoy that. But you had to eat it to survive, otherwise you'd die of starvation. I ended up down there in the strip cell for two weeks. Then they took me out and put me in a normal cell in the block, but there was no talking, there was no singing, there was no whistling. You had a mattress, a thin mattress that was put in at 8 o 'clock at night and taken out at 7 in the morning, and you're in a cell all day with nothing except a plastic piss pot.

30:21So I'm in there, and I can't lose any bird. So they remind me to the border visitors, which is the highest people who can give you the punishment in prison. They can lose the rest of your bird, but I can't lose nothing. So after about a month, I'm up in front of the border visitors, causing gross personal violence to an officer attempted to escape. And they found me guilty as they would and said, what we propose to do is keep you in solitary confinement unlimited because we can't lose you any remission. So I didn't know what that meant. And I'm down that block and months went by, seriously. And I'm in this fucking cell.

30:59Every day the routine is the same. The governor comes around in the morning. This is what you live for, the governor coming around because you think he's going to say, wait, you can go back to the wing because you never know when you're going. The governor would come around. Chief would open your door. You're supposed to stand to attention, give your name and number to the governor. And this is how it went. Smith, PJ2679, governor. Morning, Smith. Everything fine? Yes, governor. And you're open with him and say, wait, you're going back to the... And he walks on and they close the door and it was devastating every day.

31:28You had another 24 hours to wait. And this went on for months. And eventually, after two months, I went, fuck this. I'm not doing it. So I went out to the toilet. I couldn't read and I couldn't write. Went out to the toilet and I found a bit of the Financial Times, like two big pages out of the Financial Times. So I brought them back, smuggled them back to me cell. And the next morning I was ready. I was sitting at the back of the cell, facing the wall, with this newspaper like that, door opens, name and number to the governor. I went, all right, governor, am I going back today? He went, stand up and give your name and number to the governor.

32:03Now, peace off. Am I going back today? They slammed the door. And every day, I'd be doing something else. Yeah. Be doing press-ups or something. Morning, Governor. Am I going back? And eventually, I got so paranoid down in that fucking cell that in there, it was like a submarine. You could hear the screws in the office, but it sounded burbling. Like you couldn't hear the sounds, the words they were saying. So I'm up my door, and I became convinced that they were going to kill my mother. And they were plotting to kill my mother. and the thing is my mother had never even visited me in there so I became manic and then what I'd done was I ripped the zipper off my jeans by then I had normal prison jeans sharpen it up and ripped out my fucking my veins in my wrist probably what you just wanted to end your life yeah my god so they found me in a pool of blood took me up to the hospital stitched me up and then sent me back to the block so I was there for another nine months I was in that block and eventually solitary confinement yeah no exercise no fresh air you didn't get no exercise you're in a cell all the time no no no three times a day you can go out and go across the landing to get water in a plastic jug and empty your piss part and that's it nothing so what was your mindset when you're thinking right there's no way out here am I going to keep fighting this cruise am I going to be being a proper nuisance every single time or was there a point you go do you know I'm actually done with this I need to learn my lesson from that so I can get an easier a cushy lifestyle up in the wing that can get out of here.

33:33The only thing is you go through all them phases in your time of solitary confinement. Yeah. So I ended up, I thought, fuck this, I don't want to be doing this for the rest of my life. And then I thought, well, fuck them. You know, I mean, if they're going to treat me like this and I've got no time to lose, I'm going to do my whole sentence. So I'm not playing the game. Eventually they come along and said, right, we're going to let you up in the wing. The governor said, I'll let you up in the wing. I went, right. But that feeling was nice, wasn't it? Not only because I was a smoker, and down the block you can't smoke.

34:05Yeah. So I was looking forward to getting a roll-up. Anyway, I'd been down there nine months. The average sentence in Ballstall for a Ballstall boy was nine months. When I come out of the block, the whole wing was new people I'd never seen before. But they all knew about me being down the block. And it became a thing. I ended up doing every day of that sentence. Got out in 1980 and went back to criminality and went back rubbing again. And this time I took it serious. But that time in there, it mentally fucked me. Yeah, I was about to say mentally, wasn't it? Yeah. I spoke to a psychiatrist afterwards and she said, to a 16-year-old boy, three years imprisonment is the same as life to an adult because they can't see beyond.

34:50Their brain is not developed to see beyond. In 1977, when I got it, people used to say, when you out then? I used to go 1980 and people would go, fuck me, we'd be flying around in rocket ships by then and all that stuff. So 1980, I got out. What was your attitude? When you left there in 1980, did you leave angry at the whole system? Were you thinking, right, I'm going to be one of the best robbers now? What's the difference between robbing a building society and robbing a bank? The main difference is you get less money out of the building society. Building societies were always sort of an amateur thing.

35:25you know I mean when you were up and coming you'd rob a building society just to get some experience there's no real security in them so basically you would just get it was whether they were going to give you the money whether you could get them to give you the money and once you could do that you could do anything did that give you the confidence then to move on to actually robbing banks yeah and back then in the banks obviously no cctv well it was but it was but it was rubbish really when you looked at it because black and white and fluffy you can't see anything what was what was the buzz like robbing a bank and how well planned were you when you were robbing banks it was the best feeling in the world seriously i still miss it it was like where i had no power yeah and i'd always been bashed up and like fucking lowest rung in the ladder suddenly when i'm robbing i'm fucking it everybody has to do what i say and it turned out i had a right neck for it so you know you sort of build yourself up what was my one of my first robberies I think was I think it was at Barclays and where about do you remember Clapham yeah Clapham was it yeah oh no it was in Ballham sorry it was right opposite the station and the first time I'd done that it was like oh I'll tell you this the first shop robbery we'd done or the second shop robbery we'd done me and my mate we thought like we're going to do this professionally shop as in what sort of shop it's a record shop it's a record shop going in there robbing the cash and out okay so what happened was we had a Nick car called Tina Marks and we had a gypsy fellow who was our driver and it was me and me mate Peter he's dead now and we both had the guns I had the Luger Peter had the shotgun no ammo in them Peter had a flick knife two pairs of handcuffs to handcuff the staff right But the flick knife was to cut the phone line.

37:17We had all sorts of mad shit with us that we thought we needed because it was on films. And the guy who was driving for us, it's the middle of summer, and he's sitting outside revving the engine with a ski mask on in the middle of summer. People walking by going, what a gypsy lad. Yeah, come on, hurry up. So we've got him in my mate. Fair play. Big overcoach in the middle of summer. And there was a couple of customers in there. So we've gone down pretending to look through the records and we're watching. Last customer goes out, we go up to the counter. So this is my first fucking robbery. So the guy said, yeah, what was it like?

37:55No, there was a record out called 20 Heartbreakers. And I've picked that up off the thing and went, can you play track number six? And the record player was under the counter. So he had to get down. And as he's got down, I've reached in my pocket, pulled the Luger out. But as I've pulled it out, the foresight got caught on the lining of my jacket, which was red. It's ripped, and there's a bit of red lining hanging out. Like the bang thing on it. Yeah, yeah. So I'm holding it up like that. I said, right. And the first thing I could think to say was stand and deliver. Yeah. I'm like, what a fucking idiot.

38:25He went, what do you want? I went, stand and deliver. He went, what? So I went, I'll blow your fucking head off. And he put his hands up. Then I thought, oh, I'm getting away of it. So I went, get the money out of the safe. He went, we haven't got a safe. I said, well, get the money out of the tool. he's hoping to tilt pot a tenner on the thing I went what the fuck is that he said we took the money to the bank at three o 'clock oh no yeah so I'll come out with some fanny story to him like see that roof over there by now I'm getting into it he's like yeah I said there's a sniper up there if you leave this there weren't even a phone in there if you leave this shop within the next ten minutes you'll put a bullet in the head you got that there was nobody on the phone roof so he's pretending to agree oh yeah yeah so as we're going out through the door there was a carousel thing with all records in it.

39:11I grabbed a big arm full of LPs because we only had a tenner. They're all basically fucking rollers LPs. All the girls in the flats love them, my sister and that. But yeah, we nicked the tenner. So that was the first one. Yeah. And then what was it when you went into a bank then? What other things did you have to think about before going into the bank? Well, I became professional sort of in the 80s. And the things you had to look out for, certain banks had security guards, like the allied Irish used to always have a security guard in Cricklewood Broadway. But you'd take them anyway. They're not armed.

39:44But... What do you mean you'd take them? You'd put them down on the floor. Okay. Cuff them up or put a fear in them? I had one of them sort of faces and voices, 18 stone with a big leather jacket on a ski mask. I used to go in and go, everybody up the fucking end of the bank and I'd be waving the gun around. Everybody would go to the end of the bank. right security guards down the end of the bank so what we used to do then was we had a bag man this is the typical team for in the robbery team one is the driver don't come into the gaff right you've got the doorman now the doorman when you get into the premises he stays by the door with a weapon uh in our case it was a fireman's axe uh right scary weapon so no anyone who comes in ain't getting back out and telling them there's a robbery and nobody's getting out so he'll stay there by the door with the axe.

40:34We had a bag man who was my pal and his job was just to go from the counter to the counter bagging up the money and I was the fighter, the gunman. So my job was to get them all to comply and I was really good at it. Give me an example as you've gone in. I want to know the example as you've gone in. Who's the first man in? You were always the first man in there and you'd put the fear up everyone. Give me an example as you've just gone through the door now, what you'd do, what you'd say. Let me base it on one we've done. We've done a Midland Bank. Midland were our favourite. They no longer exist.

41:07I think it's partly down to us. But we've done the Midland Bank on London Road, and what happened was we're on mobile phones, hands-free. This is 97. So we've all got the earpiece in and the geezer in the car can hear exactly what's going on in the bank through our mobile phones. So he knows when to start the engine when we're on our way out. So it's a big, long pavement across the road. We go one by one into the vestibule. Every bank's got a vestibule, which is you're going through the doors, then there's another set of doors. So it's a little sterile place. Once we're in there, pull the ski mask down, get the gun out.

41:42I'd have the gun, they'd have the bag and the axe. And then we kick open the second set, because the thing is surprise. As soon as I kick the door open, I'll be in there pointing the gun at everyone. Get on the fucking floor, you muggy cunts. And they're Like with the fright of it, they just drop to the floor or they go where you tell them to go. No, I talked to old robbers years ago and they said, if there's any other go heroes, you can avoid them by always keeping everyone at gun's length. Yes. I mean, don't let them anywhere near the gun. So that was my game. And I'd be walking around, people would be on the floor and I'm going, what are you fucking looking at?

42:16Oh, blow your fucking head off. Like really frightening while the rest of them went to work and got the money and all that stuff. But the thing is, when you do that sort of job, and I said it in my first book, time freezes. It slows down. You can hear everything. You can hear cars indicating on the street as you're crossing the road. And then when you get in there, it's complete silence because the banking hall is a lot quieter than it is outside. And when you start shouting, everyone just out of flight just drops to the floor. Some people don't. I mean, I'd done one down in Tulsa once, and I walked in.

42:52There was 20 people. I'd done it on my own, pulled the shotgun out, fired a shot out of one barrel into the ceiling because there were so many people. And when everyone on the floor, everyone dropped on the floor except for one geezer, a black fella over in the corner. He was up at the counter. So I've walked through the people. I went, oh, you. I went, what's your fucking game? Get on the floor. And he went, I'm a yardie. I said, I don't care if you're a fucking yardie. I went, get on the fucking floor. But mad shit like that. I had another one. I've been doing one on my own. I've walked in and I've got a bag, plastic bag for the money, pulled out the gun.

43:25There's a geezer at the counter who's paying some money in. So I pull out the gun. They're all looking at me. I went, right, fill this and threw the bag over to the counter. The geezer who's on this side of the counter grabs the bag and starts emptying his pockets into it. I said, what are you fucking doing, mate? Give him the bag. So he pushes it under. When I go home and I'm emptying the money out of the bag, there's a biro, there's a bus ticket. It was two feet. All the things out of his pocket. Another one. I used to use at one stage, I used to use a Remington Sawn Off.22 rifle. It was semi-automatic.

43:56It was about that long, but it was heavy. And I've gone into a bank up and stripped them on my own, pulled it out of my overcoat. No, I've still got it in my overcoat. I went, everyone down the end of the bank. And they all started moving down towards the end of the bank. And as I've pulled it out, it got caught again. And I've wrenched it and it's come out of my hand, dropped onto the floor and it was like a marble floor in this bank dropped onto the floor and skidded about four foot in front of me now they're all up against the wall and I'm here with nothing in the hand and the gun on the floor so there's a geezer standing there and on the spur of the moment I went kick that back to me and he went and kicked it back and I picked it up but so many mad things happen when you're doing it which is the one that really stands out for you which is the robbery which is your biggest robbery that you've ever done oh I can't talk about that I haven't you know I've only been nicked for a third of the crimes.

44:44I've been convicted of a third of the crimes I've committed, so I can't be. And I'm a bit long in the tooth to be going back on that shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I will tell you about one. We've done a security van, a security post office van in Ballam. And we discovered, it became quite well known in the criminal underworld, that in order to do the vans, what you could do is, if you shot them with a 2-2 long case in the window, it would make a tiny little hole, and then a pig axe bomb and threw into the hole and then you could put the barrel of a gun through and they had to open the doors. So we're down there where I had the 2-2.

45:19We've blocked them in, jumped out, I've jumped out, ski masked up, a couple of other people and I've gone right up to the fucking window and I've fired the gun and I flew back when it hit the glass but it never made the hole. It just cracked. So I'm there with this 2-2 rifle. It's only got four shots in it and I'm trying to make a hole and none of them went through the hole and I thought that's a load of bollocks so we've all embarrassed there was a million pound on the van embarrassedly we'd all have to run back to the cars and just fuck off but yeah I mean so many different I was on so many robberies that they all become like one okay you know what I mean what was your lifestyle like it was you're earning all this cash you're bringing the cash in you get the buzz you go back you have a divvy up with your mates how do you know your mates got your back on a job I'll tell you why the last robberies I've done the laughing bank robbers we were called because we wore Santa hats Christmas Eve robbing the Midland Bank up in Clapham yeah what you wearing whack Santa hats on yeah over the ski masks over the there was a geezer selling them outside for a pound it was Christmas Eve my birthday again so he's selling them outside there's three of us again and I went yeah I guess three we ain't got the masks on yet get into the vestibule put the masks on then put the hats on and I've come through the door with a shotgun going ho ho ho fill my sack and threw the stuff.

46:39And we were wishing a Merry Christmas as we left, and it was all in local papers. So the Flying Squad nicknamed us the Laughing Bank. I heard. So we lived up to that. We went and done the Midland Bank over in Hendon, right next to the police college. They all chased us out of college, never caught us. But yeah, I mean, I think I must have robbed every Midland Bank in London and the home counties. They were a listening bank, and they really did listen. You know, they give you the money straight away. but why Midlands why would you pick on them were you just like was it an easy target did you know yeah I'll tell you you come to know certain things when you're in a robbery game when you're in jail you meet other robbers every robber and every criminal inside has got their depths do you know what depths are no depositions so it'll be a bunch of paperwork that big for every case you get Nick Ford I have to give you the depositions everyone's statements because you're going to be fighting the case and all the photographs so when you look in the depositions it will tell you stuff they don't do it no more bit say Barclays Bank um we were robbed that morning I came in as the key holder at say 8 30 I moved the curtain on over to the left hand side of the window to let anybody else come in know that the bank was okay they have all these little security things so you pick them up so I picked up the fact that Barclays Banks had lockable till drawers which meant if you come in to rob them if they slammed the till shut it was shut for 15 minutes you couldn't get you couldn't even get till money so i refused to rob them the net west i robbed them a few times but they had a policy that they were not to hand over money even if customers were threatened like so yeah so yeah don't have a bank with a net west they'd um i was in one one day i made a good advert from you wouldn't it that way it's never bank with that west i don't hand over the money yeah i was in one one day i had 20 people on the floor and all the cashiers went down behind the counters because they tell them you've got polyproof glass they can't get you yeah so I'm standing there in this bank and all the people are on the floor I've got a sauna shotgun and I went if you don't come up from down there I said I'm gonna start fucking shooting these customers one by one and all the customers and because they can't see me the bank staff I went like that to the customers but they weren't you know and I went listen I won't get up here and give me the money I'm putting this in this fucking bird's head they never come up so in the end i went you fucking wankers going out like remember in the craze uh yeah when he goes yeah yeah so that was me walking out the bank so i went and robbed another midland up in uh tootin i think it was no uh a net west rather that was in clapham ballam and i've gone into that one and the same thing they've all ducked down behind the counter and then one geezer's come out from the back he looked like a bodybuilder working in the bank and he's come through he didn't realize I said, what was happening?

49:30And I went, you, come here. So he's come walking over with a cup of tea in his hand. He went, what? You see them all on the floor? And I've put the barrels of the gun into the drawer. I said, if I fire this, he's going straight up there, ricocheting into your fucking head. Give me the money. And he gave me about five grand or something. I walked out. But from then on, I wouldn't do Nat West's. Yeah. And I wouldn't do Barclays. And certain banks you could do, like the Midland and the Allied Irish, we had people not connected to us, but sort of who would tell us, who worked in them banks. Now, the Midland Bank had this thing where when they got delivery from a security van on a Thursday, that would be their, what they called the reserve, their money for the next month.

50:14And instead of putting it straight into a vault, which would be on a time lock, they put it in a safe underneath their head cashier's desk right at the front. We discovered that. So of course we wait till the van delivered, straight in, over the counter, right, give us the money and out the cashier's safe. When you said that, they go, well, so they pick up the security pack and give it to you. Right. You'd end up with like 40, 60, 70 grand in that alone. So that was our job the last one, the reserve game. We used to do more of all the Midlands and that Irish. Yeah. Your lifestyle. Where were you living around these times?

50:49Were you Clapham and Brixton, Wondroth around there? I moved up to Croydon. I had a penthouse flat up in Croydon. But, you know, that life, people think it's really glamorous. It's fucking not. It's glamorous. I had a nightclub in Wandsworth. Yeah. Where all the old faces used to come up to. What was it like for you being, people would know you for who you are and what you did and they gave you a lot of respect. Did you enjoy that? I must admit I did at first. Yeah. And then I found out years later that it weren't really respected. It was fear. Okay. And this is how I found out. Me and my pal robbed the bank up in Clapham.

51:28And what had happened? No, I robbed the bank in Stratom. What had happened? I love this confusion. So many banks. I had a hood, like a hoodie, and I thought myself, right, I'll nip in, robbed this. I was on my own. So as I'm getting to the thought, I had in those days, I was using a Navy Colt revolver, which is about how fucking long it's got, about a nine inch barrel so it was always like hard to get out of trousers and that so i'm on my way into this bank and as i'm trying to pull the gun out and flick me hood up at the same time as i go through the dog but why i didn't realize me hood's hit the back of my head and fell down so i'm barefaced so i've got in rub the gaff and um it was on uh police five the video sure taylor on a sunday what does he say and keep them peeled yeah i'm at home in the kitchen with me missus and my son who was about four at the time come running dad you're on telly around the door and there's me robbing and sure taylor's going do you know this man there's a reward and i thought fucking hell so i fucked off to island stayed over there about see i well went to wales actually i didn't get to island stayed down there for six weeks come back nobody had priced me up but when I got nicked the next time, me and me pal got voted.

52:44I'm wearing a hood, but you could see my face. And we both got guns in our hands. And it was in the South London press. It was on the front page. And it said, do you know these men rewards offered? So, me mate Dave gets nicked. There's a 10 grand reward on him, 15 grand reward on me. So eventually I get nicked. And after about, you know, we've been through all the court cases and that we're up for trial and we're outside waiting with the flying squad who's nicked us in waiting to go into court and um i hadn't spoken to them that was my game i wouldn't speak to them i wouldn't say a word from the minute i was nicked what everything no comment no not even no comment i wouldn't say nothing i just sit there and just look at the floor you know i mean stuff like that or look at the ceiling stop counting all the bricks and they used to get really frustrated But anyway, I hadn't spoken to them.

53:40And then one of them said to me, just to be spiteful, waiting to go in the court, he said, you'll never guess. He said, your mate's a bit more popular than you are. So I'm looking at him. He went, it was 10 ,000 on you, mate. He said, someone claimed that. So I'm listening. He went, it was 15 ,000 on you. He said, you know what? He said, we had nine phone calls naming you, and not one of them wanted the reward. That's how much people love you. They're willing to put you in jail for life for nothing. They don't even want the money. So I realized that it weren't respect. It was fucking fear. Fear, yeah.

54:17What would you say? How would you explain your personality in your 30s and 40s? Complicated. I was mentally ill. There's no doubt about it. You know, I mean, I had all sorts of, I got diagnosed later on as a psychopath. I had 37 or 40 traits of a psychopath or something. I'd done the test hair, psychopathy test. Don't know if you see that, it was on channel four. They'd done a big program of it. It took me to the greatest brain doctors in the world and all that. And they said, my frontal lobe was damaged. And that made me a psychopath. I wasn't one of those, I'll kill you in two seconds, psychopaths.

54:56I was a person who got it into my head that I was going to do something and then it was single-minded. I would just go and do it. And that was my psychopathy. And I didn't care. You know, I mean, I could walk into a place if there was 20 coppers in there and still try and rob the gaff. I just didn't. It didn't compute to me. So I was like a fucking. You're a dangerous man. Unexploded bomb. Yeah. 18 stone lump who was at it and didn't care. But it was also the stupid shit I'd done, mate. I mean, I'll give you an example. I went down to Brixton. I think it was 89 and I bought a Webley revolver with five bullets in it so I was coming back up to my mate's house to stash it and it was quite a nice day and there was a drug dealer who used to come to my mate's house he sold sulfate and he was sitting outside with his bird in a fucking American motor and he just bought three kilos of sulfate and he had it wrapped in newspaper and they were sitting in the car and they'd opened it to get a bit out to give to my mate.

56:03So they got three kilos of sulphate and their window. What the hell is that? That's him. He wants his sulphate back. Yeah. Sorry, I can't turn that off. Did anyone know how to turn this off? But yeah, that was me local shoplifter. That's what I should have. Yeah. It was a 15 grand reward there. Yeah. That's me local shoplifter with a load of steak for me. Oh, it's what I'm calling you now. Yeah. yeah so wait that's that's my local shoplifter who's nicked me a load of steak for tonight a load of sir tell him I'll have it two quid yeah so I was I was mad as a fucking hat seriously yeah and I didn't give a shit I wasn't really A violent man, if you know what I mean.

56:45My violence came mostly when I was in prison. And I was never what you'd call a great fucking fighter. I could hold me on, I could throw a few punches, but I was a weapons man as well. I mean, my first fight in jail, I cut a geezer across the face with a razor in ballstool. A bit of fellas here off. And I was one of them kind of geezers. I wouldn't go out and start and shop. My thing was the system, the prison system I hated. I didn't hate other prisoners. And in those days, it was a bit of solidarity where everybody sort of had a code. And they'd done something. It's gone by the way since Bertie Smalls grassed everyone up and never got touched.

57:19Who's that? Was that Bertie Smalls? Bertie Smalls, yeah. The Wembley mob. Go on. He was the first ever super grass in this country, Bertie Smalls. Derek Quiet and Smalls. They were doing robberies all over. They nicked 122 grand out of Barclays Bank in 1971. And they were having it right off. and he got caught and he'd done a deal with the Crown Prosecution Service that he wouldn't serve a single day in prison but he would give them 25 armed robbers and he did. You're joking, mate. They all went away with Big Bird and they put a million pound hit out on his head and he lived another 30 years in London and never got touched.

57:54So the criminal code went out the fucking window. Oh, if you're grass you're going to get killed but he's small, grass, all the top villains never got touched. How did he get away with that? Just bright. You've got a load of faces. So you got a lot of faces. Yeah, okay. Apparently, he was the worst of the robbers. Yeah. And he was the most violent. So just a brass neck, you know what I mean? And he went, well, come and fucking kill me then. But by the time they'd finished their 18 and 16 year sentences, nobody wanted to go out and get done for fucking killing him. Yeah. So that fucked the system up and it fucked the prison system.

58:24In the old days, we were all together and the screws was the enemy. The system was the enemy. Then heroin came in to prison system and suddenly people who you would never even expect were suddenly junkies and trying to keep it secret and all that shit. And then the grassing and the fucking, the prison system fell apart. What decade do you reckon the prison system? That's the 80s. The 80s. Yeah. So what drugs were the drug of choice before heroin got involved in the prison? Just before pure cannabis. Yeah. But if you're smoking that and you've got to test you for 30 days, you're getting another whack on top of that.

58:56No, there was no drug testing. There wasn't. Drug testing only came out about 1992. So would you say drug testing was a good thing or a bad thing? Bad thing. What it done was it turned a lot of people in prison off cannabis and on the heroin, right? Because I'll tell you why. You take heroin and you can flush it out of your system in two days. You take cannabis, it's in your system for 28 days. So if you get a piss test, you are fucked. So everybody who got cannabis went on heroin, right? And that's why there's so many mad junkies out there killing people. And I'll blame the prison system. But yeah, in those days, you could have a smoke and the screws, even the smell, the screws would come up.

59:32There was no piss tests or nothing. You had to be caught with it in your hands to be like nicked. Screws would come up the cell, scrubs and places like that. Stinky cannabis on the landing. They'd open your cell door and go, open the window will you mate? For fuck's sake, the governor's going to be through in a minute. And that was what you got. Then Michael Lourdes decided that prisoners were out there not on cannabis, decided to bring in piss testing. And then what happened was everyone went, fuck, If I get nicked with cannabis in my system, I'm losing 28 days. If I get nicked with heroin in my system, 28 days, but I can flush heroin through my system in two days.

1:00:05Whereas 10 days later, they test me for cannabis, so I've still got it. So that fucked up a lot of people, and it made the prison system very skewed. Whereas it used to be solidarity, you'd back up any prisoner against any screwer against the system, then it fragmented everything. People were off doing heroin deals and blah, blah, blah. It led to more violence because people couldn't pay for it. When we were smoking cannabis in jail, it was£7.50 for a 16th of cannabis. You can't get in fucking debt to that. Whereas heroin is£10 for each hit and it lasts about an hour. You know what I mean? So that fucked the whole prison system up.

1:00:44And let's face it, everyone in prison is inadequate. They're people who are not good at their fucking jobs. I mean, the criminals. and that's how we end up in prison in the first place. But yeah, it fucked the prison system up and also fucked up the whole criminal ecosystem, if you like, the heroin, because now there's people on it you wouldn't even believe and keep it secret. When you were at peak of your bank robbing and earning loads of dough, what was your lifestyle like? It was, I've got to tell you this, there was four of us in the laughing bank robbers, right? Yeah. One of my mates. They were still alive?

1:01:19uh one yeah they're all still alive one's in Costa Rica one's in another prison at the moment he phoned me the other day he got my guilt he's on them all but anyway what we and the other one uh he's just living a family life he was a cannabis grower okay and then he came into our robbery from that but this is the thing with us right there's four of us right whenever we had it off one of my mates would go and buy tools right he'd buy thousands of pounds worth of snap-on tools all the best tools you could get but if his light bulb went in his house he'd have to call an electrician to change the light bulb so he had loads of tools and nothing to do with them another one had used to buy videos uh vhs videos he had a whole library his front room was all shelves and videos that's what he spent his money on i would spend my money on cars i was i love classic cars and just generally living a good lifestyle.

1:02:16But here's how it goes, Dodge. Right, Dodge. If you rob a bank today and you get 40 grand, 10 grand each, which was our normal whack, within about two weeks, someone would be run out of money because it was such easy money. And they'd phone you up and say, should we have another one? So you never worried about money. I would go into places and if you was working for the money, you go in and buy a car and they go, that's 22 grand. If you're working for the money, you go, oh, I don't know. When you're nicking it, you go - You want to give it, don't you? I'll rob another bank tomorrow, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:02:45Yeah, so we all had great cars. And we were out on the piss. We were playing over Camden Town, playing pool for like 50 quid a game, cash and all that, a nut on coke. And, you know, we were just like, nobody knew we were at it. In fact, the geezer in the pub where we used to drink and play pool for 50 quid called us the four yuppies. Is that right? Yeah. Because only yuppies back then would be doing cocaine, wouldn't they? Or rock stars. And we were all dressed. We were all proper dressed and had proper cars. So he used to call us the four-year-old. He used to go, what do you do, lads? Oh, we're in financial, yeah, we're in financial interests.

1:03:21But yeah, and we robbed the Allied Irish Bank because I was going to Ireland for holiday and I wanted some Irish money to take with me. But yeah, here's another funny thing. Robbed the Allied Irish Bank in Cricklewood, yeah? So we decided, well, I decided, that when we were going in, we were going to talk like we were from Belfast, right? So pretend that we were IRA or terrorists so they'd hand over the money straight away. Got in. So I'm like, all right, they're number two. Get that fucking money out of there. Come here, you. You know what I mean? And all that shit. And my mates are doing it as well.

1:03:56Get that fucking money in there. Anyway, when I got nicked about a year later and they charged me with that robbery, they couldn't prove it. I had a mask on. But two of the witnesses, like this, God's honest truth, come to the old Bailey and said, yeah the man with the gun was definitely from east belfast and how do you know i know that dialect and that accent they were both from belfast themselves and thought i was from east belfast and i'm going you're you're contributing to the cause here now put that fucking money over right so that was fucking mental i've got my giri on that um but yeah just that magic like that and we used to just spend most of our time driving around and this is what it's like when you're arm brother seriously you go out with your family for a drive and every bank and every target that you see you're looking at i'll stop here wait there kids and you're going over looking in how many counters blah blah blah you're always working and you've always got about 20 in your mind to do and you never decide which one until the day because that's how the flying squad catch it they go get you on the rubber you know i mean and they know where you're going um eventually i got arrested at gunpoint after a 90 mile an hour chase across strep and common i was in a car and i was sitting at the traffic lights window open and i've got all full side d on me because i'm on the run from prison and i'm hiding in another place and um all of a sudden something catches me eye and around the corner against the traffic comes a bmw with like loads of gizzes screeches up next to me and as they're jumping out they're putting on the police hats you know the firearms hats don't move don't fucking move they're right next to me i've gone fuck that i've gone up on the pavement through a bus shelter around and now they're chasing me right and this is the funny thing i'm i'm doing about 70 mile an hour across stretton common across the actual yeah they're next to me in a volvo 740 leading out two of them with guns pointed at me so i'm like that they're next to me we're racing and a cop goes pot slow down he went we're gonna fucking shoot you so i've press the button, the window's gone up, as if that's going to stop them.

1:06:06So I'm there like that, oh, window's gone up, I can't see them no more. Anyway, they eventually catch me, they had a helicopter up. Well, there was a chopper up following you as well, was there? Yeah, there was a proper ambush. Yeah. And what had happened was, when we're shooting around the streets and they're chasing me and it's been raining, I throw all the ID out so they won't know where my address is if they catch me. So they catch me after about 20 minutes and they've got me bent over the bonnet of the car, my head on the bonnet of the car, putting the cuffs on, and my head's on the bonnet of the car, and one of them comes up, slaps down all the ID all covered in rain and everything, went, finger drop these, mate.

1:06:43So now they don't know where I live. But yeah, I went to prison for a long time for that one. How many, so I'll break through this timeline. So you've done the ball stall, you've done the detention, then you did the ball stall. Your first prison sentence, you said it was a three-year-old. And out of that three year, what did you do, a year and a half? Three years. You did the whole three. And the next one? The next one was seven. Okay, so how long was it when you left, when you'd done the three, how long were you out for before you got nicked again for a seven? About two years. Two years. And in that two years, how many robberies do you reckon you'd done?

1:07:16About 60. I used to do them regular. People used to just come to me to carry the gun and give me a share out of the robbery. So people who were gearing up to do a robbery, go, raise a, you whack him in first. There you go. There's a cut. You can have a cut. Off you go. So were you a planner? No. Were you just like, I want you in there. I want you the front man raiser. Go and do what you've got to do. Scare everyone. I wouldn't even ask. How much am I getting? You're getting 10 grand. All right, sweet. And I'll just go in and do it. We went and robbed the supermarket. They brought me to rob a supermarket once up in Stretman, Tesco's I think it was.

1:07:50And we're all in there. We're in Tesco jackets waiting for the van to deliver or pick up or whatever it was. and they had a butcher's and a fishmonger's in the actual big superstore. And when we robbed the security van coming in, the guard, all these butchers and that come running out with knives in their white coats chasing us out of the shop. So the other three guys were quicker than me and our escape was across Streatham High Road and then down by a railway bridge and the car was waiting there with a driver in it to pick us up. So my mate runs out first, and he loses one of his shoes crossing the road.

1:08:31So he's only got one shoe on. So I run out. Now, I've got a double-barrel shotgun, and I hear, and I turn around, and there's about six geysers with big fucking knives with the hats on and the white coats. Yeah, all come out of the supermarket. So I've turned around, and I've gone like that, and I've pointed the gullet, and they've all run back in. But as I've turned around, somebody on a push-bike has bumped straight into me, He smashed straight into me. I've gone on the floor, guns fell out my hand, and he's all tangled. He had done it on purpose. He was just coming down the high road, and I'm there.

1:09:02So I've quickly got up, grabbed the gun, and I think he's done it on purpose. I'm going to shoot him in the head. I wasn't going to shoot him, but I've given it to him and legged it and got away. But, you know, it was just madness. It was chaos from beginning. Because I didn't plan nothing, and I was willing to be part of other people's plans, I never really knew what was fucking going on. So I could never grasp anyone up. Where was this planned? I ain't got a fucking clue. But yeah, I got nicked too many times to be successful and ended up spending 35 years behind bars, you know. My God. Yeah, I was a shit robber.

1:09:38My God, 35 years behind bars. Yeah, I've never been caught on a robbery, but always caught afterwards. How old are you today? 65 in December. how do you look back at that and think i've i've put i've spent 35 years behind bars with great regret yeah i have to say yeah i regret everything i think you know john mcvicker said it once he was a mate of mine john and he said um crime is a great life committing crime is a fucking fantastic life the only trouble is they put you in prison for it yeah and he also said um you could earn more doing a straight job than you could in all those years you spent in prison and robbing which is true yeah if i'd have went and done a straight job i'd have earned the same money probably and i'd have been out all these years and i really regret seriously all the crime that it's not glamorous mate when you when you're laying in a punishment block in some top security prison with 10 years left to serve and you've got four broken ribs and blood coming out your mouth and blood in your shit where you've been stamped on your stomach by 15 screws it loses its glamour It really does.

1:10:45And people will tell you, most people, most criminals say, and I get sick of it, they won every fight, every robbery they've done was a million pounds. That's bullshit. I've been to at least 10 banks where they've refused me, and I've walked out. They say, well, why'd you walk out? There's a million fucking banks. Why would I shoot someone in a bank? It's not worth it. So, yeah, I regret the whole life of crime. I regret the prison. I regret losing my family and my kids down there. I'm back with my kids and some of my kids and my grandkids now. But I lost a good woman who loved me and just threw fucking about and going to prison.

1:11:22I lost my house. I get out of prison every time with nothing, the clothes I stand up in. And, you know, it's no good nicking, robbing 200 banks if when you get out of jail for the last time, you've got one pair of trousers and one pair of socks. Yeah. You know what I mean? Why is that? Because they take everything. They take everything. But you see bank robbers and go, all right, if he's done 40 grand there, underground around there. You're the full. You've stashed it underground. When I come out, I want to come back to a nice little bundle. But the amount of people I've had on the podcast who've come out and gone, I've come out absolutely brassic.

1:11:53There's a couple who've come out and I know I've done good off air, but why, there was no planning to it. Was it easy go, easy come, money was gone, spend it in nightclub, spend it on gear, birds partying, whatever. Early 80s. Yeah. A lot of my mates who were robbers in London said to me, get on the coke, put your money in the coke that's going to be the next big thing i went off i didn't want to i was like a traditional robber i wanted to be walking the streets in the rain with me gun and um a lot of them ended up very very rich yeah ended up retiring to spain and i was still on the streets rainy streets of london walking around trying to rob 10 grand out of a bank but um and there was other times when people said invest in property and i bought a share in a scrapyard down in um and I put money into that and it was doing well.

1:12:43And then when I went in jail, I said I cashed in the money and pulled out. It was five grand. And 10 weeks later, the bit of land that we had the scrapyard on was sold for 7.1 million to McDonald's. Wow. Yeah. They wanted to put a drive through there. They didn't eventually, but yeah, so I could have been in on that. I've missed so much stuff over the years because I'm not organized and I wasn't a very good criminal and I was no good at planning so people would come up and say hey do you fancy robbing that jewellery shop I've been calling like oh yeah come on then you know no question why what's in there or anything you know I mean let's just do it where did you get that from being so game and not fear of going because roles reversed I'd be like hold on a minute I'm not a bank robber or anything like that but I'd be like hold on a minute let's have a look at this who's involved what timings who's going to be in there how much are you going to get out how much am I roughly going to get out I'd be planning like that if I was going to do something.

1:13:37But you were just like, nah, let's go. It's part of my psychopathy. Okay. The fact I'm a psychopath meant I didn't care about little things like that. It's like, as a psychopath, this is true, and I'm not saying this to scare anybody. I'll try and make myself a little bit. As a psychopath, I could walk up to you, stab you in the face, and not feel nothing about it. It's just one of them things. And it was the same with armed robberies. I just go in, you know, I never thought about nothing. Yeah, I'll get a bit of money. Yeah, bomb. so my psychopath and I became a psychopath because I got hit in the frontal lobe when I was 10 years old with an iron bar and it damaged my brain that's how I became a psychopath what's that feeling like sitting there actually saying I am a psychopath I don't know because that's what I do it doesn't seem nothing that's what my point is but when you when like I've got someone chatting to you now if you were to come in and go I'd be going I've got a psychopath coming in today all you feel is the movies and stuff I don't see it as Razor, who is very well known around the UK, as a psychopath.

1:14:38Let me tell you something. Yeah. Do you know what profession has the most psychopaths in this country? Politicians. Surgeons. Surgeons. Obviously surgeons, is it? Because when you think about it, how can you cut into living flesh and not feel anything about it? And they can take your heart out. Because they're psychopaths. They're on it. You know what I mean? It doesn't bother them. And I learned that when I'd done a documentary. They tested me for psychopathy. And it turns out surgeons and top businessmen are psychopaths. Is that right? Yeah. They're so driven and they don't care about stamping on people that they, you know, become successful.

1:15:18Certain businessmen don't care about stamping. Yeah. Yeah. There's a few out there. Yeah. Really sort of like Alan Sugar. Yeah. He wouldn't give a toss if, you know, he had to step on you to get about it. There's loads of them, you know. But yeah, I discovered that. And being a psychopath is not what you'd think. It's not you're mental and you're foaming at the mouth. Yeah, yeah. But that's how it's portrayed, right? Yeah. But what it basically means is that you don't care the same way other people care. So if someone says to me, my sister died last week and I knew your sister, I'd go, yeah, oh, that's bad.

1:15:53But I wouldn't feel nothing. Yeah. Whereas normal people would go, oh, my God, did she? Yeah. I sit there. And my missus used to hate it because we'd watch sad films and I'd be going, fuck you crying at me. Yeah. It's a dog. Lassie's a dog. Yeah. You know, I couldn't understand it. And I can only, I could only understand people's emotions as a psychopath by studying them and trying to copy them. So when they gave me the test, funny enough, how old were you when you got the test? I was 46. Okay. So I never knew all them years. Yeah. And when they give you the test, They show you faces, a series of faces on the screen with different expressions, and you've got to say what expressions they are.

1:16:34Mine were all angry, and yet none of them were angry. I could see anger in every face, and that was down in my psychopathy. I couldn't understand emotions, you know? And it's fucking hard work sometimes. It's not now. I mean, I'm retired, and I've got my grandkids around me. It doesn't ever come into the equation, you know what I mean? But when I think back, I think, no wonder I've done that, or no wonder I've done that. you know at the time I didn't know why I was doing it or why I didn't feel anything about it did you feel anything when you were in Nick and then your kids were coming to see you or your missus was coming to see you what feelings were going through your head knowing that you ain't gonna see them for god knows how many years most of the time once I went in jail I wouldn't have visits I'd tell everyone stay away because you cannot live inside and outside at the same fucking time I'll give you an example after I got weighed off last time I was with a geezer who'd just got 15 years at the Old Bailey Whit like in the next court to me.

1:17:28And we're in Belmice the next day waiting to see the governor. And he's looked at his watch and he went, oh, boss, and he said, I'll be on about my fifth cup of tea now waiting for a sausage sandwich. Fuck. And I turned around to him and I said, yeah, but you ain't, mate. I said, you've got 15 years to do. Because I'm a psychopath, I don't care. 15 years to do and you ain't getting no fucking sausage sandwich ever. So fucking get with it. And he went on to have a breakdown because he thought about the out so much. his family were coming up all the time me i just cut everybody off and go and do me bird razor i'm fascinated can you list all the prisons you've spent time in uh it might take a bit of a while but um going right back to the beginning first incarceration with stamp at house in uh shepherd's bush then it was uh send dc in surrey then it was latchmere house in surrey which was remand place then it was ashford which is no longer there in middlesex from ashford it was dover then rochester then brixton then world scrubs then pentville canterbury canterbury white moore long larton bell marsh Where else?

1:18:51Oh, so many nicks. It's unreal. I mean, Maidstone, Albany on the Isle of Wight, Parkhurst. I mean, I could go on forever. Is there one prison that stands out who's the most brutal out of all of those? Yeah. Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight was brutal, not from the staff. From a prisoner's point of view, there was at least two stabbings in there every week. It was a really bad, violent dispersal. And in fact, when you first got there, my mates were already there. And one of them come up to me, give me a knife and a wedge for my door. He said, because doors unlock electronically in the morning.

1:19:31If someone's going to do you, they'll be outside and straight in. He said, wedge up your door so they can't get in. And there was a lot, a lot of violence there. But as for brutality from the screws, I'd say Dartmoor was one of the worst, really. Weren't many Londoners down there. It was mainly Welshman. um and they've got a big rival down there between the welsh cardiff and swansea they're always you know uh but the screws were just like it was i'll tell you what it was like it was like frankenstein's castle you know the mel brooks one where um it's a bit of a comedy i got down there and they're unpacking my property it's freezing believe me and they're going from my property and they were like something out of a horror film these two guys they're proper country buds and um one of them I had a Sega game do you remember yeah one of them you were allowed them in prison then so he's pulled it out he went what's this that's this Sega game he went that's a TV that is so I went that's nice it's an electronic game and he's gone to his mate he went here look have a look at that and they gave us a look he went cartoons on there that's a TV and I thought fucking hell what sort of jail is this and then they went you're not allowed to wear your own trainers unless they look like shoes what if your trainers look like shoes you can wear them that's what my trainers look like white shoes no they don't they look like trainers fucking mental and then they're bringing you along it's like they've got a lantern bringing you through all these dirty disgusting corridors with water dripping down and in the cells there's no word of a lie i was there in 86 before they renovated and in every cell up in the corner they the old gas heaters, right?

1:21:18They weren't working, but they were still there, the gas heaters from like 1920s. And it was just a brutal place. It really was the fucking violence. You know, what they used to do in a block down there, it was the only prison that didn't have an electronic gate. So when you've got an electronic gate, every time you come in or out, it's registered. Down there, it was just a normal gate. So the screws would go out, say lunchtime, they had a club just outside the walls. They'd go and get pissed out of their heads, come in and start on the prisoners. and one of the worst punishments they had in dartmoor they used to get you down in the block and they'd make you sit on the floor and then a 20 stone screw would sit on your shoulders on your back forcing your head down between your legs fucking nightmarish you couldn't breathe or anything wandsworth as well i was in wandsworth in um 89 waiting to get shipped to the island 1990 when a strange ways riots kicked off and we kicked off in wandsworth as well we tried to escape seven of us.

1:22:16I wasn't on the escape. There was five cut A's and us two, and we ended up fighting the screws for about half hour. And eventually they come and got me, and there was a guy who used to be the strongest man in the world. His name was Mr. Taylor. He was the gym screw. He was 22 stone, but he was on all them strongest men. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was the head of the muff that he would come to pick me up, and he went, you walk into the block or you can be carried by us so i went i walk as i come out they walk me down the land and everyone's banged up every single person you go down to the center and they've got this big center plate right and every screw in nick was there including the governor and i'm on my own with six screws behind me and he went walk down the stairs and you had to walk clockwise around the thing the block stair yeah and as i come down the stairs because we'd attacked all the screws out on the JCB and that, the government went, draw buttons.

1:23:13They've all pulled out their truncheons. It's about 70, 80 screws. And they've all started banging them on the fucking floor. As I'm walking around, they're all banging their truncheons on the floor because they're all ex-British forces, and they used to see stuff like that in Ireland. So I was shitting myself. Walked around, got to the top of the stairs, and they kicked me down the stairs into the block. There's about 10 stairs down, and there's four screws waiting for me. now they've already done the other guys and they've got blood on their shirts and their shirts are open they've got no hats on and their sleeves are rolled up and they're ready for me and they've beat the shit out of me dragged me into a cell now there's a process when you're going into the block what they do is this is how it normally works they put you in a cell and then one will stand at the door and go right what's your name they're writing your card what's your number what diet are you on you know i mean vegetarian or whatever watch what religion are you so i am getting battered by three screws in the cell.

1:24:06They're ripping the clothes off me, ripping the hairs out of my chest, stamping on me bare feet. And like they've got me up the back of the cell. And meanwhile, there's the PO pretending nothing's wrong at the door. Nam, Smith, number. So I've given me number. I'm getting battered all this time. And then he's gone, what diet are you? And I went, I was a veg then. I went, vegetarian. And one of the screws was beating me up, come right up to me face. He's got me ear like that. And he went, you were full of fucking beans this morning, weren't you? When you bashed my mate up. And that was it. They fucking tried to kill us down there.

1:24:42Seriously. I ended up getting a not guilty on it, which was lucky, but... How many times do you reckon you've been beaten? By screws? Yeah. A good five or six times. A proper beating? Yeah, a proper beating. Give me an example of a proper beating. Well, the one I had in Rochester, they stamp all over you. What they do is they get... It's called control and restraint. It's jujitsu moves. so they get your arm like that yeah like one on each arm and you can't move your fingers and all that and then they just kick you in the face as you go along because your head's down and they're wearing boots uh that one they dragged me into the cell and about four of them jumped i mean jumped up and down on my body i was about 16 and i was a skinny little broke my ribs nearly broke my breastbone uh broke my nose knocked four teeth out and then i've had similar beatings as well over the years um one in Pentonville where they trunched me across the head and split me head open um but it was I won't say it was my fault but I was one of them kind of geezers dodging yeah this is the sort of person I was I suppose this is a psychopath I know that if I punch a screw I'm gonna get fucking mullered all the rest of the screws again but when I'm arguing with a screw and when I'm in that moment and he's saying yeah I fucking know I I can't help it.

1:26:01I just pick my spot and crack and I let one go. And I know as soon as he drops to the floor, they're all coming. But for me, that's the moment of triumph. The beating afterwards is like, you know, you've got your digging and that's the main thing. What's that feeling like though, knowing you've just done a screw, knowing now you're waiting, you're waiting on your bed, waiting to get a beating. Well, it's mixed because you feel great that you've knocked him out or you've got a punching, but you also have then that fear of what they're going to do to you this time you start thinking what's going to happen this time you know but you can see them all coming towards you they're running like lunatics with their truncheons and um i once held up um 22 screws in the corridor i had a pool cue half a pool cue in albany and what that one was quite funny story i've come out the bricks workshop i was working in bricks and in the skip outside there was an office chair so i said the brick skis i said is that getting thrown out he went yeah yeah he said it's it needs a bit of fixing so i said can i take it back to me so he went yeah of course you can it's only going to be thrown out took it back to me cell three weeks later they come in to search me and there's one of them screws that five foot four leather gloves had pulled down to their chewing gum you know one of the little kids who has to make himself look big so he said uh they couldn't find nothing in the cell and he went i'm taking this chair so i went what he said that is not cell furniture so i said you had to find something and he smiled at me and that was it.

1:27:27I picked up the chair. I burst out my cell. I was on the ground floor and the office was down there. I said, you want the fucking chair? Ran down to where the office is with the big windows. They're all sitting in there and launched the chair straight through the fucking window. And it's stuck in the window because it's wire glass. And all the screws inside are like, fucking hell. And they battered the light. What they done was then they pressed the bell. So the alarm's gone off. Screws are coming from everywhere. So I've ran back to my cell, pushed the screw out of the way, ran back to my cell, got in there, and I had a pull cue.

1:27:58You're allowed a pull cue. And it was in two pieces. I got the bottom off, come out my cell. By now, they've all come, but the corridor is too narrow for them to get to me. I'm holding off about 10 in front and about 10 behind, and they can't get to me. So the screw's gone to me. The PO's gone to me. Smith, put that down. I swear to you, there'll be no brutality. You can take my word for it. His name was Mr. Moncton. i remember in po moncton so i went i put it down and went you better not be lying to me so i threw it on the floor they've rushed me and as they've gone to throw a few punches he's jumped in and went no no i probably did didn't he yeah so he marched me down to the block with six other screws put me in the cell he went see i told you and off he went he said i've got to get back to the wing the other screws from the block come and went strip so i went what strip you have to strip when you go to bed.

1:28:50So I'm a bit weary. And as I get down to my boxer shorts, they've steamed it in the cell and fucking beat the shit out of me. Oh, mate. And when I see Monkton next, I went, you fucking lying cunt. He said, they're not under me. Yeah, yeah. But he knew what was going to happen. Oh, God. Did you ever come across Charlie Bronson? I love Charlie. He's a good friend of mine. Charlie was, he was like our weapon in the 80s and 90s in the present system. Everyone liked him because he attacked the screw. yeah and the first time I ever see him I was in Wandsworth and I see two young screws running along opening the gate and he's marching behind them the big bald head he's got prison raincoat on and boots and he's got a big tash right and he's just marching along right and they're running in front of him to open the gate because if they don't open the gate you march straight into the gate and he's like that and we were all laughing our heads off he walked straight across the center where you weren't allowed to walk and the PO turned around and went when you see it was him He went, hello, Charlie.

1:29:50So he became our sort of hero because he was our one weapon against the system, if you like. He was forever doing it. And then I got to know him. I was in a cell next to him in High Dam when he knocked the governor out. And I used to talk to him out the window and I found him really, really amusing, but interesting to talk to. And I remember I was in Wandsworth Block and he was in one cell there was a kid called Joe de Greek. He was quite a famous prisoner. Yeah. And Joe de Greek had this thing. He used to cut prison governors with blades. He was wanted in Cyprus or Turkey or somewhere, and he had the death penalty.

1:30:29So he didn't give a shit. He wanted to stay in prison over here. So he'd forever be in the block. And what he used to do was, he'd make a cut in his skin, and then rub it with salt for about three, four days until eventually the skin was painless and he had a little pocket he could put a razor blade in on his own skin. Yeah, so they could strip him. He'd still have a blade on him. They stripped him once in Wandsworth and he jumped over the counter table and cut the governor's face, pulled a razor blade out of his skin. They eventually sent him back to Turkey and he got shot, didn't have to play him.

1:31:04But the guys like them would be in the block and i remember i was out there talking to my mate mine you're in cages in the block you know on the exercise yard i was talking to a mate of mine and a screw one of the oval screws went shut your fucking mouth smith and before i could say anything joe de creek was at his window and went cut him razor cut that fucker yeah but yeah it was it was uh it was a terrible time to be honest with you especially the 80s the printing system was really really bad there was no rehabilitation. There's no rehabilitation now. But there weren't none then. And it was just you knew what you were getting.

1:31:44People say nowadays, I like the old prison system, you knew where you stood. You knew where you stood because you'd get a punch in the fucking jaw if you didn't know where you stood. You know what I mean? The amount of people I've had on the podcast who went into prison back in the 80s and 90s or went into the noughties, they were like, back then it was old school, naughty gangsters where there was a lot of respect. You go into prison now, there's zero respect and everyone's just you've got to watch your back every single move. They're all on spice and all that shit. In those days, it was cannabis and, you know, very little heroin.

1:32:14Heroin fucked the whole prison system up. And then it's now become acceptable to be a grass, to be a rapist. There's people boasting about it. Whereas in my day, if you said anything like that, Landon, you'd be stabbed. Six geysers would turn up at your door and kill you. I'd done a load of it. I was a member of a firm called Dagen in the top security dispersals in the 80s. and darken stood for direct action against grasses and nonces. Yeah. And what we used to do was there was about 20 of us and we all went to different prisons. And if you suspected somebody on your wing was a nonce or a rapist or a grass, then we would burn their cells out and bash the fucking life out of them.

1:32:55And we ended up spreading it around the top security prisons and I eventually got shipped out and never done it again. And I'll tell you why. He was called Stefan Kishko. Probably never heard of him. He was a child rapist and murderer, supposedly, but he was a bit simple. Anyway, his mum campaigned for him all them years to get out that he'd never done it. He was in for about 20 years. And I seen him in Bristol prison. Me and my pal was down there. And he walked past us. And my mate went, you know who that is? I went, no, he went, Stefan Kishko. Killed a seven-year-old girl, raped her. So I went, oh, yeah.

1:33:33and he was old then. He was about 67. So the next day, I see him come to the top of the stairs and there was no one about, so I licked it out and fucking elbowed him down the stairs, shoulder barged him, went down, broke his wrist, never see it was me. And about a year later, I'm watching the telly in another prison and he's been released because they didn't have DNA back in those days and when they retested the evidence, it wasn't him at all and they knew who it was. He was nicked for another murder. so he'd spent all them years in nothing and I had bashed the shit out of the poor old cunt and from that moment I said I'm not fucking doing it no more people used to come up to me and go see that geezer down there he's a nonce and I go is he coming let's fucking do him nowadays after that people come up see that geezer there he's a nonce I say we'll go and fucking do him then I'll keep watch you know what I mean I wasn't doing it no one's tall no more but yeah I want to go back so you've done the three years you've done the seven years what was the next stint that was another two years.

1:34:35And how long were you after the seven years? How long were you out for before you got done again for the two years? About six months. Okay. No, I'll tell you what happened. They let me out of Wandsworth. I was doing two years for possession of a firearm without a license. And they let me out. And because I've done so much from my own time, there's some mix-up. And they said, this was Wandsworth prison. I lived not far in Clapham. And they said, we're not giving you a discharge grant because the paperwork ain't been put in. So I said, what, you're releasing me from prison with nothing? They said, yeah, we've got travel warrant, but that's about it.

1:35:07So I said, all right, I'll just rob a bank. Went down to Tooting from Winesworth and mooching about, see a building society there. I thought, I'll have that. This morning I get out of prison. So there's a bin, go over, look through the bin, McDonald's bag, a plastic bottle into the McDonald's bag, and then I've just wrapped my scarf around my face, walked in with a plastic bottle in a McDonald's bag, pretending it was gun and walked out with seven grand. So that was the morning. On the day, on the morning you got out after Wandsworth. Yeah. That's how bad it was. I didn't give a shit. Yeah. And between.

1:35:40I can sense. Yeah. I think it was between 1988 and 2010. Yeah. I had only 13 months out of prison in all. Three months when I escaped, I was on the run for three months. And a year complete that I was out between sentences. Madness. From 88 to 2010? Yeah. My God. After you finished that, you got that two-year sentence then. When was the one when you got the eight life sentences? Was that the one straight after? No. Was there one after that, after the two years? What were you banged up again for? Yeah, I got 19 years for armed robbery, me and a mate of mine, Knightsbridge Crown Court. And we pleaded guilty to three robberies.

1:36:23And I got 19 years and my mate got 13 years. I appealed that. they cut that down to a 12. So I've done that. I got out in 98. I was out for 99. No, 98. And a lot of 99. Then I got nicked for the laughing bank robbers case. Eight robberies. So that's what I got the life for. So the eight life sentences were for eight robberies that you got nicked for? Yeah. And the biggest robbery there was the Croydon one? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, but we were nicking good money in them anyway. there was another firm doing the same as what we'd done funny enough well known firm and they uh but they had it wrong they knew that the money was there when it come in so they robbed the security guards in the bank and ended up having to shoot one in the foot whereas we wait till the guards were gone and went in yeah but um yeah i ended up doing a lot a lot of bird did you ever shoot anyone uh no no not on a robbery anyway no no have you ever have you ever shot anyone i'm not Sure, I've been in about three gunfights, but in the confusion, you never know who you shot.

1:37:30You just fire enough shots at other people when they're firing at you. I got shot at by two yardies one time and I come on and I ran into the house, got the gun and it was a double-wale shotgun and I forgot I didn't have the ammo with it. It was hidden somewhere else. So I come out with a gun with no ammo in it and they called my bluff and started shooting at me. So I had to leg it. Where was that? Brixton? Clapham. Clapham, was it? Yeah. Yeah, I used to drink in a pub called the Yaker Tavern, and it was around the back of there on the estate. I used to live in Clapham North. Did you? Yeah, and then I bought my first...

1:38:00Was it Bedford Road, was it? I bought my first gaff in Brixton. Oh, yeah. Right next to the prison it was in the year 2000. Fucking hell. Like Kingswood Road, I think, something like that. It was madness. That was madness back then. Murder Mile. Murder Mile, yeah, it was madness. Yeah. I couldn't afford Clapham, so I went and bought in Brixton. But now it's all been gentrified, apparently, 25 years later, whatever you... You know what all the posh people were in Stockwell? Yeah. St. Ockwell. Is that what they call it? St. Ockwell, yeah. Fucking St. Ockwell. Oh, my God. What was the point in your life when you go, I've got to stop, number one, and do you have any regret on anyone that you've traumatised in any of these robberies?

1:38:39To be honest, I'll tell you what happened. I was in Whitemore, 78 life sentences, waiting to get shipped to, no, I was in Belmarsh, waiting to get shipped to Whitemore. I was at Category A. and no I was in White Moor sorry I got to White Moor and suddenly I got a message that my son had died outside he was 19 and I'm serving eight life sentences I'm a category A but everyone was saying ask to go to the funeral they've got to let you so I asked the governor if I could go to the funeral and they said no I can't take the chance to send you to the funeral he said you're doing eight life sentences you've got loads of criminal connections your family are there they could break you out.

1:39:20I said, let me go on my own. I said, and a point of honor, I'll come back. It's my son's fucking funeral. But they said no. And it was after that I'm in prison and I can't even comfort my family when my son's died. And it was after that I said to myself, you know what, there's got to be something fucking bad than this, mate. I've got to get out. And that's when I applied for Grendon. And Grendon was the making of me. I managed to, I'd done, out of that sentence, I've done two years in Belmarsh, three years in Whitemore, five years in Grendon, then another two years in a semi-open prison called Blantyre House, where you could go out to work.

1:39:57So I've done 12 out of that sentence. It was an eight tariff. Eight. I've done 12. So that's what really turned my life around. And the fact is, about regret, I regret it all, mate. Seriously. There's certain people. My son. I couldn't be there when he needed me. How did he die? it was an open verdict he was he had started following my footsteps and he robbed someone down in malden and he got nick for it he was putting felton him and his mate funny enough justin yeah they were working together yeah yeah and um then he he got out felton and i spoke to him on the phone i was in whitewater and i used to phone every sunday morning home and i was speaking to him and he sounded really happy he was working with his granddad yeah everything's going great i'm not coming back to prison again and about a week later i was coming back from tea and i looked up the end of the landing and there's a priest up there and i knew once you see some sort of holy person on the landing is bad news for someone so a mate of mine bud armstrong big geordie drug dealer when it's bad news for someone he went hey come up there it's me so this priest said to me you know smith i went no i just knew i didn't want to hear it yeah yeah so i went in and closed my cell door and he come back five minutes later and he opened the hatch and he said uh noel smith so it's not me mate you're looking for someone else i didn't want to hear it yeah so he opened the door he said look i'm afraid uh his son died last night and i was just i went off i went you got the wrong man piss off yeah and i was just in bits mate it killed me and it was after that i thought you know what i can't be coming into prison in my old age and that and fucking about.

1:41:41It's better off I do something. Now, the thing about me was I had no skills. I was a good robber, but I weren't great. And suddenly, I thought, you know what, I've got to write a book about this because my son, I've got to leave it for the rest of the family to let them know what went wrong over the years. And I wrote this book, and I had a mate who I'd met when I was last out. I was with John McVicar, and he introduced me to Will Self, who was a writer who wanted me to advise him on a story he was doing about Wandsworth. So we got on really great, me and Will, and he used to come to visit me when I went back in.

1:42:16And he come up soon after Joe died and I went, listen, I said, I'm going to write a book. He said, good idea. He said, I'll get it published for you if it's any good. He said, send me three chapters. Boom, sent him three chapters. Never heard nothing for about two weeks. Phoned him up. He said, three different publishing companies are bidding for it. he said I'd go with Penguin he said they're offering£30 ,000 advance now when I give him the book I said listen if I write this book do you think I'll be able to what really jarred me was when my son died all the money I've stolen in my life my in-laws had to pay for his funeral and that really jarred me because I didn't get on with them so I said look I'm looking to earn about three or four grand in order to pay off my son's funeral he said yeah I'll see what I can do come back £30 ,000 off I went fucking hell I can write the book went out it went all around the world I got letters from Hong Kong Australia everything loads of people wanted to get in touch with me paid off the funeral proudest day in my life and yeah it was everything changed from then now I suddenly had a skill you had 30 grand worth of legit money for the first time not only that and you knew you were good at something yeah not only that I knew how easy it was so I wrote another book really quickly and I've got another 30 grand for that.

1:43:36Yeah, okay. And I'm sitting in jail earning seven pound a week and I've got 60 grand in the fucking bank. Yeah, yeah. How did Joe die? Nobody really knows. He was found hung behind some shops, but he had trouble with other gangs and he also had trouble with the police. The police fucking hated him. And all the CCTV for that night disappeared of the area he was in. And the police got a letter from someone saying that he'd been killed by a certain family for punching their son or something. And loads of people come forward and said what had happened, but it was an open verdict. The coroner couldn't decide, so we don't know.

1:44:16He was found hung in an alley from some stairs. My God. It was Justin's best pal. Yeah. And I was in jail, and when they told me, I was fucking devastated. Yeah. Seriously. And that made me think, you know what, I don't need this shit anymore. I've got to get out and look after my family. So, yeah, when I had time to slow down and look at it, at my life, and I see what an absolute fucking shit show it was, a mess, chaos, and I thought, you know what? I'm not doing this no more. Yeah. Got out. Last time I got parole in 2010. I got out of my life sentence, and the first two days I was out, I got three phone calls from people asking me if I wanted to hold the gun in a robbery.

1:45:01Straight away. yeah i'm done i'm finished yeah and one geezer went to 70 grand in it for you i was like that yeah how much but that's my share you mean yeah i went no i said i i ain't doing it no more fair play and eventually they got the message and i had to move down to uh hampshire in order to get away from it all because i knew so many criminals in london and i uh lived the life of a hermit down there for about 10 years and moved up to london about three years ago right around me grandkids and my family now so yeah yeah i wouldn't um i wouldn't recommend the life of crime to anybody and that's a serious serious thing you might think it's glamorous when you're doing it but it ain't right i keep hearing the same story the people who've been on the podcast and i only get people who've got redemption right to come back going it's the same story yeah none of them none of them gets out alive everyone gets banged up you lose everything you lose your family you lose your kids you lose your money you lose everything around you and you're left with what exactly you know it don't matter how hard you think you are that first night in prison when you know you're spending another 12 14 years in there you know i mean you're in bits mate i've seen really tough geezers break down and cry because they're in fucking jail the first night it's just i can't believe i can't believe like to actually put it into sort of words that you spend in 35 years in all these different prisons yeah like it's it's bonkers we know i've had John Massey on.

1:46:31Oh, John, yeah. Lovely fella. He did 43 years behind bars. And then you look at Charlie Bronson who's just done over 50 years behind bars. Is he ever going to get out? I think they'll do the same to him as they've done to Reggie Cray when he's so infirm and dying they will let him out for his last two weeks or so. Okay. Because I like Charlie. Yeah. But I wouldn't like to live next fucking door to him. I can't tell you. But he's a kind-hearted geezer. Even though he's a big lump of it he's not that fucking big but he's a lump of a geezer who don't feel pain yeah okay and um i'll give you an example i was in the block in i think it was in bristol and charlie was there on the light down and there was a kid who was next door to us he was about 20 and he was crying all the time his first time in prison so charlie went why don't you turn a fucking radio on or read a book or something he was talking about when he said i ain't got a radio so next morning they let charlie out for slop out and there's a cleaner in the block who's a prisoner and he has his cell open all the time his cell was open he's out mopping and his radio's on on the table charlie walked straight over picks his radio up he went i'm lending this to that kid all right you'll get it back when he's gone and the cleaner went oh yeah and he's got to screw open the kid's door yeah screw we can't open the fucking door what do you want me to do slide it underneath and went and give him a radio you know i mean he's a kind-eyed fella but he just can't help himself.

1:47:52Yeah. Like if you wind him up enough, he goes off. Has there been any time when you've been in prison where you've feared for your own life? Loads of times. Yeah. Are you fucking mad? Prison runs on paranoia and violence. That's what the top security prisoners run on. Not your locals, although there is plenty in there. You've got to imagine this, Dodge, right? You're on a spur, say in White Moor, and there'll be 60 men on that spur, all in single cells. and you walk along that spur and you look at their cars 25 years 35 years is that what outside each side so you know who's in there and that was like right okay five years life six lives eight lives ten lives and you they're all serious serious people otherwise they wouldn't have got there yeah in the first place and you just think do you know what i could die at any moment and people did people got killed all over the place there's at one stage i don't know if you know this David Wilson Professor David Wilson I work with a lot used to be a prison governor and he told me he said recently at one stage there was a higher you were seven times more likely to be murdered in prison in a British prison than you were outside in any of the no-go areas like the slum areas seven times more likely to be murdered in jail think about that I've seen people there's so many mentally ill people in jail because they don't you know They just put them in there, yeah.

1:49:18And I've seen people, this is God's honest truth, get opened up in the morning with everyone else and come out wrapped in a sheet with a table leg and a Bible saying they're going to kill every sinner on the wing and go around bashing people or stabbing people until they get brought down. It's a nightmare place. You don't know who's coming out of the cell in the mornings. Is there any names that you've been to prison? Do you go, Nat Gezer is a seriously dangerous person? I don't want to be anywhere near him. There's been a few. Probably people you've never heard of. Yeah, like? oh fucking hell um what's his name who killed the four prisoners I'll tell you he used to be a bad fucker as well Yami B he's got a podcast now I always got on great with Yami Yami's been on the podcast has he?

1:50:03yeah I'll tell you why I got on great with him yeah his whole existence was around heroin like robbing people and stabbing people in jail for heroin I've never taken heroin yeah and he knew that so I remember one day we were in Parkhurst Albany rather on the other way. And I'm cleaning, I'm sweeping the floor, and he comes up to me and he's hanging about. I said, yeah, what are you doing? Because he used to have really long hair. He looked like a red Indian. I said, what are you doing, Yemi? He went to Geyser up there, he's on a visit. He said, I'm going to rob him when he comes back, got the tool.

1:50:32I said, what, are you going to stab him? This is just prison talk, you know, casual talk. You're going to stab him? Yeah, I might do it. It depends if he puts up a fight. And then he's there waiting for the Geyser. And then he went, Razor, Uncle Razor. He went, I really wish you were addicted to heroin. I went, what? Why? He said, me and you would be a great robbery team in the system. I went, thanks for that, you fucking muppet. But yeah, I mean, there's people in there who would stab you as soon as look at you. I mean, there's loads of them. Yeah. You go into a top security jail, and I think maybe 30 % of the prisoners are in for murder.

1:51:06Yeah. GBH with intent, you know, just mad attacks on the street. When you read about someone, say, getting their ear chopped off in the street, that guy's going to be your next door neighbour in fucking prison who chopped the ear off and nobody knows why he'd done it. Yeah. So on those cards, when someone says 25, 22 life sentence, does it sound underneath what for? You've got to go and find out. But the thing is, what we used to do was, in Albany prison, we used to, they were sneaking so many undercover people onto the wing who actually should have been on the numbers, that we decided to do something about it.

1:51:40So all of the prisoners decided to hang their depositions, their charge sheet, outside their cell as well so you could know what they were in for. And the people who didn't have to be off the wing by nightfall. So we ended up getting rid of a load of wrong-uns. What about when you've got big lumps coming into prison? Are you all waiting there going, there's a new geezer coming in? Everyone's got to walk past your cell. There's a new geezer coming in. Is everyone sort of like sussing them out? Do you ever hear rumours of people coming to prison? Yeah, of course. yeah okay so you know so what was it what was your with your reputation at the time which was massive around a uk prison when you're going to a prison are you like people don't know people are going to turn up razors on his way yeah okay yeah i mean i'd always get i'll tell you it was a good mate of mine vicky dark yeah right east east london boy yeah uh vick i got the wire down uh one time and vick was like on the wing and by the time i got down to me cell they put me in a single cell, he had got me a brand new telly from the stores and a brand new mattress and snout and everything.

1:52:43It's like that in prison. If you're known, people will fucking help you out when you get there. Um, but Vic was a dangerous man, a very dangerous man. Very dangerous. I mean, with his fists, he's a martial artist. Yeah. Yeah. Apart from the fact he shoots people. Yeah. But, um, yeah, yeah, Vic was lovely. Do you know what he got shipped out of? Um, I was in Albany with him and he was in the cell, he was on a landing above me and I got steel doors in Albany and he got shipped over. the parkhouse for slamming his door every night when he had to bang up he'd grab the door with both hands boom the whole wing would shake and they went get him out of it yeah moving forwards like today where you're at today you've been out of nick now for 15 years as you are today are you happy i am yeah yeah yeah happiest i've ever been i think i've got my children around me my grandchildren finally i love my grandchildren they've all grown up to be really nice people and very smart.

1:53:39And I work still for inside time. I'm working for home since COVID, but I love the job, you know, and it allows me to, and I do a few bits and pieces, but I haven't really since COVID. I used to do a lot of university talks and school talks and stuff like that. But yeah, I've had two strokes. I'd won in 2018 and I won this year, which they said was going to kill me, and it very nearly did. And I've got dementia and the brain damage I've got from being hit over the head so many times over the year. Apparently, they're doing another test in three months. I have them every year. They're doing a brain scan about Alzheimer's.

1:54:18I'm young to have it, but it started already in my brain. So, yeah. So I said to myself, my dad died about a month ago and my dad was 20 years older than me. And I always had that kind of thing, like when my dad dies, I've got 20 years left. Yeah. But I don't think I have. No. I don't think I have. I mean, I'm on those build-up drinks because I can't eat. Yeah. And I went down. They said last time I went to the hospital, they said I was close to starvation, malnutrition. So they give me the build-up drinks. But I don't have nothing to do with criminality anymore. I read a lot about prisons because I work for the prison's newspaper, the national prison's newspaper, and I have to keep in touch.

1:55:00But I still get letters in. I deal with the letters. and I still get letters in every month, 350 to 400 letters of people complaining about things that I was complaining about in prison 30 years ago. Right, okay. Nothing changed. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, I feel happy now and I feel as though I never want to go back to prison again in my life and it would make me sick, seriously, to really know. I don't think you'll be going back now. I don't even like it. Kevin Lane is a good mate of mine as well. Kevin's been on, yeah. I was in Whitewall with Kevin, but he was recently jailed in Highdown, which is just down the road from my house.

1:55:33And he sent me a VO and asked me, and I just, I've got the horrors, mate. I could not go into that prison. What, going in now, the fear of it? No, okay. Yeah, I spent six years in there. Yeah. And I said, sorry, Kev, I can't. And he wrote back and said, yes, don't worry about it. You know what I mean? I understand. But Kevin is a nice fellow. He is a good fellow, yeah. I think for a long bird with him, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I couldn't actually, if I went back into prison again and they gave me a sentence, a big sentence, I would I would deal with it and I thought about this by becoming just the biggest fucking noose as they had I'd be attacking them hoping they'd kill me yeah I mean that's what I love Jimmy Boyle yeah just hope they fucking kill you and put you out of your misery so I'd do that because I can't get quiet yeah even though I probably can't hold my hands up down my little skinny razor I've absolutely loved this oh thank you it's been fascinating I hope people get something out of it yeah You know, prison ain't the life, mate.

1:56:29Live is crime. It's wrong. You know what I mean? And any of those people, I was just going to say it a minute ago, any of those people who were in those robberies when they were on the floor feel traumatized? Is there anything you would, if you saw any of them now, and they went, yeah, I was in that robbery, anything you'd say to them? Yeah. See, I was your typical criminal in that I made everyone into cardboard cutouts. It's easier if you don't think they're human. You can do what you like. and it wasn't until I went through Grenham five years of therapy that I discovered empathy I had to learn it it wasn't something that came naturally to me and I can kind of get it now and then this will give you an idea of how far I've come I was married when I first got out I got married and my wife was in a robbery up in Croydon when she was in a Tesco's or something where they have a post office in there and she was shopping and three kids has come in jumped over the counter of big knives and started robbing the place and she was about two rows away from it saw it all traumatized her for about another year she used to even though she never thought she was she'd wake up in the night screaming and all that thinking they were going to kill her and that really brought it home to me as well because in crendon they said think about your victims and i used to be off the i was like a typical armed robber i ain't got no victims when i rob a bank i I don't shoot anybody and they just put a penny on interest rates or whatever.

1:57:56But no, mate, every bank I went into, 20, 30 people, and they were terrified. You know, I didn't really think of it at the time because I was doing what I was doing. But now that I think about it, I remember one. I've got to tell you this one. It's funny. I rode the Midland Bank. One of your favorites. Yeah. In Bollum, on my own. Yeah, yeah. And when I got the crowd all up the end, there were about 10 of them. They were all up the end of the bank while I'm at the counter. and one guy's got his arms up like that and I notice he's got a fucking gold Rolex on. So I'm looking over at him. I said, nice watch, mate.

1:58:28I said, is that a real Rolex? I'm getting the money over the counter. So he went, yeah, yeah. And he starts taking it off. I went, what are you doing? He said, I'll give it to you. I'm not giving you fucking watch, mate. I'm robbing the bank. I just said it's a nice watch. I was making conversation. But that's how much people take you on face value. He thinks I'm going to shoot him if he doesn't give me his watch. I was just complimenting his watch. But he don't know. No. He don't know whether you're going to be a madman in the shoe. No one knows. So imagine you being a bloke experiencing that.

1:58:59But imagine a girl or a woman experiencing it on the floor, armed robbing, you see it on telly, it's actually happening to them. It must be horrific for us. It's a nightmare for us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, the only thing I can say in my own defence, and it's really not a fucking defence, is that I never actually physically assaulted anyone during a robbery or fired a shot or stabbed anyone. Some people just go and squirt ammonia in people's faces, but I was never one of them. We always classed ourselves as gentlemen bank robbers. In reality, we were just dirty, fucking, horrible, greedy thieves with guns.

1:59:35That's what we were, mate.

1:59:41Glad I'm not in jail still. Yeah, I couldn't think of anything worse to be honest with you. Fair play. Ray, like I said, mate, I've really enjoyed this. Thank you for your honesty. No worries. And it's lovely to see redemption. Yeah. I don't know if anyone around here hasn't got redemption and gone around and, you know, whether they found God or whether they've totally hands up and regret the things or whatever it may be, but it seems like you've got full redemption. Oh man, yeah. Yeah. Just, the thing is, I still get the, the instinct for it. And by that, I mean, I can be, even today, I haven't committed a robbery since 1999.

2:00:16Yeah. Today, I can be walking past a bank down in the high street, see a security guard and look at me, watch that market. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not going to do anything, but it's just like an old war horse here in a bugle. Yeah. Oh, that looks easy. It's mad though. The high street's easy. All the banks are boarded up and closed up these days. It's a dead game bank robbery. It's gone. Razor, I really appreciate you coming down. That works. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks for your honesty. Talk about eventful lives. That is one eventful life you've lived. I wish you all the best in your later years as well.

2:00:51Nice one. Good stuff. I like that pound note over there. That's a pound note. Do you know that? Yeah, I nicked a few of them. Same. I always talk about pound notes. This bloke wrote in, found out the address for the studio, wrote in this beautiful letter it goes every time you're on here we're talking about pound notes and then a pound note he's got us sent a pound note so we framed it lovely fair play yeah it reminds me of the old days mate good days nice one Razor good man I wish you all the best cheers Dodds nice one mate thank you brilliant good man cheers hi guys I really hope you enjoyed that as much as I did can you do us a favour and leave us a review as it massively helps us grow the show cheers guys