I KNOW I shouldn t really be indulging in levity, but meeting Mad Frankie Fraser for the first time, it s impossible not to think of Doug and Dinsdale Piranha, the amiable Monty Python hardmen who insisted on shaking their victims hands before nailing them to the floor.
Disarmingly friendly and always ready with a witty one-liner, it s easy to forget that the East Ender-with-a-boxer s-nose has spent 42 of his 73 years in jail for some seriously violent crimes. His name mightn t be as instantly recognisable as that of his old adversaries The Krays but, rest assured, he s wrought just as much havoc.
The Lord Longford brigade would probably say he never stood a chance. Born into one of South London s most notorious crime families, the ardent Arsenal supporter graduated from petty thievery to rub shoulders not to mention fists with such notorious post-war villains as Billy Hill and Jack Spot.
By the time he d hit 30, Fraser had notched up 15 convictions, twice been certified insane and made himself seriously unpopular with all of the members of the Metropolitan Police Force that he hadn t managed to bribe.
As the old school gave way to the new thugs on the block, Fraser manoeuvred himself into a position of power with the Richardson family who made good use of his pugilistic skills.
He was one of the most polite mild-mannered men I ve met but he had a bad temper on him sometimes, reminisces boss man Charlie Richardson. He was quite small a stocky bloke of about 5 2 but he was game, he was hard to handle, he was not afraid to speak out for his rights, and he was more than capable of doing what he threatened. His word was his bond. People knew they should never say to Frank, I want to chin a screw , unless they meant it, because he would expect them to do it, and rightly so.
Such glowing testimonials cut little sway with the judiciary, Fraser eventually going down for a 20-year stretch in 1967 after his heartfelt plea of innocence in the Richardson Torture trial was rejected at the Old Bailey. Feet had been stabbed and electrodes placed on testicles but Frankie had been somewhere else at the time, honest Guv.
Fast forward 30 years and London s former most wanted is revelling in his new found status as a media personality. Imminent biopics starring Gary Kemp and Patsy Kensit aside, he s currently concentrating his efforts on An Evening With Mad Frankie Fraser, a suitably grisly stroll down memory lane which has just completed a sell-out week-long run at Dublin s Andrew s Lane Theatre.
Accompanied by his fortysomething girlfriend Marilyn Wisbey if the name s familiar, crime fans, that s because her old man Tommy s one of the Great Train Robbers Frank fondly recalls a previous visit to Dublin.
I was on the run here in 1956 after stabbing Jack Spot, he says with more than a hint of nostalgia. This bloke had told some paper he was the King Of The Underworld and then demonstrated he was nothing of the sort by nicking me to the police. If I d known he was a fucking grass, I d have done it masked up.
Naturally.
Spain still had extradition back then, he continues in a voice that s unerringly similar to Ray Wilkins , so Ireland was a favourite place to disappear. Billy Hill, who really was the King Of The Underworld back then, rented us a furnished doctor s house right next to Donnybrook Bus Garage. Actually, they had one of the best world title fights I ve ever seen there Billy Spider Kelly and Ray Famersham which ended in a riot when the Irish lad lost very, very narrowly. I went back because Billy Hill reckoned he d got Jack Spot sorted but, unfortunately, he hadn t reckoned on his wife giving evidence and I went down for seven years.
Bearing in mind that all true East Enders are supposed to love the Queen Mum God bless er, she does all her own breathing it s a bit of a surprise to hear Fraser standing up for the IRA.
We re not political, he explains, but we would understand their cause. Three IRA guys gave evidence for me in Bristol nick. I d knocked-out a screw during exercise, so I was on report for assaulting an officer. Now, you re allowed to have a solicitor or barrister there, but back then you were dealt with by three visiting magistrates in what can only be described as a kangaroo court. I was standing there thinking, let s get this over with , when the chairman said, Fraser, there are three prisoners who want to speak on your behalf. These were the kids who d got 20 years for fire-bombing the stores in Oxford Street and one or two other places. Even if it d been Bill Clinton giving evidence, I d still have been found guilty, but I thought it was dead good of them to risk a beating for me. They were young, totally loyal to the cause and like most the IRA guys I met, friendly if you were friendly to them.
I tell you who I got very pally with after leaving prison the bloke who d been done for blowing up Scotland Yard and the Old Bailey. He was a big mate of Marilyn s dad in Parkhurst and someone I really admire. We were across last month in Dublin for his wedding and had a great time.
Fraser says he has other good friends in Ireland but refuses to elaborate. Although nothing s ever been proved, there s a suggestion that for a large enough wad of cash, the London underworld will render whatever assistance is necessary to the IRA. True?
I never heard of that, no, but we wouldn t shop em or anything like that. The reason they never came to us is that they didn t need to. These are highly-skilled people who, don t forget, have scores of proper Irish families they can call on. I suppose we could ve helped em nick cars and get into places but when it comes to explosives and shooters, they re better equipped than the fucking army!
I tell you something, he proffers, the screws did everything they could to get the other inmates to turn against the IRA. It might ve been getting some psycho to have a go at one of em, or promising a mug prisoner parole if they d grass em up. While everyone else considers sex offenders to be the lowest form of prison life, the people the officers hate the most and go out of their way to make life hard for, are the IRA.
According to Frankie, another commonly held misconception is that without the old firms, the streets of 60s London would have been awash with Class A pharmaceuticals.
I remember Ronnie Scott walking down Carnaby Street in the 40s and getting nicked for charlie, but apart from the odd bit of coke and blues y know, amphetamines you never saw or heard about drugs. I don t have any problem at all with the soft ones and I m standing as MP for South Bermondsey in the next election as part of Howard Marks Legalise Cannabis campaign. He reckons there s already a minimum of 2,000 people who ll vote for us, so hopefully we can fuck the other parties up.
Some brave souls not me, I hasten to add might suggest that it d be more appropriate for Frankie Fraser to ally himself to the Monster Raving Loony Party but, let s face it, he s a damn sight more compos mentis than most the people who ve been voted into Westminster Palace. But before we stray too far away from the subject of illicit substances, what about Frank being named in 1987 as one of the bosses behind the Costa del Sol drugs racket?
That was a load of old bollocks, he insists. This guy was nicked and to try and win favour with the police, got his defence to finger meself and Charlie Richardson as the blokes who were running all the drugs out of Spain. I was in Wandsworth at the time but if he d got in touch like he easily could ve and said, Frank, can I use your name? , I d probably have given him the okay. As it was, I was very annoyed that he didn t ask my permission. People were running up to me in the nick going, Frank, Frank, why didn t you give us a slice of that? , and I was telling em I don t have a slice of it meself!
I wouldn t have nothing to do with heroin but I would advocate that all drugs be made legal. The only sensible way is to give people the facts and let them make their own minds up.
But does he himself inhale? One would presume that if Frankie s currently hanging with Howard Marks, he must indulge in the odd spot of reefer madness.
The other prisoners used to plead with me, have a smoke, it ll calm you down , but I didn t know how to, did I? I must be the only person in the history of organised crime who doesn t smoke, drink or do drugs. Even over 50 years ago, when you used to have a bottle of Scotch brought in at Christmas by a crooked officer, I never touched a drop. Alcohol s a problem in prison because it makes people aggressive but smoke s different. Screws bring it in, often at cost price, just to cut down the aggro. I don t know about Ireland but in Britain, it s easier to score drugs in prison than it is outside.
Whether or not a few shots of Glenfiddich could ve made Frankie Fraser any more violent is debatable, his pathological aversion to prison staff earning him four years in solitary, over 100 transfers and an incalculable number of beatings. His one-man crusade against burly blokes in blue uniforms also meant he could wave goodbye to any chance of remission.
If I hadn t lost it for hitting a screw, he avers, I d have lost it for something else because they were out to get me. They had been ever since I was 17 and got the birch for trying to drown a prison officer. From that moment onwards, my record went round with me and whenever I was moved somewhere new, there was a reception committee waiting. It might ve been different if I d been a big fella but being so small, they thought they could do me no problem.
Needless to say, they were wrong.
I cut a screw s ear off, didn t I? he chuckles. They call him Ere Ear now! No, he was a right evil bastard, so when I got my hands on a decent knife I decided to give him a bit of cosmetic surgery. For a tough guy, he didn t half squeal.
In prison, even the beautiful game was reason enough for Fraser to tackle the authorities.
When Frank was in chokey, Marilyn reveals proudly, the other prisoners used to make out that Arsenal had lost so that when they gave him his bread and water, he d batter the guards.
It didn t really matter if we won or lost, he resumes, I d still give them a chinning. Football was a big thing in prison and every Saturday at a quarter-to-five you d have some cunt of a screw shouting through the grill, you ll never win the fucking championship now! Sometimes I d leave it a couple of days and then, wallop, he d find his nose splattered all over his face.
By the end of the 60s, his penchant for nasal reconfiguration had made Fraser a cause celebre among his fellow inmates. Not surprisingly, this popularity didn t extend to the other side of the bars with more than one warder deliberately goading him into throwing a wobbly, so they could get him transferred. This penal version of pass the parcel reached its conclusion in 1969 when, according to Frank, the authorities manipulated a situation in order to give him the mother of all beatings.
There d been a governor at Parkhurst, not in my time, who was a very good man, he explains. I never met this guy, he d retired, but while he was in charge the screws had to play it by the book. His replacement was this 6 2 bloke, immaculately dressed in classy suits and really good at the PR side of things. He was also extremely weak, which meant our uniformed friends could take liberties and get away with it.
There was a team of officers called the burglars who d search your cell and find, for instance, an extra pair of socks. That being a breach of the rules, you d be put on report and the next day after breakfast taken to see the governor. On your way down, there d be six of them going, come on Frank, come on Frank , and punching you in the side. Down the punishment block, they had a pot full of piss and shit that they d done and they d tip it over you.
Needless to say, the burglars found a lot of extra socks in Fraser s cell and having had one turd too many dumped on his head, he decided to take retaliatory action.
For about two or three years, he continues, the prisoners were planning to have a riot and at the last minute their arsehole went and it came to nothing. Halfway through my punishment for knocking the governor out at Leicester, they transferred me to Parkhurst where I had to do another three months in chokey before meeting the rest of the prisoners. When I realised what had been going on, I said, tomorrow night, we ll have a sit-in in association. The eight prison officers who ll be up there with us, we won t hurt em, we ll just tell em to mind their business cos we re taking over. The plan was to barricade the doors up and then somehow get a message to the newspapers.
The dangerous bit was asking people before they went there, do you wanna be involved? I didn t want em being half-hearted or moaning about losing remission. There was always a chance that some of em would grass us up and, sure enough, three of em went special sick from different workshops and when the screw came to take em in, they said, I d like to see the chief officer , and they told em.
At this stage, it s worth pointing out that Frankie s version of events more or less tallies with the findings of the Home Office s official inquiry. Simply put, the prison authorities could ve prevented a riot situation but chose not to.
They cancelled all leave at Parkhurst and brought in as many screws as they could nearly 600 from Camphill, Elwood, Winchester and Portsmouth, Fraser resumes. We finished work at half-past-four, were locked into our cells until six and then led up to association as if nothing was happening. What we didn t realise was that there were 30 officers in an office, 40 in a bathroom and so on, all issued with riot sticks. You know what? The bastards never told the eight screws in charge of us what was going down which, actually, worked in our favour when it came to them giving evidence afterwards. The poor fuckers resented the danger they d been put in and more or less told the magistrate that the whole thing had been engineered so that the screws could give us a kicking.
For 20 minutes it was the fiercest fighting in British prison history it was tremendous. You should ve seen it, there was blood everywhere. I managed to take a few of the bastards out and then, of course, they got me on the floor and did both my legs, my ribs and my head which needed 60 stitches.
Whatever about the other fella, Frankie Fraser s injuries were so severe that he ended up spending six weeks in a wheelchair. His next journey to casualty came relatively recently, in 1992 when a lone gunman opened fire on him outside Turnmills nightclub in Farringdon. So, who pulled the trigger?
No question about it, it was the cops, he alleges. If you go to hospital and it s not an accident i.e. you ve been whacked over the head with a metal bar the doctors have no option but to call the police. And the first thing they do, whether you re in bed or on a trolley, is ask for a statement. If you don t give em one, they ll call a doctor or a nurse and say, Mr. Fraser, we re asking you again, will you give us a statement? No? Right, we have a witness here who ll confirm that you refused to co-operate. They never done that with me. When I came to, there were all these armed police standing there and I said, look, you ve already shot me once, piss off.
Why would Her Majesty s Constabulary want to kill him?
Because they know that, should I choose to do so, I can finger a lot of bent coppers. Most have retired by now but there are still a few high-rankers that go back to my day. I tell you something, half the people in jail are there for crimes they didn t commit. The Birmingham Six and Guildford Four who I felt extremely sorry for, as it happens are just the tip of the iceberg. There are loads of blokes who ve been fitted up but probably won t get out because they don t have MPs or the media to fight their case.
Had it not been for his girlfriend s timely intervention, it s unlikely that Fraser would ve survived to tell the tale not to mention scoff the plate of prawns in garlic & wine sauce that s just been plonked down in front of him.
After he d been hit the first time, Marilyn takes over, I jumped on Frank to stop him going for the gunman and in doing that pushed him out of the way of the second bullet which ricocheted off the front of the car. It went in there (points to his somewhat indented left temple), slid behind his nose and then lodged on the other side.
It was the kind of bullet that goes in and travels round and round until it finds an exit, Fraser says, switching into forensic science-mode. In other words, if you get shot in the stomach, it ll eventually end up in your fucking heart. By rights, I should ve been a goner but the top of my cheekbone stopped it reaching my brain. When they operated on us to get it out, I asked could I have the bullet. They said, no, I m sorry Mr. Fraser, we re not allowed to. What do you want it for, anyway? I told em, a friend of mine s got a lovely scrap metal business and he might give me a few quid for it.
Of course, it wasn t the first piece of lead that d been dug out of his Rottweiler-like body, Fraser escaping from a serious rumble at the Krays-run Mr. Smith s nightclub in 1966 with a shattered thighbone. More significantly, he ended up being arrested for the murder of a small-time villain called Dickie Hart who was found outside with a bullet in his face and his skull caved in.
Actually, it was the guy who fingered me to the police, Henry Botton, who saw me giving Dickie Hart a kick and shouted, you re fucking mad, Frank! That same night I d given the bastard #25, which was a lot of money in those days, to help him get a defence lawyer for some minor charge he was on. Later on, he was shot dead himself. I was in the punishment block at Durham Prison in 1983 when the lads shouted, Frank, Frank, good news for you. Henry Botton s been taken out. You should ve heard the cheer!
The other reason I got called Mad is that s what I pretended to be to get out of national service and, later, to get myself transferred to Broadmoor, which is a holiday camp compared to normal prisons.
With no evidence that he d fired the fatal shot, Fraser was found not guilty of Hart s murder but along with the other main protagonists, received five years for causing an affray. All of this was overshadowed, though, by the murder of his closest criminal ally, George Cornell, who was shot at point-blank range by Ronnie Kray after reportedly calling him, a big fat poof.
Not true, Frankie insists. George was a lovely man who was brought up with Ronnie and Reggie and used to bash em as kids. They were frightened of him, no doubt about that. He came from the East End but moved over to South London where he married this girl from the Elephant & Castle, so he hardly ever saw the Krays. He never called him a poof, he didn t talk like that. The reason he got shot is that he was stepping on their toes business-wise. They wanted a slice of his porn racket and he wouldn t give it to them.
Wasn t Frank just a teensy weensy bit annoyed that somebody had shot dead his best mate?
Of course I was angry, but that s life, that s how it goes in the kind of business we re in. I could ve started a feud with the Krays but then all of us would ve ended up dead. They were very good to me when I was doing several years over Jack Spot, fetching my sister and bringing her to visit me at prisons all over the country. We were rivals but we were also in it together, if you know what I mean.
Why couldn t Ronnie have just gone into George and given him a whack? Marilyn asks.
No, he couldn t have done that because George would ve killed him. That s the only way he could win, Frank explains.
If someone had turned round in public and said, Frank, I think you re a fucking wanker , would that have been enough for him to do serious damage to them?
Yeah, he says with more than a hint of menace, that would be enough. But not then, not in front of witnesses. I d laugh it off and say, see you later , but you could guarantee he d be really hurt. That probably sounds barbaric to you, but in a business where respect is everything, you couldn t have people taking liberties.
Did he ever take his work home with him?
You mean was I violent in my private life? No, as Marilyn will tell you, I ve always been very placid.
He s never hit me or nothing, no, she nods.
Fraser might maintain that it was the police who took a potshot at him outside Turnmills, but the general consensus is that the shooting was payback for an earlier indiscretion. Indeed, there were nearly 50 gangland-related murders during 1992, suggesting that more than a few old scores were being settled. Does Frankie ever worry about old ghosts coming back to haunt him?
If somebody wants to kill you badly enough they will, so why worry about it? he asks rhetorically. That applies to any guy who s involved or has been involved in top crime. As far as I m concerned, the 50s and the 60s are history but there could be a bloke from back then who still harbours a grudge and wants to do me. There s nothing stopping em I don t have a bodyguard or live at a secret address. They could shoot me on stage if they wanted to.
Adamant that he s now gone straight, Fraser last had his collar felt in 1986 when he was caught in flagrante delicto with #35,000 worth of stolen coinage. Joining him in the dock were several of his former associates, criminals growing old but rarely fading away.
There s a bit of continuity, yeah, but to be honest, most the major players from my day are either dead or in the nick, he reflects. Everyone goes on about how multi-national crime s become whilst forgetting that as far back as the 50s, you had the Greeks, the Italians, the Maltese and a small smattering of Chinese. The media talks about the Yardies and the Russian Mafia taking manors over but that s rubbish. The blacks and I m not knocking em are good at drugs, but they couldn t organise a major heist like the Brinks-Mat job. If you look at the people who were involved in that, it was old school.
Ask him the right or should that be wrong? question and Frankie Fraser leaves you in no doubt that the bad press he s received down through the years is entirely justified.
Do I regret hurting people? No, the only thing I regret is some of them I didn t hurt bad enough. It was business, purely business. I sorted the people who needed sorting out but I never got any sadistic pleasure from it. The guys who inflicted pain for kicks were brushed aside by us, they wouldn t have been in our company even. The trouble with that type is they re unreliable. You know, they re good at mouthing off, but stick em in an interview room and they ll shop the lot of you. Not only that, but hurt em and they ll press charges, which is something no one in the families would ever have done. You d tell the police to fuck off and then get the doctor to stitch you up.
So, in other words, if he had his time all over again, he wouldn t do things any differently?
Well, he admits with a rueful look in his eye, I wouldn t have minded being part of the Great Train Robbery. Marilyn s dad wanted me to be but I was on the run at the time in Clacton and said, no, I d only be a liability to you. He wouldn t tell me anything about the blag except that it d be very big, it d be terrific and we d all make a fortune. From a professional point of view, I was very jealous when that went down.
Marilyn has her own memories of the blag which led to her father spending 12 years in prison.
My Mum was the only woman who knew the robbery was going off, she explains. She made the balaclavas. The first bunch she did, one eye was up here and the other down there, so she had to do em again.
I must tell you this story. Just before the robbery, Dad told Mum to take me and my sister away to the chalet we owned by the sea. Anyway, we got down there and being a typical nine-year-old, I wanted a donkey ride, a helter skelter ride and this nurse s uniform they had in a shop. She kept saying, no, we can t afford it, wait til Tuesday , which, me not knowing about the robbery on the Monday, made no sense at all. Anyway, come Tuesday, Dad knocks on the window, gives me Mum #500 in a cigarette packet and within an hour, I had three uniforms, 20 donkey rides and a sore bum from the helter skelter!
The downside to all that, she continues is that by the time he got out of nick, I was 21 with a kid. Y know, when I needed his help, he wasn t there.
As compelling as An Evening With Mad Frankie Fraser undoubtedly is, there s something rather grotesque about a crowd shrieking with laughter as an ex-con in a dickie-bow regales them with tales of his wrongdoing. Forget all the cuddly Bob Hoskins pretensions; this man has maimed people for fucking life.
If anybody gets upset about it, he counters rather lamely, society s more than had its pound of flesh, innit? I ve more than paid me debt to society. Not only that, but I think the public has the right to know the other side of the story. People like myself are made out to be animals but there are just as many animals some worse than me walking round in uniforms.
The events may have taken place 30 years ago but, surely, there s no difference between Frankie Fraser waxing lyrical about the Krays and the bloke-on-the-motorbike treating us to the inside story of how he shot dead Veronica Guerin.
You know what?, he neatly side-steps. I think the police could ve killed her to stir up trouble for everyone. I don t know me Penguins from me Tossers actually, why ain t he called The Wanker? but I d say it s entirely possible that the Gardam arranged the hit to make life difficult for them.
But if, even for one moment, Frankie could set aside his paranoia about the law and accept that Veronica s death was, indeed, a gangland murder would he condemn the killing?
Well, it d be muggish cos you d stir up a hornet s nest. When Capone, at the end of the 20s, had that reporter killed, it was his downfall because the resulting public outcry forced the police into nailing him. That s the situation you ve got at the moment in Dublin everyone s angry this girl s been shot, which gives the Gardai a licence to do whatever the fuck they want. No politician in their right mind s going to say, whoa, hang on a minute lads , because then it d look as if they were soft on crime. I ve given my opinion about Veronica Guerin to a lot of journalists here but none of em have had the bottle to print it.