Crime in Sports - #314 - Pain Is My Best Friend - The Gumpness of Stephen "The Devil" French

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

This week, we look at story that is deep in underground criminal lore. An English kickboxer, with international titles, but we barely have time for any sports, due to this episode being packed with crime. Wall to wall. His main occupation was robbing drug dealers for very large amounts of cash & product. Sometimes, needing to torture the unsuspecting dealer with a clothes iron. He claims to the main person to set off a famous riot, that lasted 9 days, and injured hundreds. He's just an all around bad dude. As a matter of fact, he calls himself "The Devil" This one is wilder than can be described here!!Spend your childhood getting beat up by your sister, become the most feared drug dealer robber in Europe, and torture someone with an iron with Stephen "The Devil" French!! Check us out, every Tuesday! We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!!  Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman  Donate at... patreon.com/crimeinsports or with paypal.com using our email: [e-mail]  Get all the CIS & STM merch at crimeinsports.threadless.com  Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things CIS & STM!!  Contact us on... twitter.com/crimeinsports [e-mail] facebook.com/Crimeinsports instagram.com/smalltownmurderSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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A first listen is waiting for you when you start your free trial at audible.ca. Each week on the Mr. Ballin Podcast, now available wherever you get your podcasts, you'll hear strange, dark, and mysterious stories about inexplicable encounters, shocking disappearances, true crime cases, and everything in between. So go listen to Mr. Ballin Podcast, strange, dark, and mysterious stories on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Crime and Sports! Yay! Yay! Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed.

My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another wild, crazy edition of Crime and Sports. My episode 314. Can you believe that? Son of a bitch. That is so goddamn many. Keep pumping them out. And last week, Jason Kidd was insane,

obviously, because he's one of those guys that was famous from like the ninth grade on. And boy, just a class A dickhead. Wow, is he just a jackass. We are going to have something completely different today. Completely different. And as always, when we do an overseas episode, we do ask

that you find our ignorance charming because this is a sport we don't know about. This is what there's really no sports in this episode. The sports part of this episode will cover about six minutes, probably. They happen to be involved. And then the rest is just crazy British street gangsterism. And it's amazing in his own words too weird britishisms that i don't we don't understand that we can try to figure out it's so cool we cannot wait but before we get to that thank you for everything that you've done for us always thank you for your

reviews they help a lot five stars whatever app you're listening on does help us out drives us up the chart so if you could do that that is greatly appreciated head over to shut up and give me murder.com right now today first of all all your merchandise merchandise tons of merch we got merch coming out your ass over there so get over there get your merch and also tickets to live shows oh my goodness yes full slate lined up first of all for small town murder come out and see us for that uh August the 12th, we are in San Francisco at Cobb's Comedy Club. Two shows that night. It will be two different shows. If you want to see both, you're going to see two different stories.

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Yes. This week, there is so much bonus stuff. And every time there's going to be bonus stuff. Every other week, you're going to get two new episodes without fail. You're going to get everything that Crime and Sports puts out. Everything that Small Town Murder bonus puts out. And the entire back catalog of it as well. So much.

So much. Over 100 episodes. This week, what you're going to get for your money is for crime and sports we are going to talk about all of michael jordan's scandals now oh man he's got a bunch first there's the gambling stuff we'll talk about that obviously and conspiracy theories behind his dead dad and his basketball retirement 94 the whole deal we'll talk about but then also his affairs his paternity suits and his amazing divorce settlement that is like mind-bogglingly huge divorce settlement so much

juanita but congratulations when you get hit with paternity suits every single year that's you're gonna that's gonna happen so not good and then for small town murders we're gonna talk about we're gonna do an old favorite here haven't done in about a year we're going to do small town reviews and oh god that was so much fun last time i can't wait reviews of small towns and even maybe a couple of weird business reviews from inside that small town just to find it's going to be weird stuff patreon.com slash crime and sports is where you get all of that and you'll get a shout out at the end of the show jimmy will mispronounce your name terribly he wants to get it right, I promise you. But he just can't.

So he's going to try, though. So do that. And also, if you want to donate over on PayPal and get that shout out, you can do that using our email address, crimeandsportsatgmail.com. Let's do this, Jimmy. Hey! Let's find our asshole of the week here. Here we go. It's a guy I know you've never heard of him, so I'm not say ever heard of this guy uh stephen thomas french yeah yeah you know him yeah posters on your

walls as a kid hall of fame expos play that's exactly right he isn't a hall of fame as a matter of fact is he yes um he is more commonly known as stephen the devil french oh and that is not he's a fighter but that's not from his fighting, the devil. He has a different fighter name, actually. He has three different nicknames, this guy, which that should be a crime and sports rule also. We have all the rules, no teenagers in your hit squad, don't get married when things are going bad, don't find religion. One of them should be one nickname only.

You can't have more. You can't have three nicknames. That's too many, I feel like. Two throughout your career is fine, I suppose. Because you could change. You change. We turn into different people. Well, suppose at first you're like a kid who comes up and you're like, you know, kid so-and-so or you're like something youthful.

But then like you have a tragic car accident, but you work your way back from it. Now you're not kid anymore. You got a big scar on your face. You're limping. Now you're like something that you've come through the flames type of nickname. Even Tyson went from Kid Dynamite to Iron Mike. You got to get better. It's just different.

You got to change up a little bit. So his are nothing to do with age. They're just his different cycles, basically. He's got a a ring persona that's the warrior that's steven the warrior thomas uh french i'm sorry thomas is his middle name and then there is his street persona which is steven the devil french and that is what pretty much the entire underground of liverpool knew him as was the devil and then um then later on he is the fighting preacher so and then he goes back to inmate and devil after that so you know if we grow we grow and uh here

we go here we go let's grow with steven here we are yeah he's born either october 1st 1959 or 1960 i can't quite pin it down. One of the two. Nothing makes me happier than the beginning of the story not knowing when the fuck somebody entered this world. I know it's October 1st. I just don't know if it's 59 or 60. He seems to go back and forth on how old he is a couple of times. And I will say this as well when we get into it.

He's born in Toxeth. T-O-X-E-T-H. Toxic? Toxic, I guess. Toxic. That's not good. Toxeth? It's got, like, toxic. It sounds like toxic. It's a place in Liverpool in England here. It's got to be Tozeth, right?

There's no way it's Toxeth. I don't know, man. It's got a straight X in there, but I guess, yeah, I don't know. It's got to be Tozeth. I'm going with To, I don't know. It's got to be Toza. I'm going with Toxa. Nobody's going to call a place Toxa. It's like a shit area, too. It's like a real.

And it's a toxic place. Yeah, so people are going to call it toxic, I assume, no matter what. So from what I understand, it's a rough place and kind of a poor area. From what I understand, it's a rough place and kind of a poor area. Now, a ton of this, most of this episode, maybe not most, but a good half of this episode is going to come directly from this man's mouth here. I don't know if it's sort of his mouth. It was written like a ghostwriter through somebody named, I think, named Graham Johnson is the credited writer. And it's called The Devil,ain's most feared underworld tax man that's the name of the book wow and uh tax man you know what a tax man is by any chance in the

street that's the that's the that's the guy that that's the fucking enforcer that's the guy that comes and gets the money right that's the omar is what that is he yeah he's essentially an omar he's going around taking your shit. He robs the bad guys. He robs the bad guys and you don't fuck with him cause they're all afraid of him and they're all like, Oh no, not the, where's the devil? The debt, like the, he's the baddest bad guy. Yeah. The devil is a whisper among people just like Omar and the wires, like this whisper among

the street, like, Oh, Omar's Omar coming. Oh shit. Like everybody would scatter. Omar. So you have a great whistle song. I wish he did. See, shit. Like everybody would scatter. Omar. Did you have a great whistle song? I wish he did. See, that's the thing. He needs to pick a nursery rhyme and whistle it.

And then we're on to it. Nothing scarier than Farmer in the Dell now. Not when you got a guy with a fucking shotgun coming at you. Yeah, that's terrifying. That guy could be whistling anything. He could be whistling if you like piña coladas. But if he's coming at you looking with a trench coat and a fucking shotgun dangling down off of it i think you're afraid was the farmer had a dog and bingo oh my god run

oh god we're about to get caught in the rain run run shit so we don't know what if everything in here is true or not but from the sound of it the gist of it is all true we don't know about the details but i there's no reason to doubt it we'll put it that way yeah from you know and when a bad man who's everybody knows is a bad that's what i mean story who gives a fuck if it's true or not? If he's saying it, let's just be scared. That's what I mean. If John Gotti's going to tell you about a couple of hits, I don't really care if the details are messed up. That's kind of part of it.

Part of the psychology is what details is he going to tell me? The scarier part is what the fuck did he leave out that makes this so much worse because you know it's worse yeah this is so bad i don't know how it could be worse like this this is written like a guy who didn't do anything but like had this active imagination only i know he did a lot of shit so i feel like a lot of this might be true that's the scary part you're reading this going this this is probably true that's what's terrifying about some some of it's some oj shit some some if i did it here's how it was done no he just says this is what i did that's the other thing too he doesn't give a fuck this guy it's wild it's crazy we'll get into it here we go

so um he said i'll give you here's a couple paragraphs from the book to open it up. OK, this is, you know, writing from his current state when he writes the book in 2007. OK, quote, You may think that you may think that my life is a doddle. What with the luxurious flats in Canary Wharf, the penthouse apartments in Liverpool City Center, 70,000 pound cars christmas in the caribbean and five-star hotels in las vegas new york florida and the indian ocean let me share with you a strand of the rope that gives me the strength and makes me who i am yeah but i want to know does he mean 71 000 pound cars or 70 000 pound cars so cars that cost 70,000 pounds. Yeah. Got it.

I was like, what the fuck weighs that much? It's a semi truck with another one on top and then a load of coal sitting on top of it. That's a semi truck pulling 30 Sherman tanks. Yep. With a fat guy driving. That's what that is. Big old fat guy driving. Fat guy seat belted into that bouncy chair i'm adding an extra 500

to this whole mess rounding it out 70 000 pound valued cars yeah so your cars all that that's that's the but let me share with you lifestyle astray yeah this is let me tell you how i got to here quote from my earliest memory to when i was 15 years old, I was bullied on a daily basis. During that period, I was stabbed with scissors, hit with a poker, lashed with a curtain wire, scalded with hot water, and punched and kicked endlessly. Jesus Christ. Good Lord. Lashed with a curtain wire? Was he in Helsinki?

What the fuck is happening what what middle eastern prison did he spend his childhood years in like what abu grab facility was this was he in was he in the cell next to john mccain what is yeah i think he was obviously um pain became my best friend what okay well pain is my best friend. What? Okay. Well, pain is my best friend is certainly the title of the show. Best friend. I don't think that's going without it right there. It's got to be something with the devil, but no, pain is my best friend.

That's the quote of the year. Holy shit. Pain. The devil and his best friend pain. And his best friend pain. But then when I was 16 years old, my balls dropped and I began to man up. Hold on. All of that before he was how old?

That was up until he was 15. All this was happening to him. And then at 16, he said, no more. I will do the bullying. I stopped the bullies with a well-aimed and even better propelled everyday house brick. Yeah, leave me the fuck alone.

Wow. So he beat somebody with a brick, which will do it. That'll do it. That'll turn somebody around. Yeah, that's the thing. That's the thing, by the way, I love about coming up in a shit area is you really know how to take anything and have it be a weapon. Growing up, I know tons of kids that just carried hammers around with them. Just hammers, screwdrivers, things, just everyday things that you find around.

That's a good weapon right there. And it is a good weapon. But normal people don't think like that. They think knives or whatever. If you take inch and a half bolts and weld them together, four of them, you can make them into brass knuckles. Ph you take like a phillips head screwdriver you're like that grip with the finger that is fucking that's nasty man as a kid you think of that shit so yeah he said at 17 the bullies were back this time with a concealed blade. A steak knife was homing in like a missile for my throat in a deceptive and lightning attack.

I was unarmed, lying down on my mother's couch, maxing out. A nanosecond somehow became an eon, and I managed to get my left arm between my throat and the Grim Reaper. Very dramatic, this guy. Was somebody standing over him and stabbing he was just chilling on the couch on his mother's couch and somebody just came in out of nowhere and without warning or you know any sort of priest you know precept just came in and started stabbing him attacked him with a knife a steak knife as a matter of fact the blade was violently plunged through my arm midway between my left wrist and elbow. It pierced my skin, its serrated edge scraping across the bone and completely severing three tendons.

Jesus Christ. I was left with the use of my left index finger and left thumb only, but I could still make a fist. I weighed around 175 pounds. My throat was not cut, as had my assailant's murderous intention. So he got away from it, is what he's saying. So then he's- A little worse for wear, though. You can't fucking use his three fingers on his hand.

No, no, no. This is just the intro to this guy right now I'm giving you here. Oh, my God. In the melee that ensuedued my bright red blood sprayed my mom's front room and i knew without being told that i was in a fight for my life as i subdued my arm to salient with my bare hands i knew instinctively that i would find myself in this situation many more times why would you know why would you this is gonna happen often like as you're doing that it sounds awful doesn't it fuck i gotta get out of here it would be my jesus this is my life i guess stabbing

stab and be stabbed i suppose um i also oh wait i'm sorry as my assailant passed into unconsciousness i also knew with a heightened almost prim awareness, that I would always win and never lose a death match. Did he kill this person? I suppose he just choked him down, it seems like, from what he said. Choked his ass out. Feels like you'd probably get away with self-defense if they stabbed you and you murdered them, right? I think so. was self-defense if they stabbed you and you murdered them i think so i mean but yeah maybe you just left them there in an unconscious pile kick them out in the yard and then everybody

knows not to fuck with you now i stabbed him and then he choked me out that's a pretty rough story nobody wants to mess with that guy so he continues that was the first attempt on my life 30 years ago in 1977 and from that day to this there have been several more attempts to assassinate me. My enemy, and they won't be the last either. My enemies have tried to burn me, melt me with acid, shoot me, or kill me in any way possible. This is my story. They called me the devil. That's how it started.

That's your opening to the book. This Rasputin motherfucker. He is a poet. Jesus. This guy is a smart guy. That's the the other thing this is not a stupid guy what so fucking ever he's a sharp guy he gets into many different businesses he knows how to keep a lot of plates spinning a stupid person could not do all the weird things that he's done uh but a vicious person you'd have to be as well that's the problem so he's unbelievable already um yeah it's it's rough uh he describes how um he grew up in a rough neighborhood and a lot of that he says

is i i don't know this is this is like our ignorance because we don't know we know like american social stuff you know what i mean like we knew oh the civil rights movement in the 60s and blah blah blah we know all that stuff. I don't know shit about England's at all. Anything that went on there. I got to assume. I really don't. That that went along in like the 1800s.

Because if we started in the 1700s. Are we assuming history now? I'm assuming. Let's not. Yeah, I am. Let's not. Let's not go there. I got to assume. We're not.

We can't assume history. They did this hundreds of years ago. This happened in the 1530s, as a matter of fact. It was. They had to have gotten started before us. No. Well, I don't know what their, I don't know how their shit works exactly. So all I know is the way he describes it is he said that he's from Liverpool and growing up in the 60s in Liverpool, the 1960s, not the 1860s.

He said that he was the, as he puts it, the product of a mixed marriage racially. So he said that was more like it was almost worse to be mixed the way he put it. Like that was really kind of puts you outside of both both camps. put it like that was really kind of puts you outside of both both uh camps but interesting the thing that's weird about it is he says and he really makes a point of saying that in his neighborhood there was black and white and everybody that was poor were together against the non-poor it wasn't a matter of like they didn't fight each other again it was yeah it was socioeconomic was what it was. We're all here. So, I mean, what the fuck are we fighting over?

Exactly. Right. Who gives a fuck what color we are when we don't have any money? Poor people should never fight each other because that's really, you're just making both of you more poor. That's all you're doing. That's really not good. Never fight each other, poor people. That's bad.

And rich people go, hey, look at that. They're fighting each other. Good. Now they won't notice what we're doing. So don't do that. So anyway, he says that he says that he I like this line. When I first decided to help Graham Johnson write this book, well, it's you'd have to help. It's all your quotes.

The whole book is like a book of you speaking. I knew I had a good story inside me, but I also knew I should take advantage of the life experiences of the people I've known throughout my life. 25 years, including 25 years security experience and 30 years as a martial artist. Yeah, that's all good. So, like I said, not sure how much is true, but it's a hell of a tale either way. Let's get into it here. Totally. but it's a hell of a tale either way let's get into it here uh totally he calls his mother a flame-haired white woman of irish immigrant stock and film star looks yeah and so he just

that's how he describes his mom yeah jolene his mom's like uh like a 90s the fuck is her name god damn it uh his mom's like julianne moore coming at him all right yeah boogie nights not bad yeah hopefully not telling him to come inside of her so you have to see rocks around yeah you have to see boogie nights to understand that joke but anyway uh he said his dad was west indian and um he was west indian and was on the quote on the run for killing a man. Really? Yeah. That's what he said.

So from from India or in West Indian is not West Indian is the islands. That's not in India. Oh, yeah. He's an island. West India. West India. Yeah. So he said that basically that his he puts it this way.

Quote, I am the product of the irish potato famine and the african slave trade okay so that's the way he puts it he said his dad thomas benjamin french uh so his middle name is his dad's name he's not a junior but stay tuned he said he came came to the uk in in uh when he was 26 years old in 1955 from trinidad uh i guess a lot of immigrants were coming at that point in time and uh he married the you know his mom the a year later so he just got there and he said that it was pretty quick before he quote it wasn't long before he fucked off with the babysitter so um yeah that's not good um he said that his mom was left with three uh five children from three different fathers and uh you know no help at this

point and uh her her latest husband fucking the babysitter so he said yeah he had an elder sister and an elder brother and then a middle brother and then a middle brother, and then, I guess, another sister, too. So he was like the youngest of everybody, it seems like here. So he says that having an absent father affected him deeply. And the way he says it, he quote, it was one of the main reasons I fell into a life of crime. Yeah, the rage that you feel when that man is not there is brutal, man. Not only that, when you have one parent instead of two, and's five kids and you don't have a lot of money and that one parent has to work a lot, then there's no supervision. And then that kid goes out and does shit.

And then it's. Yeah. So it's a matter of even if the kid's not pissed off at anything, he's just out. You know. Yeah. It's just going to be running. And he really likely feels like he has nothing to lose, and what's the difference? Who's going to tell me no?

My fucking mom? Well, yeah, and he'll describe, too, his home life here. You'd want to go out in the street, too, I think, and do some shit here. He said his mother, though, sacrificed everything to bring all the kids up, and he said that for a long time he thought she was a vegetarian because the kids would eat meat, but then she wouldn't eat anything. So he was like, oh, mom's a vegetarian. Okay, that's nice.

She's eating crackers while I'm eating meat. That makes sense. She's a vegetarian. She's eating cabbage soup while we all have fucking meat and potatoes. He said it took him a while to understand that. And then he was like, oh, mom's, okay, I get it. Mom's sacrificing food for us to be able to eat. He said the first his first real, you know, run ins with violence came from a very unlikely place.

As a matter of fact, his sister, Helen. Why? Yes. Most people who've been through a life of violence and you go, what started it all? They don't go the fucking sister, Helen. That's who started it. Goddamn. Goddamn Helen. Goddamn Helen, I'll tell you right now.

You rarely hear that. Just go find a gangbanger anywhere in the streets of America and be like, what started you on this? Man, my sister Helen, she's a motherfucker, man. No, seriously, Helen was a bitch. Helen jumped me in. Who do you think jumped me in, man? Helen's the leader of this fucking whole business he says quote she tormented me physically mentally and emotionally with fists

bats not and knives from the age of three jesus helen what the fuck is wrong with helen jesus this book should be about helen she sounds like a psychopath at this point. I don't know if that's true, but it sounds like it. He said, that was probably the second reason I became a gangster. Dad being out there and then my sister being there. Why'd you become a gangster? The babysitter and Helen, that's why. All right.

Why are you doing this? Stop beating me. Why are you beating me the babysitter and helen motherfucker that's why so he said that helen gave him an incredible ability to tolerate pain as he put it um he's a lot of beating for which today i give thanks to her for it has saved my life on many occasions. He said, so, um, yeah, he said that he,

um, noticed racism at first when he never noticed it before, but when his mom took him in a shop to get some stickers when he was a kid and all the, well, he said all the kids were like different colors and shit, all of her five kids. And,

um, we, she said we all came in and everybody was like oh this fucking red-haired white woman what the fuck how many different how many are what's up with the around the world fuck that's going on here that you're doing what is it's just hands across america yeah it's hands across you, apparently, from all over everywhere. Hands from around the world across you is what it looks like. So, no, they all, he said that that was kind of annoying, he said, though. But he didn't, he said he wouldn't let that bother him.

He wouldn't let that bother him. She said that, he did say it was very difficult, very difficult with his mom no money no support um he said that he first went into care which i assume is like a foster care situation okay care in england uh in north wales with his brother tony when he was seven and he said every time it would happen after that he'd just run away so that's it he said one time i quote i sneaked back home to discover that my dad had returned hey look at that yeah that's cool oh wait no it's not uh he'd returned quote to have an affair with the social worker who was supposed to be looking after us he had sex with her right on my mom's bed what okay he got put into foster care he ran away from foster care to go home

noticed his dad was there cool but his dad is fucking the social worker that's supposed to be keeping him safe in his mother's bed how does this guy do this how does he how does the father pull it off yeah just banging everybody how do you fuck the social because the social workers should hate you they have to deal and put your kids in these places because you've run away and bang the babysitter and instead she's like i see why the babysitter wanted such a piece of your wonderful wonderful cock now i see it i understand may i por favor uh have a sample of that wow that is wonderful but it fucks up uh it fucks up poor steve a lot here the devil is upset about this that's the problem it's tough to come home and be excited to see pop and uh

he's laying pipe in the social worker that's not easy to deal with he's laying pipe over here what are you talking about hey oh i'm laying pipe on the social worker oh what are we talking about here so what so i'm laying some pipe you got a fucking problem with that it's a goddamn pipe i gotta do over here hold on a minute wait a second i gotta ask this question here listen pops look she walked in i thought she was fine too you know what i mean i'm not gonna lie but uh you know, mom's going to be here in like 15 minutes. You know what I mean? Maybe just hurry it up is what I'm saying.

Clean up a little bit, you know. Also, where you been? By the way, nice to see you since I was two. It's been a long, it's been a while. I can talk now. I can talk. So he ended up saying that, you know, this sent him out into the streets even more. I love how one thing that's funny is whenever like a lot of times when criminals write books, they rather than kind of having this kind of cumulative snowball that really what people's lives are, they attribute behaviors and future things.

They project it out from one event because in your brain later on that's how you remember shit it christian you remember that event and you also remember then doing this and you put those two together and go that happened so i did this rather than a bunch of other stuff happened in the middle too that all caused this stuff so right he says that it's like sister makes him do that father comes bangs the social worker. Now he's out in the streets committing crime because now he's mad at that. You know what I mean? The world's going to pay for this.

The world's going to pay for this. He said he picked up his first conviction at age 11, which is young. Four. Robbing cars, stealing shit out of cars and stuff like that. Then he started, well, first it was robbing from cars then it was taking the actual cars took the whole car yeah at 11 he said that he'd seen like high-speed chases on tv and he thought that looked pretty fun so he said you know maybe i'll grab some cars and then race them around he said after a while though it was too risky yeah he said it was

it was tough because it was difficult because you you know, he's a little kid. He can't see over the steering wheel. Once again, like the wire, when they see that one little kid driving, they immediately hit the sirens. He doesn't have a fucking license. He's 11. That's fascinating because the takeaway from seeing a police chase on TV shouldn't be, that looks like fun. It should be, oh, my God, that looks dangerous and horrifying. Absolutely.

Well, you should also probably run away from nicknames like the devil, too, rather than embracing them, I feel like. You're a different kind of fella at that point, possibly. The wait is over. So far, you're not losing. The only thing you're losing is my patience. Quickly, I see that. Ding! The queen of the courtroom is back. I didn't do anything.

You wouldn't know the truth if it came up and slapped you in the face. I see he's not intimidated by anything. I can fix that. New cases. She wanted to fight me. Leave her alone. OK, so, um. This is not a so. This is a period. She wanted to fight me. Leave her alone.

Okay, so... This is not a so. This is a period. Classic Judy. Did you sleep with her? Yes, Your Honor. You married his cousin. His brother. That's not him. Yes, ma'am.

I would make a beeline for the door. The Emmy Award-winning series returns. How did I know that? I have crystal ball in my head It's an all new season It's streaming, you can say anything Judy Justice Only on Freebie If you don't know when Crystal Pepsi was discontinued

What was in Al Capone's vault Or which famous meteorologist is Lenny Kravitz's second cousin, then you haven't spent enough time on Wikipedia. But that's okay. I am here for you. I'm Darcy Carden, and I'm inviting you to listen to my new podcast, WikiHole, from Smartless Media. Discover the craziest rabbit holes on Wikipedia with me and my funny friends as we bring the cyber frontier directly to your tympanic membrane. And if you listen to my podcast, you've learned that that's the sciency term for eardrum. We embark on a hyperlink roller coaster as we start out on a Wikipedia page and go from link to link to link to link, careening through trivia, oddities, and unexpected connections

until we collectively shout, how the hell did we get here? Follow WikiHole on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to WikiHole ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. So, yeah, he said that he soon realized, though, that it's not going to be the moneymaker for him, just stealing cars. It's too difficult. can't do it um so he ends up uh he ends up finding a guy named george osu osu um who was kind of he's called like kind of a street mentor at the time here um he said quote he was only 16

but he was a movie star oh wait, wait. No, I'm sorry. This is a different guy. He's talking about the actual. No, wait. Who the fuck is this? Okay. No, this is the George guy. I'm sorry, because there's two different street mentors he has, and I thought I had them mixed up, but I didn't.

I had them correct. God damn it. So he describes George as, quote, he was only 16, but he was a movie star to all of us. Tall and slim with the neatest of neat afros. He wore a long black leather midi coat just like Shaft, and he always had pound notes on him. Dollars. George's bag was burglaries. It all came down to one thing.

Small windows. Jimmy just made a face like I told him. It all came down to one thing skittles like that was the face you were like what uh small windows he said only kids could get through them so people would leave their tiny windows open because they wouldn't figure people could get through them so he said this guy had a thing where he would recruit kids to go through the windows and get shit so he said at one time george himself had been a house burglar the kid who squeezed through those windows but now he'd grown too big so he's looking for others to recruit goddamn puberty damn it jesus now i

can't cry through shit my balls drop they're stuck in there can't cry anymore can't cry well i'll get little kids to do it he said george took me under his wing because i was skinny and nimble he showed me how to get into a house and trained me how to systematically clean a place out soon i was screwing two houses a week wow his dad's screwing the social worker he's screwing two houses a week and we made lots of cash in no time at all i was dressing just like george so that So that's his idol here. So he said as well, he starts taking up actual normal fighting at the same time here. He says, not only was I fast, but I was also becoming a champion fighter in waiting. My sister's beatings had made me immune to the pain.

Thanks, Helen. Thanks, Hel. He said, and he describes to talk about that when most people are hit and this is true actually most people when they're hit it's kind of like we described they talk about um most people that get shot they fall down because they think they're supposed to fall down because that's what they see in movies this is the same thing most people that get hit they think they're supposed to be hurt, so they automatically kind of go down. Yeah, they cover up.

If you've been hit a lot, you know whether you're hurt or not. So you take a shot, and unless you're fucking seeing stars and spinning or you think your nose is broken or something, it just pisses you off at that point. You motherfucker. It's different. You're not shocked. He said it's the shock of being hit that most people are.

It takes them five seconds to realize they're in a fight. That's the problem most people have. And if you're not used to getting hit, you can't gauge which pain. Like being hit in the side of the head, if you don't go out or whatever, it's just a clunk in the head. Hit in the nose. Sometimes it goes numb and it's broken and there's no blood. Yeah. Who knows?

Sometimes there's blood fucking everywhere and you're fine yeah you don't yeah just you just have to get you just right if you've never done it right yeah so um he says though he was so used to getting beat up that if somebody hit him he would was able to strike back immediately because he would just be upset about it he wouldn't be you know anything like that he said he took up boxing um quote perfecting my natural ability for street combat and was soon cock of the school good for you good for you man he's the cock of the school his dad's the cock of the social workers he's passed his cock down to him that's nice of him right so he then joined an organization

which is uh you know kids need yeah you know you need a group somewhere to be or some something to be a part of something ranger rick well the young black panthers but or that or the young black panthers so either way i, I mean, he joins a group, so that's good. It's nice that he has friends anyway. So he said at the age of 12, he joined the young Black Panthers. And, you know, it's based on the one from the U.S., obviously, but it's of English descent. So it's politer, more polite. You know, there's tea involved.

They say in it. We're angry, but we also would like some tea you know what i mean like we're all angry in it yeah all right we're angry isn't it all right well no pour the tea then i'm not i'm not that angry i mean i'm angry but i still want tea it's yeah you know so if you could uh so he's talking about all of that shit. He talks about how he did that. He said that there was an article done on him, on them, on his group there, on the Observer magazine. And which was a, quote, supplement of the Sunday broad broadsheet. I guess that's the newspaper.

I don't know which fucking one. Who the fuck knows? He said they took a picture of us climbing the wall outside the cathedral. The bit in the text below about the skinheads was spot on. So this is what he says. This was the caption. Quote, the Great Wall of Liverpool surrounds the cathedral and is a conveniently situated training center for young panthers. Getting up to the top is what matters. Going up fast and skillful like a novice commando gives you new confidence, prestige, and sinew.

Qualities that are going to be tested in your next encounter with white skinheads. The inner city district of Liverpool 8 near the cathedral has appalling housing, bad schools, and chronic unemployment. Whites and blacks are trapped together in the same vicious cycle of slumdom so there you go that's the the description of of kind of their group and what's going on yeah so he says so by the time he's 13 he says he's too big to fit through the windows anymore yeah not happening anymore so he got big faster than george did same probably i don't know george 16 when he quit no no he was 16 running the gang he just used to

do that who knows what he yeah so uh he said that at that point he recruited what he called an innocent young boy to take my place called curtis okay. Now Curtis is going to become, Curtis is going to become the, like the richest drug dealer in England. It's later. Yeah. He's going to literally be the, the kingpin of kingpins. He's on like, he's on like their, like Forbes 500 list as far as like wealthy people. Yeah.

We'll talk about him. So he says that, uh, Curtis was reluctant. He said, but quote, I simply forced him through the windows. Just shoved him in like a greased up missile. Just fucking put some butter on him and fucking threw him through a window. Find the jewels, boy. Find it. That's it.

Go get it. Come on. Sniff it out. You can do it. So he said one evening in November of 1974, he picked him up at his mom's house, and they had a stolen Ford Cortina they were driving. I don't even know what that car is. Different model names in England, so who the hell knows. Yeah, I don't either.

Probably one of their shitty. I'm sure it's a smaller one, whatever their smaller cars were at that point. Yeah, they like tiny cars. Yeah, they don't fit anywhere else. They're small fucking roads. So he said to make himself, what the hell does this mean? cars were at that point. Yeah, they like tiny cars. Yeah, they don't fit anywhere else. They're small fucking roads. So, to make, he said, to make himself what the hell does this mean? Quote, to make himself look older

so he didn't get a tug. A tug. Somebody jerked him off on the way there. You gotta look older otherwise they'll molest you around here. What are you, 14? Get that cock out. You look a little young. He said that George wore a black flash mustache

that was in stark contract to his ginger afro. Okay. Okay. He said, quote, Curtis had the face of an angel and was so light-skinned he could pass for white. We'd find a big house in the country, get him to knock on the door

with kind of lost babes in the wood routine, and if someone answered, he'd innocently ask for directions. If nobody was in, he'd come back to the car and give us the green light to go to work. So, wow. He said that one night after Curtis found there was no one in the mansion,

he said, George turned to me and said, Frenchie, get in the house with him. Put the stuff in boxes in the hallway. Open the door. Then I'll come and pick the stuff up. He said he was a bit scared, quote, but George spat on me, hit me in the face and told me, get your fucking arse up there. Open the door and stop making excuses. Attaboy.

That was the nature of our relationship that sounds wonderful he spit on him your fucking arse up there not just a smack a smack you fucking get up there you fucking pussy jesus christ that seems like a lot right i don't know so you become the boss jane you got a spit on him and so he said as curtis and i were creeping up the path he's they heard a little noise he said to make sure no one was home curtis gave the door a loud knock and shouted through the letterbox is anybody in is anybody in he said even at that age he had an incredible nerve unshakable confidence and an ability not to panic whereas on the other hand my nerves were already beginning to jingle.

He said they got a bunch of shit, a portable TV, a radio cassette player, jewelry, silverware, anything that they could like, you know, hot quick basically. He said as they were loading shit into the car, George said you haven't done the kitchen yet. Get in there and see if there's any cash. Is that where people hide cash? In the kitchen? Under the silverware? I have no idea where you hide some people some people put

it in the fridge there is that cold hard freezer i've heard freezer before people putting i guess but he said you haven't done the kitchen get in there so he said they went in back in there him and curtis they opened the door of the kitchen he said and there before us was the biggest fucking monster Rottweiler I'd ever seen god damn it oh he said Curtis flew into the car leaving me to cop a terrible bite on the arse that pretty much marked the end of my burglary career so yeah he's he basically described the beginning of the movie The Ref. George is chain smoking there, whatever his name was, at the bar while Dennis Leary is getting bit in the ass by a Rottweiler. What was it?

I forget his name. I think it was George. No. It was like Benny or Vinny or some shit like that because he was screaming at him on the phone, right? Yeah, maybe it was. Yeah, he was. Why did I think it was George? Someone's fucking name is George. I don't know.

Either way. That was the dad's name, wasn't it? I don't remember. He was yelling at him all the time on the phone. Yeah, he was. Why did I think it was George? Someone's fucking name was George. I don't know. Either way. Well, that was the dad's name, wasn't it? I don't remember. He was yelling at him all the time on the phone. He kept calling the bar. Murray. Murray. Murray. Murray, you fucking piece of shit. It came out and channeled it. Murray, you fucking piece of shit. What are you doing right now? You fucking drinking right now?

No, no. I'm not doing nothing. I'm not drinking. I'm not doing nothing. What do you mean? I'm waiting for you. I'm not drinking. No, not doing nothing. I'm not drinking. I'm not doing nothing. What do you mean? I'm waiting for you. Yeah, I'm over here waiting for you. I'm doing nothing. Where are you at? I'm waiting for you just like you said. Murray, you fucking piece of shit.

Murray, you fucking. I love that. Hi, can I speak to Murray, please? Hello? Drunk piece of shit. Murray, you fucking drunk piece of shit. What the fuck are you doing? Yeah, drunk piece of shit said at the end of the bar.

And he describes him. Oh, yeah, we got one of those oh yeah he's right here hey murray it's for you you murray he asked is there a drunk piece of shit motherfucking blah blah blah and murray goes that's for me that's my name that's me down here named murray is there one of those down there okay that was very funny i love the ref so it's a great movie it really is now curtis as he describes it stuck with it and went on to bigger and better things he said that this must have given him good you know good legs under him because he went on to become the richest most successful criminal in british history worth by some newspaper estimates 250 million pounds so probably 800 million pounds well well yeah the way do you hear what's going on with this guy so they said

he became the most prolific drug trafficker in britain the most wanted man in europe at one point which he was actually uh his nickname was cocky curtis warren and um yeah he did all this type of shit steve made him he what's up steve made him steve made yeah well he threw him through a window greased him up and shoved him through a window shot him in there he said uh that he was he actually this is not from the book this is from other research on curtis here he was interpol's target one at one point holy shit and he was once listed on the sunday times rich list which do you know what the sunday times rich list is i'm gonna imagine it was something that robin leach wrote probably he would jerk off to it i think is what he would do he just jerk oh look at that oh

grease up and imagine that oh isn't it oh all, all right. And then he just, he's old, so he's just trying to dribble on top of the yachts. All right, all right. He'd say over and over again. Dribbles on magazine articles that he wishes this guy would invite him to come see the home. It's so glossy. Why won't he call me back? I'm not good enough, isn't it? So the Sunday Times Rich List is a list of the 1,000 wealthiest people or families, residents of the United Kingdom, ranked by net wealth.

Okay. And he was where? He was on the list. It's updated annually. We'll talk about it here. What do I have on that? The list updated annually, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They've been doing it since 1989.

2015, by the way, was the first time in the history since 1989 that the queen was not among the top 300 most wealthy list. Is that right? She was number one in 1989 when it first came out. Now she's dropped below 300. Holy shit. Yeah, yeah. The queen must be hurting over there. Broke bitch.

Those dresses look pretty old that she's wearing. I'm going to be honest. They look like she pulled them out of the back of her closet. I'm just saying. She might be hanging on to some old shit. So he gets into karate does steven here does the devil the devil likes karate yeah he said after watching his hero bruce lee and enter the dragon how many i've heard so fucking many people say that they got into

martial arts is that anything because of bruce lee like yeah but we're we weren't alive obviously in the 70s when this was going on how i i have friends that that got into it because of him in the 80s in the but like by but in the 70s it was a cultural phenomenon like i mean bruce lee was the biggest fucking thing in the 70s we just can't like we can't quantify it because by the 80s it was over, over, over. He was dead. It was fucking over. I mean, like, he wasn't even, like, old, like, just making movies but being a little slower with the karate.

You know what I mean? He wasn't even doing that. Jackie Chan not doing backflips anymore. Just using ladders all the time. Just get a ladder and put it over his head and go back and forth with it and do that. I can't do those kicks anymore. Just tying people up with ropes and smacking people with hammers. I'm going to do like a ladder thing and I'm going to run up his chest and kick him once.

I'm not going to do the back flip. I'm just going to jump straight down. Otherwise, my hip will be fucked for six months. I can't do it. It's not going to work. So, yeah, he said that that was the thing. He wanted to do karate, but he had no money and do karate classes. You had to have money.

So then he heard of an instructor at the Liverpool shell and karate club that let poor kids train for free. Really? A little program there. Uh, Ronnie Colwell, it was his name and he is like, he is loves Ronnie Colwell.

He calls him, he calls him pops. He called, you know, he said he's like his second father or first colwell he calls him he calls him pops he called you know he said he's like his second father or first father i guess in this case and he uh teach him ty rondo he teaches so he said that he wasn't even 5 10 and uh he wasn't a big guy but he's called him one of the most dangerous people on the planet. He said he became like the father he never had over the next 15 years. He said that Ronnie had trained at a top martial arts academy in Japan and wanted to come back to where he was from, to the inner city, and give something back.

So he did that. He said that Ronnie took him in his office and said, quote, I can see something in you, Stephen, but I'm either going to make you or break you getting it out. It's up to you, witch. Jesus, still that to a child. My sister already did that. He's like, oh, you can't break me.

You're telling me you're tougher than Helen? I don't think so. You got scalding water around here? You got a curtain rod handy? I didn't think so. I'm telling you, Helen's a bad bitch. I think I'm going to be fine, Ron. Let's go i know helen doesn't sound tough but you know what i'm gonna bring helen in here and you deal with her and we'll see who's the tougher one and then i'll take the training from

the roundhouse kicks ron let's go but for him he said this was the first time that anyone had ever said i see anything in you for anything so he was like holy shit and he said he was determined to not fuck that up he'll fuck it up many times but not in karate and martial arts he's really good at that he said he got his yellow belt within a year and then he uh he left school at 15 so he dropped out at 15 so he could sign up for the dole he could sign up for welfare basically that's what he would do because he's a holy shit he's, so he can get, you know, minor. He's not in school. He's alone, whatever.

So he's got to choose between school and government assistance. He wants government assistance and karate. Those are the things he wants. And street crime, as we'll talk about as well, too. Yeah. So he said, though, he was going to tournaments all over the country and he wanted to be able to pay. He had to be able to pay his way to karate tournaments. So that's why he did that.

He said that one day he went to fight and fight the England International Coaches Club team at Crystal Palace in London. He put it this way, quote, the refereeing was bent as fuck. That's really official that way to put it this way, quote, the refereeing was bent as fuck. That's really official that way to put it. Bent as fuck. I don't think they're allowed to say that now, right? Well, bent just means crooked. Bender is a, yeah, yeah. But then someone who is bent.

Right. I don't know what he's saying there he describes the way he uses bent is in a lot of ways is in a way of crooked because he says the cops are bent toward this later so that's another thing so i think it's a context word i think it can mean gay or it can mean crooked depending on what context it is you know maybe i don't know maybe it's like aloha maybe they just use it for everything. You come in, you're a little hungry. You're like, oh, I'm bent.

And he's like, it's about six o'clock. That's my all-in context. He must be hungry. And he's like, no, I want to introduce you to my boyfriend. And you're like, oh, wow, I was making dinner. Sure. Hi, how you doing? It's a real English shalom.

Yeah, it's all it is, man. I think it is. We're not sure. So he said, we scored our points clean, but the markers made out they hadn't seen our world-class jabs and kicks and ripped us off left, right, and center. In desperation, Ronnie turned to his five sons. That was me and the team. That's his five sons that was me and the team that's his five sons the karate team this is when they turn into the bad guys in the karate kid here this is when they this is when johnny steps in and he literally says to them quote we can't win here honorably

so i'm instructing you to forget the rules and attack them full on. Sweep the leg. Take it. Get him a body bag. Johnny, take them out in the next round. Body bag. You follow? Let them have it.

I don't know if this happened. I feel like he might have just seen the karate kid once and then put it in the back of his mind and forgot about it. And then when he thinks about karate as a kid he's like god damn it when that one kid then afterwards and the next time when we caught up to him they went out in the parking lot and then the guy punched a window out and then there's an asian man no wait hold on a minute this isn't right chain link fence somewhere fuck what's going on here somebody running in a shower curtain it was a real weird time things were happening real fast around me i'm not sure so his instructor told them to forget the rules and sweep the leg so there we go um he said we knew what he meant forget about

no contact just knock the other team out full Full stop. At the end of the tournament, we five fighters stood proud and bowed to the other side. On the other side, only two men just about remained upright. The rest ended up in casualty. Needless to say, we got disqualified. Casual? They murdered people. Injured. Injured.

Casualty can mean injuries, too. We marked people that day. We marked them up on that mat that day no casualty is anybody who can't participate anymore for whatever the fuck so the uh he said the club became famous for its toughness and its trophies jesus our bright red track suits emblazoned emblazoned with the toxic lsk or lskc on the back struck fear into the hearts of our opponents. It wasn't long before the news of our infamy got into the newspapers and the magazines. So that's about all the sports we're going to talk about.

There's another thing for about a minute later on. Back to criminal activities, because this is mainly everything here. OK, this shit. He's a champion now. Oh, he's a champion. Yeah, he's a champion yeah he's a champ he'll be a champion later on he'll have a medal it's he's really good so wow um this is a an area of this story i like to call thug life here it is so this is where he decides where to go he said the club is where he met a guy named andrew john and he said that's a guy who's going to be and

it's someone he's going to be very tight with he calls him his brother always and all this type of shit he said they were from the second they met they were brothers siblings and soul mates in like the fight club or in the in the karate club in the karate club yeah in the karate club he said that also quote he was

an incredible martial artist and the only man I've ever truly feared that's saying a lot, it seems like. So he said they were together all the time, hanging out best of friends after that. He said he was eager to move from no contact to full contact, and he puts it this way, quote, this meant that you could whack a geezer out and draw blood. God, I love the way they talk.

When you say whack, unless you mean just whack him, that's a murder. Any other connotation of the word whack means to jerk off in America. It does. It's hilarious. the way they talk when you say whack unless you mean just whack him that's a murder any other connotation of the word whack means to jerk off in america so it's hilarious when you say whack a geezer out that can be whack them out that's kill that's fine but if you said whack a geezer off that would have been terrible so never say that and draw blood drawing blood when you whack a geezer off you're doing it wrong you are aggressively doing it i mean wow either that or some more lube in there fuck man just wore the skin off either that or it gave some softer hands sir good lord he said uh so it was as close to reality as possible

intuitively i knew that's where i would come into my own and become a champion fighter but i still had a long way to go i was six foot three inches tall but still rake thin comes a tall guy here he then says quote one night when i tried to get into a nightclub called the time piece a bully doorman called tommy wall stopped me this is is about some some fucking bully English bouncer. Picture this guy. You can the guy in between the line and the club is called Wall. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah.

Tommy Wall. I'm the wall. Brilliant. Yeah. He's apparently very mean, has a big rep for street fighting. He says later on, quote, he was a giant of a man with a legendary rep as a street fighter. Tommy Wall. he just says you're not 18 isn't it and then it's on and that's what he says to him quote you're not 18

quote my daughter's got a bigger chest than you that's what the wall says to him he then goes he says quote then he gave me a smack and i fell to the floor. I can remember looking up at him from the gutter, knowing that there was nothing I could do as he was a giant of a man. Nevertheless, I felt the rage burning and the evil building up inside me. I swore that one day I would get revenge. That's a very, I can't believe they're allowed to do that. Just smack people that aren't allowed in the club. You're not 18.

You must be a child. Pow. people that aren't allowed in the club. You're not 18. You must be a child. Pow. And then I smack you in the face. I can see if you smack adults and that was drunken adults, but you're a child. Therefore, I can kick you into the gutter. What the hell is that about? Those aren't dress shoes and then smack. Pow.

You're not 18. What? You're a child. Which means I could beat you. That means that was, that's a felony, I think. Oh, it's got to be something. But not if nobody tells. And that's what he figures out here.

He said that he tried to stay on the straight and narrow. He did. He tried to just live on the dole and do his karate. He said, but it's so hard. He said, it's so hard. At one point he said, said quote it wasn't long before the dark side came for me hell yeah in the form of a karate guy from his team here named liam he said they became street robbers together and he said as well as a way of getting money it was an opportunity to practice our kicks and punches on real people. That's nice.

That's good, right? Practice. Practice my kicks and punches on real people. Unsuspecting ones, but people nonetheless. It was kind of like when surgeons practice cutting up dead bodies instead of drawing diagrams. Except those people are fucking dead and they volunteered their body for this service you're just talking about people walking down the street who i don't think went i want to go get punched and kicked tonight all right that sounds good all right let's go out

there they didn't leave the house to get punched and kicked i don't think a bigger difference between the two is one can feel it yeah that's the's the problem. He said that at that time, all the lads in the neighborhood were becoming muggers. You don't expect to hear the word lad and mugger in the same, describing the same people. He's a mugger of a lad. That's not a normal. A lad's like a little kid with like,

you know, the little knickers on. Yeah, lad indicates soft and sweet. Yeah. Mugger. Mugger. Hey, give me all your money. you know the little knickers on yeah lad indicates uh paper boy hat sweet yeah yeah mugger mugger guy hey give me all your money a lad's like hello sell your news the mugger fucking mugs yeah the poor lad you tell the lads to run away there's muggers afoot yeah warn the lads of the muggers get away oh man so they would uh do all of that he said that uh they were all becoming muggers quote it was all the rage that's nice like all the kids were wearing a certain style they're all wearing wearing baggy pants this year last year they were mugging it's all

different things change muggers are the real jordans of england yeah they come in it stays in fashion he said that uh according to police records later that Curtis Warren, separate of him, was purse snatching at this time. This was he had moved on from his own racket to purse snatching. He then said, oh, my goodness, Lord. OK, well, this is this certainly isn't me talking. So let's not let's not quote me on this. This is Stephen French. isn't me talking um so let's not let's not quote me on this this is i want to plug my ears but i can't steven french uh quote liam and i started off by queer bashing oh that's not good simply

waiting near men's toilets and robbing the cottagers who hung around such places for sex so male prostitutes that's his yeah rolling maleitutes. The both of yous are hanging around male bathrooms. So who's the queer? If someone drives by, it all looks the same, right? They would say, hey, how much to you? Because you're hanging out there too. So what are you doing? He said, we knew they wouldn't report it to the police as it was too embarrassing for them.

This taught me the first golden rule of taxing unreported crime is the best crime because there is no punishment yeah so he always says that like you know he's he wasn't like anti-gay people say later on he wasn't anti whoever he was robbing he just wanted money so whoever had money was who he was taking it from didn't matter to him who it was he's not anti anybody he's pro victim he's pretty well he's anti-victim is what he is really yeah he's pro making people a victim right so he said so then they started doing it mugging people three four times a week just fucking plowing through uh this is amazing quote our secret weapon was a nine feet long leather common chair a whip nine foot long

whip what fucking muggers mug with a whip where are you new mexico in 1875 who is mugging someone with a whip that's crazy were you indiana jones indiana jones's young life was much different from his professorial later years. What the fuck is happening? Got into ancient artifacts. Yeah. This is a first. One day he came across a whip, meaning to just mug people, but then he noticed the craftsmanship of the whip, asked a historian about it. Next thing you know, here he is.

about it next thing you know here he is is he do you think he's making any of all of this up and he's just like picking movies from the time and placing himself in them putting a whip in his hand in the middle of the indiana jones right liverpool yeah in the middle of liverpool in the streets in the in the hood in liverpool not in like a you know fucking bazaar market in fucking 1942. What's happening? It's like Family Guy wrote his childhood. That's what it kind of is. Yeah, with like little cutaways. A cutaway to him with a whip on a street.

And you're like, wow, how'd we get here? I'd like to see how Peter set this up. He only used the whip for a little while until he realized he could rip hearts out of chest with his bare fucking hand. They would beat for a couple seconds and you could talk to the person and they would talk back to you. And then you eat monkey brains with an Asian boy. Taylor Swift is soaring high. Her every move captured in the news cycle and devoured by her devoted fans. captured in the news cycle and devoured by her devoted fans.

She's broken billboard records and made Grammys history, not to mention becoming a billionaire in the process. But along the way, Taylor has had to wage war, first by taking on a very powerful, very famous manager, Scooter Braun, and then by going up against the biggest live events company, Ticketmaster. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery's show, Business Wars. We go deep into some of the biggest corporate rivalries of all time. And in our latest season, Taylor Swift

will shake up not only the music business but Hollywood and the NFL. Follow Business Wars wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. So, a nine-foot... This is a crime and sports first, by the way.

314 episodes. We've never, ever had anybody assault anyone else with a nine-foot-long Caminero leather whip. That's never happened before. He said that Liam would sneak up on someone from behind and lash the whip, quote, like a cowboy in a movie. So it wrapped around the legs and pulled the person to the ground. He would yank out from under him like they were a bandit trying to get away in a cowboy movie. What in the shit is going on? He said one night we attacked an Irish brother who wasn't a stranger to hardship or street life

he was a man who had evidently decided that he wasn't going to be robbed by a couple of boys they robbed like a some tough fucking irish guy and he said the fight that ensued eventually became too much for my cohort liam and he soon deserted me leaving me to deal with this raging bull all on my own so quote once it was one-on-one, the Irishman's adrenaline kicked in, as is nature's way, converting him from victim to attacker. The bull rushed me. Time slowed down.

He's always talking about time slowing down. A second became a minute. What was it? A nanosecond became an eon earlier when he was being stabbed. Now a second becomes a minute. He's going to have a harder time finding fucking metaphors later on. He's a time bender. He's a time bender.

As he charged toward me, I assumed my fighting stance and shaped my fist into a ram's head, protruding the knuckles of my index and middle finger so they stood out from the rest uh from the rest like two antlers this uranium tipped apex known as the sikan in japanese became the focal point of all my power and i challenged i channeled all of my inner chi into this deadly spearhead i'm trying to do it right now it's fucking hard fuck are you it's not but he just described a deadly spirit he just he's punching someone this is an a paragraph because he described how to punch someone with a deadly ram's head fist well you're any chance to middle and index oh it's those two like that yeah just so you get a little extra i was trying to do ring and index

yeah it's a very good way to break your finger by the way don't do that yeah if you've done any time boxing you want to hit things as flat as fucking possible box that fucker up yeah you don't want to hit use a big knuckle in the middle you ever hit if you hit the top of a of a fucking head with a side of a knuckle that is a bad time for all um not good So he's talking about this, channeling his inner chi into a deadly spearhead. Like an arrow from a bow, like a bullet from a gun, I fired a straight right punch to meet the oncoming juggernaut. On impact, the blow landed on the point of his jaw, the target area. At the moment that he was accelerating to his optimum speed. Does he see things like miles an hour see see things like the predator i think too like he's got the fucking thing there's like

a little you know gauges and shit it's what is he talking about an immovable object meets an oncoming force and collision occurs yeah okay as my knuckles crashed into his jaw his eyeballs rolled into the back of his head he was unconscious before he hit the ground wow this is what would the first of would eventually become a total of 39 victorious street KOs

as the he counts them as you don't have to be people the fuck alone you started this as the Irish with a whip as the Irishman lay on the ground, I took his watch and wallet, making 17 pounds 50 that night, a good score. In 1977, that bought me a shirt, pants, and a pair of boots. Wow. Not bad.

Not bad. But he's still not convinced that a life of crime is for him, even though he is capable of channeling his inner chi into a deadly spearhead. Which is his fist. He's capable of that. His fist. And he can knock out grown Irishmen. He has decided that maybe not, so he signs up for the Job Creation Program, which I assume

is the British Job Corps. It is. Yeah, that's what that is as an apprentice painter and decorator yep along with liam his fellow whip buddy there so um how by the way he has a lot of balls calling people gay when he's walking around the streets with another man on a whip you know what i'm saying that's pretty fucking gay coming an interior decorator what's the fuck sir that's that's That's what I'm saying. This is a pot call.

You're going to Job Corps? You could choose any job and you chose interior decorator? This is the pot call in the kettle black while punching it. Get it. All right. So he said it wasn't long before the temptation of easy money, though, brought them back to the streets and started robbing the council houses that they were supposed to be decorating. So instead of decorating them, just, you know what?

This, you know, would look better in here without the television. I think it would look much better. I think there's not enough open space. Let's take that jewelry box out of here and see how it looks. What do you say? This place would look a lot nicer with all this shit in the bed of my pickup that would look much better there's cash in the back of the freezer this is terrible decorating so um he's doing all this he said that he decided to get away from liverpool and all of its scallywag temptations which jimmy we've all sat back

from time to time and said this whole thing is a scallywag right now and uh the temptations of this scallywaggery are just a little too much for me and i think it's time to go he's now mixing pirates of the caribbean into this fucking life well yeah i think they mixed it into his honestly probably he is a pirate i mean come on johnny depp didn't have a whip did he he may have i'm half pirate half cowboy ta-da look at me i'm also i also time travel and it's only a matter of time what other movies are we talking about fuck i got a mean one inch punch yeah the old one incher he said that um he got a job as a live-in painter with Grand Metropolitan Hotels in London. So I guess he probably got a free hotel room and he did spot painting.

He says, quote, it was a good screw. That's nice. Well paid and there were lots of opportunities for skiving. Stealing shit, I guess. I'd simply find an empty room in the hotel preferably the penthouse and pretend it needed a new roll of wallpaper or a lick of paint then i'd lock myself in and watch telly all day for fucking off that's what that is i guess yeah you just chill out that sounds wonderful turn the ac down and watch tv kick back order room service there you go he said in the

evenings he worked a second job as a cleaner in a black friar's office block. He would mop 13 floors one after another. And he wanted to get enough money to start a new life back in Liverpool, maybe open a decorating business or something like that. He said his dream was to move out of the ghetto. That's all he wanted, get the fuck out of the ghetto. So he said two months later i returned to liverpool with a thousand pounds in my pocket there you go back in the 70s too he said 16 hours after jumping off the rattler at lime street station my ambitions to start over were in the dust

i was penniless having blown everything i had made playing 70 kaluki what the fuck is that i don't know that is the most english sounding game ever 70 kaluki in an illegal gambling den this isn't even a thing you play with your friends this is like a casino game what the fuck is kaluki it's gotta be it's like the fruity right i don't fucking know is it like the fruity i'm not sure 70 there's probably 70 numbers on a wheel and they spin the goddamn thing you know maybe or maybe it's like blackjack but not maybe you have to get 70 instead of 21 maybe that's what it is we don't fucking know whoever's close it's a lot of cards you know it takes a while it's more of a settle in kind of a game.

I'm not sure. He said, I'd gone in there wearing rows of gold sovereigns on my hand and come out in my slippers. They had even taken my brand new Adidas trainers. He bet his shoes, Jimmy. How do you put your shoes up? How do you do that? What do you win if they win? I get all your shoes now.

When you bet your shoes, that's when you have a gambling problem. Yeah. When you can't even run away from. Yeah. When you can't run away from the people you owe money to, it's gone too far. He said years later he found out that these old card sharks with names such as Lead Belly, I guess that was one of the guy's names, had cheated the naive young mark who had wandered into their lair. Yeah, they worked him. They hustled him.

He said, once again, all of my hopes had come to fuck all, which is a great Britishism there. All of my hopes had come to fuck all. That is wonderful. He said so. He was pretty shit out of luck. He was pissed off. And he decided that this straight life just doesn't pay shit. Yeah. No matter what you do, you get screwed over and you're done. He said underground casino guys ruining you. That's it. He said, quote, I could feel the beast reawakening inside of me. The devil was about to surface, Jimmy. You know it. He said he went straight in town after that loss and tried to mug somebody to make up for it,

which if you're mugging someone who's wearing house slippers, that's pretty funny. You're not even wearing sneakers, and you run away from them. Who cares? They're not going to catch you. That's great. He said that to this point, he said this was the time when he went over to the dark side for good and for real. See, there's always an event that triggers.

He said, quote, the beast had forced his way into the fore and was looking for unsuspecting victim to prey on. I went into Flanagan's Irish bar full of rich Irish punters on their way to the Grand National. Irish bar full of rich Irish punters on their way to the grand national. I joined the ranks of the muggers, prostitutes and pickpockets who had descended on Liverpool to take advantage of the flush racing fans that flocked to Aintree annually. So yeah, it's, there's a big race.

It's like the Kentucky Derby's in town and, uh, there's a lot of rich people from out of town to fucking roll. Basically that's, uh, yeah. Any more time. There's something like that going on in a town

there's going to be oh there's that's ne'er-do-wells looking to take advantage absolutely for sure um he said it was like feeding time at the watering hole lions on the hunt for antelopes he said he stood at the bar and taught until he saw a guy pull out a nice enough wad and he said he waited for this guy to get all shit- faced and then followed him into the bathroom. He said, I gave him a few licks, took his wallet off him and got out of there. I got about 350 pounds, which was enough for me to see to see through. That day in 1980 was the last and only time I would ever be flat broke. It's fucking on.

We'll put it that way. He said after that, all I ever wanted to be was a hard case, to be feared rather than loved. However, I was always generous with my family. When I ate, everyone ate. When I made a packet, I made sure it got whacked out on my family. Gross. Just, I spray it, I give everybody a taste. You know what I mean?

Everybody gets a taste, kids. Come on. He said, you could say that this is the penance I paid to appease my own conscience. So June 1981, he has a son. A son is born. Stephen Jr. You betcha. Of course it is.

He has no money. Of course it is. What is he so proud of? He does now. He's doing it now. He's going to do just fine fine then he talks about 1981 this this this is actually a big historical thing that happened um he claims to be one of the few people that set it the whole thing off and it might be true because it was in his neighborhood if anybody

was to set it off it would be him and his crew basically so june or i'm sorry july 3rd 1981 um here now huge recession in britain big recession here too at that point so i mean it's it's kind of going on all over the place he said nobody had a job just poverty was shit he said that he was trying to settle down with this girl he met he met a chick a month before and uh he had gone to london and he came back and he's got this girlfriend named maria sampson and uh also his son steven had been born there they all come to come back he said he's trying to get work do the right thing and fight the evil inside me but it was just didn't work that's what he said the way he describes it as it was a summer's day in 1981 he said steven was about a month old he was out with his his brother as he calls him andrew john

there the guy the only man he's ever feared he said that they were trying to they would always try to physically outdo each other you know like friends do i can touch that can you jump up and touch shit like that he said that there was a day. They were hanging around on a street near the perimeter of the ghetto, as he says. He said suddenly a police officer my age, thin, naive and wet behind the ears, stepped out from one of two police cars and attempted to physically and verbally abuse us. He told us to move on when there was clearly nowhere else to move on. Now we've seen the wire. He's definitely seen the wire. He's definitely seen the wire. He's like, up against the wall, they're like, knockers.

Fucking knockers, the jump out boys are coming. You got to be aware of that shit. So he says, this all happened. He told us to move on when clearly there was nowhere else to go. He said, quote, Babylonians they were, flexing their muscles. Oh, he's getting deep now. He said another police officer said, quote, monkeys get back to the zoo. Go on, get your asses back to Granby Street,

meaning that we were to get back to the heart of the ghetto and stay there. So he said a lad called Leroy Cooper was with us. Leroy was the most eloquent lad I knew and today is a well-published poet. He verbally slaughtered these busies and they retaliated by resorting to their old stalwarts of, you dirty black bastards, you nasty N-words, get back to Africa. Jesus God. Cop said this shit too? That's what he said. He said cops said this.

And he keeps, there's plenty of things where he keeps saying the cops in this area were openly racist toward him, basically. And they, you know, just said whatever. He said at this, Leroy became incensed. Andrew and I, accompanied by another mate called Ivan Freeman, watched as he rammed the police car with the bicycle he was riding. Well, that's an unfair matchup. I mean, that's not going to do much. He said three policemen came at him and attempted to arrest him. At this point, Andrew gave me the look,

the one that painted a thousand words. We were veteran martial artists in complete control of our bodies and minds, and we were prepared to step into the arena of combat, even if it was against the stormtroopers of Margaret Thatcher's establishment. Leroy cried out, enough is enough. Thus, the torch paper had been lit. An uprising had begun. The rest, as they say, is history.

This turned out to be what's called the toxic toxic riots really and it's a um yeah toxic riots it's a it's a huge thing that goes on for days and days it has a big wikipedia page all about it he maybe kicked it off there he's saying he did kick it off i mean literally with a cop he started fighting cops yeah so he says, as this goes, yeah, enough is enough. He said, though the papers called it the Toxteth riots, what happened next wasn't really a riot. It was a rebellion against oppression and injustice. One of the police cars, a Panda or Rover, I think, was pushed into some roadworks and then down a hill before being set alight. They burned a cop car.

Wow. The three injured officers escaped in the other car. The ferocity of our retaliation swept through the ghetto like a whirlwind. Never had such a force been seen in the UK. Leroy marched through the streets like Spartacus through the villages as the ranks rapidly swelled behind him. Wow. So, yeah, they ended up from the streets.

They're coming in yeah look like uh look like the fucking like the warriors or something here so he said that uh terrified mercyside police were forced to bus in officers from outside the region to put on on the front line the poor bastards never knew what hit them. However, it was not about race. Both black and white joined forces in the battle against oppression and police brutality. So he said everybody got together. Just everyone poor got together. He said, I ripped the stripes from a sergeant's arm, took his helmet, and wore the spoils of victory like a Zulu warrior wearing a British red coat at the Battle of, what is that, Isinwana. So he said he's stunning yeah um then i took

a bin lid as a shield garbage can lid and use it as a shield and broke off a table leg as a weapon the army of people around me followed suit i started to rhythmic rhythmically bang the bin lid on the ground to warn my attackers off. So he's doing Warriors come out and play now. Or Farmer in the Dell. This is his version of it. That's how he's doing it. Soon enough, my soldiers in arms began to do the same, making an unholy racket.

Our aggressors turned heel and fled. I was 21 years old, and for the first time in my life, I felt truly free. I was an all-conquering lion of my tribe. I raised my head up to the blazing sky, let out a primeval roar of victory, and felt a wave of sensation go through me that was better than sex. Better. Better. Better than sex. Fighting off the police and making them run from you is apparently better than sex uh wow 300 holy shit that's what he just described because he saw 300

also this was written in 2007 which is after that came out so he's adding to the list he's like you know what i really like spear and a shield that's it he started he's gonna talk about like never mind i was gonna get into a whole thing about movies because he could really go down a rabbit hole here with movies but gotta continue this because we're in the middle of this crazy story so he said that um he felt better than sex he said nothing i had achieved i have achieved since that moment even comes close to the feeling of power and strength i had that night in 1981. I felt like a Roman gladiator. He's got a lot of similes and metaphors and all sorts of shit.

Who had won his freedom in the arena. However, that was not the end of the battle. Full-scale rioting blew up over the next nine days. It was a battle in which police used CS gas for the first time in mainland Britain. They'd only used it in Ireland before that. The resulting damage amounted to 468 injured police officers, 500 arrests, and at least 70 buildings that were so fucked up they had to be demolished completely.

Unbelievable. It was huge. So the way he puts it, though, quote, Like a phoenix from the fire, i rose from the ashes of the riots a different man the first of many epiphanies it was then that i was reborn the devil officially now officially the devil from this moment on i had won the title off a guy called lloyd johnson okay apparently it's like it's like the king in wrestling you You can win the title. Yeah. If you like the nickname, you got to kill the guy that has it. You got to take it from him.

That's what boxing should be. Really? Why not just be- If you want to be sugar, you got to kill Ray. Just make a little thing. Like in The Sopranos in the beginning, remember they were trying to kill pussy, but not that pussy. They were trying to kill little pussy, not big pussy.

Not our pussy. Not our pussy. So, that's what I mean. Maybe they just need- Maybe there's devil. Maybe you'll be like little devil, or you could be like big devil. You could be like black devil. He could be like this devil.

You could like, you know what I mean? You mix it up a little bit. There could be a lot of devils in the world. You don't have to fight over the title. You could be dust devil. You could be anything. There's a ton of them, man. The red devil, the dust devil.

It's tons of them. Tasmanian, for Christ's sake. Tasmanian devil. There's so many of them, man. The Red Devil, the Dust Devil. It's tons of them. Tasmanian, for Christ's sake. Tasmanian Devil. There's so many devils out there. He said, you could be a devil dog. We don't know. He said, after the smoking runes and tensions of the post-riot landscape, he had abused my sister in the street because he thought she was white. You can't beat Helen like that.

So, a different sister, I think. Oh, okay. helen he'd probably be like that shit kick her fucking ass isn't it yeah how you like that helen yeah all right all right helen take it better hit a harder she could take a punch uh she can give it we know that so um yeah he said that he's gonna fight this guy me and my brother rounded their whole family up and i presented the i presented lloyd the devil johnson to her like a dog at her feet i told him to kiss her feet and apologize so it was from that day on that the name the devil passed from him to me he was evil and dark but now i was the new king of hell that's fascinating man

power determination and control would be my watch words from then on he said at the same time as being christened the devil which i love putting those words christened the devil is hilarious i took it upon myself to adopt a poor orphan child and brought him up as my own that has to be from a movie right he took in a poor orphan child is there a karate movie where like a van damme movie i think where he was taken in and taught karate by some master i think it's a van damme movie i see the blind side yeah maybe i think that was later though she brought him in and taught him to to be a warrior on the field yeah but now this is he's this is more about him than the baby this oh i mean it was more about her too the baby's name was danny

and his dad a wanted man had been forced to flee abroad after the riots later on his dad was killed in tragic circumstances so i vowed to look after his son as if he were my own that's some martial arts movie bullshit i don't know we fought together in a great battle and then you know when the shogun tried to hunt him down finally they killed him in the streets and i vowed to raise him as my own so he could vengeance the father's death of the shogun and the you know that's a that's a fucking kung fu movie dude that's ridiculous kiss converse this is crazy the riots were a big deal too they were a big deal so he put himself right on the he's like he thinks he's british forrest gump i figure at this point and he's like there's a historical thing you could just

photoshop him into it just standing there just like i was there you know isn't it see me just hi i was the one that started Brexit. Drinking Dr. Pepper. Yeah. He was sitting around with like Boris Johnson going, this fucking euro's a bitch, isn't it? We should all be in it together. I mean, why? You know?

Let's be our own. That's it. Done. Let's do it all on our own, eh? Done. So, yeah. Anyway. He said that he was in Jesus Christ,

so he's deciding to be in these groups of things he's going to do. He decides to rob banks for a minute here because, you know, that's where the money is. Take it easy, man. So he said the first one, four or five of us went into a bank armed with pickaxe handles. Just axe handles. I love the weapons over. See, this is so much better. Whips and pickaxe handles and curtain rods and shit.

This is awesome. This is fucking entertaining. I love it. I don't even think we had a gun. We went in masked up and wearing balaclavas and boiler suits, smashed the counters and robbed the money in broad daylight. Game over. Now, during that type of job, I always made sure I had a little trick up my sleeve. Literally, I wore a jogger's kit underneath my overalls, shorts, a vest and a pair of trainers. It was a simple stunt that saved my bacon on many occasions.

That way you can pull all your shit off. You're a different looking guy as we got into the car and pulled away from the scene a police car suddenly appeared behind us uh-oh but it was just a coincidence and they had no idea what they had stumbled into all of a sudden people in the street who had just watched us run out of the bank started making signs to the policemen in the car to try to get their attention they were pointing at us and shouting get them they've just robbed a bank it's the guys dressed like nuns it's now the town shut the fuck up man yeah it's now the town exactly i was gonna say they changed into clown costumes and it's now quick change and now they're bill murray that's what's happened

because it's a bank. So he said the alarms were going and there were five gangsters. And there we were, five gangsters with masks on in a high-performance car. The chorus of have-a-go heroes who wanted to get us nicked had now reached a crescendo. Twenty people were now shouting. They've just robbed a bank. Everybody escaped and we all got about 20,000 pounds in the robbery, 4,000 pounds each. The story of the job was even on the telly, which was always a buzz.

You see it on TV. It described how we had all escaped, how much money we'd nicked, and how daring the raid had been and how close the police had come to catching us. It was a great thing at the time. If you were a firm to appear on TV for something, you'd done great thing at the time if you were a firm uh to appear on tv for something you'd done well yeah if you're a gangster you want to see your work we would all sit down afterwards watch it and have a good laugh and say to each other yeah that's our graft we actually make uh we actually make the news in our graft so yeah now kickboxing he's kickboxing at this point that's going to be his main bread and butter

here well not for money but for sports he said that this is from his book he was first british champion and then won a european title and i know that title coming up here he said quote i was using a technique called visualization to devastating effect what does that mean the first time i came across it was in 1977 when I was listening to an interview with Wimbledon tennis champ Bjorn Borg. He said, before I start the tournament,

I see myself lifting the Wimbledon shield. A lot of athletes do that bullshit, see yourself winning. It's the secret, right? Yeah. I look in my mind and visualize myself being a champion on center court. I was like,

wow, fucking powerful stuff, man. Powerful stuff. Those are his words. He said, I robbed his idea and envisioned becoming the British champion. I fought a guy called Nick North in Manchester for the title and battered him. To this day, he's never forgiven me. Well, it's a tournament.

Later on, I won my European title in Athens against a German guy called Carols. I had also pictured that victory clearly in my mind before making it an actuality. He said, as a Kizuna knight and a member of the Kizuna Brotherhood, I and my fellow knights had been entrusted with the preservation of our master's legacy, and I was fortunate enough to receive my master's samurai sword. Okay. You live in Britain, bro, in a fucking, like, you know what I'm saying? You have a kid and shit.

Worry more about that. So he also said that he was getting into the drug game at this point, too. Why not, right? Fuck it. He said that a guy called Robin came to see him saying that he had a kilo of Coke stolen from a guy, stolen from him, sorry, he didn't have a kilo of Coke, a kilo was stolen from him by a black guy

in our community called Randy. Randy the black guy. That's what we know him as at this point. Which is not a ton of black guys named Randy, which is, Randy's a black guys named randy which is randy's a pretty white guy named randy randy jackson randy moss randy moss is from west virginia though so that explains a lot there but it's it's a lot you say randy you picture i'm how you doing i'm randy randy macho man savage randy travis you picture white guy

fucking hair beard yeah hi randy here at least a mustache something going on i feel like there's a lot of country singers who changed their name from randy to something a little more southern they're like i mean there's a lot there's just too many randys is the problem that's it right there you know you can't be garth nothing you know it's the same thing it's just don't work for me so uh yeah yeah, he said, though, they had him stolen. He said, Andrew and I fought Randy at his mother's house. He and his buddy Andrew went to Randy's mom's house and beat him up there. He said he'd gotten high on his own supply, been too fucked to sell the stolen kilo, and hadn't made much damage to it.

There were still 35 ounces left which is that's about it's like he did a lot it's only a little more than half yeah that's that's you know that's he did plenty that's what i mean 2.2 pounds is a kilo so 35 ounces an ounce is 28 or a pound is 28 ounces so it's not you know yeah there's a lot gone he said 16 isn't it 16 where are we talking no grams in an ounce grams in an ounce is 28 ounces in a pound sorry You know, there's a lot gone. He said. 16, isn't it? 16. What are we talking? No, grams in an ounce. Grams in an ounce is 28.

Pounces in a pound. Sorry. I don't know what I just said there. Said that backwards. So. Conversion. Yeah. I was like, what happened there?

And when you said it, I was like, what did I just say? So he said, we still had 35 ounces left. So we just took it back off of him. Okay. He said the guy, Robin, was so happy when he called with the good news. He said, but yeah, good news is I got it back off of him okay he said the guy robin was so happy when he called with the good news um he said but yeah good news is i got it back for you bad news is i'm keeping half as my payment oh so that's how it works he said the guy said no well look that wasn't what i intended to give you and he said well tough shit that's what i'm taking tell you that's what it costs and he said i was going to give you 10 grand for getting it so i was going to give you, that's what it costs. And he said, I was going to give you 10 grand for getting it. So I was going to give you 10 grand.

Is that worth it? That's worth, that's, yeah. Well, the Coke is worth more, so that's why. But he said, when he said this to me, I nearly fell over. I put my hand over the receiver and said to Andrew, quote, we're keeping half this stuff, and he thinks we're taking too much, but he's prepared to give us 10 grand for it. So he's like, half of that shit is worth more than 10 grand. This shit,

this is a score. They didn't know. They just didn't know how much this shit was worth. He said, only then did the figure start to compute in my brain. 10 grand probably didn't even cover half the amount we had. He said, so,

uh, he said, told his friend, we got to find out what this shit's worth and do it the right way. He said at the time he didn't understand how much money was involved in drugs. He was so concentrated on robbing and kickboxing that he didn't realize that that's a big deal. Gee, wonder what everybody's been doing in America for the last 25 fucking years. He said that he didn't know what the value of cocaine was.

And he said that he was a member of the English of cocaine was um and he said that he was a member of the english karate team he didn't drink or smoke he was an athlete he didn't know anything about about drugs basically he knew street shit but not drugs so um anyway he turns to an old friend of his to value the drugs what's this worth turns it over to old curtis warren oh old butter old butter hips himself over here curtis warren um and he'd just been released from from prison for holding up a security van so that's nice still on that side of the law yeah he said that while he'd been in prison though he became friends with a huge major gangster there so uh he said that uh this guy's name was callum was his last name he said callum was from a dynasty of traditional gangsters who owned a snooker hall

and gym yeah of all your gangsters own snooker halls in the u.s right john gotti was famous for snooker halls i feel like there's a lot of them in here snooker is like a ball game right it's a ball yeah some kind of ball game. It's a heavy ball is all I know. I picture bocce, but I know that's not what it is. That's what I was saying. You know what I mean? I picture bocce.

Yeah. So he said that this guy was invested heavily in drugs and all this sort of shit. So he said Curtis was just starting out then, but he told them that the kilo was worth about a thousand an ounce so altogether you got about 35 grand worth of shit here if you broke it up and sold it yeah so they were like okay so they called their boy back there and they're like listen 10 grand is what you want to give us he said that um tell you what we're going to do from now on we're your unofficial partners okay he said we've got we got your shit back for you uh you wouldn't even

have it at all if it wasn't for us because you couldn't get it on your own so said whatever you're getting for it we're having half we're not looking to do anything bad like kill you but next time you get one we'll come with you as your partners and make sure you don't get robbed so he just muscled in on him and i'm the muscle. I'm part of this. You're paying protection, basically, and the price of I'm your partner. That's the thing. Which, if you're a drug dealer, you should have a muscle half of your organization. Probably a good idea. Yeah.

If you're going to sell weight and cocaine, you've got to have some muscle arm of this whole thing, or you're just going to get robbed constantly. That's all that's going to happen. So that's really stupid. He said that um deep down i think robin was just happy to have two good enforcers on his side who weren't looking to rip him off or do anything bad to him so it's better off this way he said so now word started to spread that they are the new business in town is providing protection for drug dealers

so now he's a reverse omar so he knows where omar's coming from so now he's a reverse Omar. So he knows where Omar's coming from. So now he's going to be a reverse Omar. He said they would help out all the time. Drug dealers would flock to us saying, so-and-so robbed this off me, all these kilos, this person, can you get it back? One of my distributors took five kilos and didn't give me the money. Can you recover the money? Like he became a debt collector almost type of thing, but on the street.

So he said that he started, they started making a shitload of money off of this. They started making a ton of money and then they realized we could make even more money. What if we became more proactive? Like? Like, you know, like Robin's problem. It happened and it involved them and it was existing drugs and all that sort of thing but why not go out there and generate our own business he says why not simply just rob the drug dealers so now he goes why not use extreme violence to make them give us

our drugs and money he goes they're not gonna go snitch on us where the fuck are they gonna go they stole right 10 kilos from me no No one's going to do that. Which is something people figured out long ago. That's why drug dealing is dangerous. More than the cops, more than anything else, it's people try to fucking rob you constantly because you have all the drugs and money. So it's just a thing.

You have all the drugs and money and you can't call anybody for help. That's it. We were just talking about Goodfellas before the show because Paul Sorvino died and we were talking about paul sorvino and the scene when they're zooming in on him when he's eating the sausage and peppers he goes that's what it's about it's the police department for wise guys they protection for people who can't go to the cops so if you had these guys robbing you you'd go to paulie and go these guys are robbing me and paulie would go

don't fucking rob them and they wouldn't rob you. That's how it worked. So anyway, instead he's out here doing this because they need more Italians in England apparently to be the middlemen here. To be the mafia and go, hey, I'll protect you over here a little bit. They just didn't have enough Italians in the mix, I don't think, here to fill out

the whole picture is what I'm talking about. You guys have like two-thirds of it, but you're missing a part. He said, he calls them taxations taking the drug dealers money he said my first taxation was on a heroin dealer called brian wagner from the everton area of liverpool me and my mate marcellus now he's seen pulp fiction he has he actually describes later on how he would get pumped up and he said it was you know you, you get pumped up beforehand, kind of get into a good character. He said it was like it was like John Travolta and Samuel Jackson going up to the door talking about Big Macs and shit. That that wasn't pumping up.

He missed the whole point. The whole point of that was they weren't talking about the murder. They were going to that crazy shit. They were casual, mad casual, just open for men in a hotel room room they do this so often they don't even they're not even nervous about it they're talking about big macs and fucking whoppers so pussy and uh eating pussy and touching feet so he um he said that this was um you know a big deal basically he said that he said that they took him and his friend Marsalis con this guy into thinking that they wanted to purchase 10 kilos from him.

Okay. Which is about 250 grand wholesale. Okay. So the guy, he said, invited them to his mother's house to do the deal. So, uh,

he said he took us right up to his bedroom. This guy has tens of kilos of Coke in his childhood bedroom this is pathetic um he said though we took us up to his bedroom and as though we were going to listen to pop records i i quickly came to realize that the majority of drug dealers weren't very smart guys they put their most valued narcotics in their own house under their own mother's bed how fucking daft is that i would say so yeah he said i sat on his bed while he took out a blue puma sports bag from his wardrobe and laid it on the liverpool fc quilt next to me then he showed us a packet of the gear containing about five kilos i said well that's nice but where's the rest he shrugged his shoulders and said that he couldn't show us the

other five kilos so i pulled a gun on him and pistol whipped him across the mouth. Well, that'll do it. I mean. Did they show up? Try that on the sales floor. Do you have this model in black? Pow. Never mind.

Yeah, you do. I guess you do. He knew that this was no run-of-the-mill sale. He was bleeding, saying he didn't have any more kilos. So I put the gun in his mouth and said, Tell me where it is, prick, or I'll put your brains out all over that Pink Floyd poster on the wall. All over your fucking Blacklight poster, goddammit. Your Led Zeppelin 4 Blacklight poster's gonna get it, bitch.

He said he mumbled some bollocks about no more gear, so I rammed the end of the barrel further into his mouth, smashing his teeth. Meanwhile, his mom was shouting up the stairs, do you want a cup of tea, lads? She didn't know what was going on, and she was getting out the chocolate hobnobs for her visitors. No thanks, Mrs. Wagner, I said politely, pushing the gun further down her son's throat. No thanks, Mrs. Wagner, I said politely, pushing the gun further down her son's throat. Then I said to Wagner, if you don't fucking tell me, I'll do your fucking ma as well as you, you fat cunt. So I'll kill your mother too.

With that, he loosened up a little bit. I've got it stashed close by, he admitted. He said, good lad, I said, putting the gun back in my pocket. Like you see in the old films during a stick-up. He said I marched him out of the house however we as we were leaving his mom spotted the blood from where i just hit him she said what's happened brian are you all right son fair play to the lad he just smiled and replied we're just messing about mom don't worry just wrestling and boxing in that i'm only going to the car to get plasters. I'll be back in a minute. Put the kettle on. I'm going to get Band-Aids.

I'll be ready for tea when I get back. This is the most English drug robbery of all time. There's mums and tea involved. Yeah. How many drug robberies are there of your mum and some tea involved in it? He's now made himself Bullet Tooth Tony in Snatch. That too. Yeah, he's got that he's adding

to his list of films do me a favor he said we all smiled thanked her for her hospitality hospitality hospitality and got into the car to go find the goods however i had one golden rule once i got the drugs i wasn't fucking giving them back. Yeah, obviously. Yeah. These are mine now. Why take them if you're going to give them back? A lot of tax men had come to grief by being too keen to undo their own hard work. They'd steal a load of gear, but then cave into underworld pressure and end up giving it all back. He took it from somebody.

Somebody else comes to him. Hey, that's a friend of mine. Don't do that. No way to run a business. Fuck them all. He said the victims used to send emissaries mates mates of mates and all of that lark to talk to the tax man around uh to talk a tax man around or if that failed to threaten him but me no you could send who you wanted the sas the fucking ss

led by the mujahideen but if you were not you were not fucking getting it back. So he's saying send Al Qaeda and fucking Hitler. Send the SS and Al Qaeda and it's fine. I'm still not giving you shit back. You'd have to snatch it from my cold dead corpse. And this wasn't just for effect or theatricality. This was the God's honest truth. Even if a victim tried to get their gear back, the chances were they wouldn't be able to find me. Nobody knew my address. I had no credit cards, no back cards the cia couldn't trace me now he's

seen good fellas yeah i had no driver's license no this no that i never filed taxes my birth certificate and my birth certificate and my arrest record the only things you'd know around to know i was alive or it's heat leave nothing around you that you can't drop in five years it's the way he put it though sounded like it was henry hill saying that he has seen so many movies and they all influence his story absolutely like it might be true but he's definitely influencing or infusing a bit of it he's like he's making like uh like fusion food is what he's doing like this is my story i did this let's fuse it with goodfellas or pulp fiction or snatch or he's forrest gump he's more of a

cinephile than michael bolton he is that's that's what he's doing he's pulling off like a fucking jack sparrow thing here kieran notley he's pulling it off i love that so much her womb is polluted that's the best line that's fucking hilarious got a bass head wife her womb is polluted that is right out of the movie and hilarious so he decides at this point what do you think he's gonna do jimmy he's 25 what do you think he's gonna to do, Jimmy? He's 25. What do you think he's going to do from here? What's his goal now? Win an Academy Award. You know what? That's close.

And later on, he's going to come. You're not far off. He decides, I'm going back to school. I'm going to college. Yeah. Of course. Still in school. Let's go.

Why not? No, no. School. School. So now he's seen back to school, I feel like. no no school so now he's seen back to school i feel like he brought his dad who was you know now on the run from something else some gray-haired guy who is now i weirdly enough become a a a magnate of large men's clothing and he's decided that he wants to attend school with his son so they're gonna do that pull. Pull off that triple lending. That's it. And his dad became star of the diving team.

It was amazing. So, yeah, back to school. He said he passed his access course. And in September 85, he won a place at Liverpool University to study psychology. He said, in the back of my mind, I had hoped I could give up crime one day and get a decent job. In the meantime, though, he's not. He said, by day I went to lectures and sat in the library with blonde girls from the home countries. At night, the devil would come out to play.

Technically, you could say I was leading a triple life as I was still training hard as a kickboxer. I won my first world title at the Wembley Conference Center on November 25th, 1985. title at the Wembley Conference Center on November 25th, 1985. I was the light middleweight supreme champion of all four million members of the World All Styles Kickboxing Association. Wow. That sounds like a lot. Four million members. He's number one?

Number one. I was the only world champion the university has ever had, and they went cock-a-hoop over it. That's why it took a second, because I'm like, what is cock-a-hoop over it. That's why it took a second, because I'm like, what is cock-a-hoop? That is very British. Putting me in the campus newspapers. Well, if that's cock-a-hoop,

if I've ever heard anything cock-a-hoopy. I guess they go out of control for him? Yeah, they go buck wild, I think that is. Going bug house for him. Bug house, bitches, hell yeah. You gotta get Patreon for that. So November 1986 is the WAKO European Championships. This is the kickboxing championships.

It's the eighth European kickboxing championships hosted by the WAKO. And it was open to amateur men and women based in Europe with each country only allowing one competitor per weight division. So the styles were on offer were full contact and semi-contact. So, yeah, so here we go. Semi-contact is his thing that he does here. They say it differs from full contact in that fighters were won by giving points due to technique, skill, and speed with physical force limited. So you're more going for hitting.

Yeah. Yeah. And more information on semi- never mind so there we go uh there was four weight divisions i guess all together in the uh 79 kilogram division steve french won the gold medal it's fucking wikipedia and everything and everywhere else too. You could find it. But I mean, he beat Andreas Lindemann, I think, from Germany here. And then the bronze medal went to Basilio Basile from Italy. That's a great name. That is awesome. Two pastas? I'm a basil basil.

That's nice to meet you. All right. Hello. So anyway, there we go. He's such a good, apparently, martial artist. He is inducted into the Martial Arts Hall of Fame in 2015 later on. Unbelievable. Well into his horseshit.

He was a British, European, and world champion. English karate team, Tiki Donovan was his coach there, represented England and Great Britain all over the world, won individual and team gold in the home internationals, numerous regional and individual team titles for a 15-year period of competing from 1978 to 1993. That's from an article about him that somebody did. So he says that he opened up a sports management company after that called wear promotions so he said between a business to manage drug dealers to rob and training to do he said he found himself too busy to even go to classes i can't imagine he said finally when it came to his finals he terrorized the lecturer into telling him what the questions on the exam would be

psychological intimidation the art of fighting without fighting he called it so that way he could pass his exams i just cheated i just cheated basically yeah in 1988 i graduated with a 2.2 not bad although i was only one i was the only one out of 40 students to get a full degree i still couldn't get a job so i'm gonna say grace let's say grace he's won world titles he's got a degree he bullied himself into a degree he's got a degree in psychology exactly so he said that he's going to open up a security business supplying doormen to nightclubs so he said then doing that opened up a mass market for him to sell narcotics because yeah that's the perfect guy yeah he's standing at the door literally people handing him things and him

handing it back to them all fucking night long he said uh directly to the consumer he could do it he said he would work front of house and he would control the supply into the clubs yeah he one of these was a bar uh call it was a nightclub called the grafton he said so i i quote forcibly took it off the took the door off the gangsters who had it so yeah it was like a consent yeah basically the mob used to have that in all the bars in new york back in the day in the nightclubs you had the bouncer concession and they would bring their guys in to be the bouncers. And then that, that way they could charge whatever they want to get in.

They could skim, they could sell drugs, they could rob people, they could do whatever the fuck they want. That's part of it. It's a contract. So he said that, the underworld didn't like, whoa,

the underworld didn't like an N word getting uppity. So the threat of war went to DEFCON one to defend the club. I installed the fiercest crew on this planet at maximum force readiness. We had Stephen French, which is him, British, European, and he's giving all their resumes here too, world kickboxing champion. Andrew John of the British karate team. Jack Percival, Commonwealth boxing gold medalist. Brian Schumacher, captain of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, British boxing team,

Sydney Bulwark, an infamous local boxer, but a terrible bore. Do we need to know that awful story? Just a shit guy. He's really boring. I'll dispel a former British army boxing team, a big Victor,

a real heavy street fighter, and Jerry the Gent, the nicest guy you could ever meet, but a vicious cunt once he's ever had one over the night. So, yeah. Get a drink in him, vicious cunt. Wasn't that Jimmy the Gent? Wasn't that his name? Jimmy the Gent.

Yeah. Jimmy Conway. Yeah. And he's a bad fucking guy. Jimmy Burke in real life. Yeah. Jerry the Gent. Jimmy the Gent.

Absolutely. Which, honestly, Jimmy the Gent, absolutely. Which, honestly, there was probably a lot of that going on after Goodfellas of people. Probably, yeah. Yeah, white guys naming themselves something the Gent after that. So next up is a story about robbing a drug dealer. This is fucking harrowing. This is horrifying. Okay. Let's start out. This is fucking harrowing. This is horrifying. Okay.

Let's start out. This is all him. Quote, the T-fal steam iron was red hot as I pressed it hard onto the top of the man's back just below his shoulder. Oh, my God. He jolted violently, but the silver duct tape wrapped around his mouth muffled his screams. I gave him a squeeze of steam from the power jets just for good measure. It's a clothing iron for God's sake. The acrid fumes of burning flesh whooshed around the basement room,

carried by the plumes of vaporized water tinged by the sulfur-like smell of charred hair. There were pools of piss, shit, and blood already on the floor, so it didn't really matter. Yet the victim still refused to give up the location of his drugs or money. Wow. I temporarily removed his gag, and he blabbered that he didn't have the goods. But when I put the gag back on, he begged for mercy using his eyes and hands or his hands

and eyes yeah the man taped to the chair in front of me was one of britain's top drug dealers worth between 30 and 40 million pounds wow he boasted about fearing no man and was responsible for the murder of many mainly his enemies during his underworld reign amongst his peers and rivals alike he was feared like a death camp commandant and revered like a dictator no one had ever dared to touch him me personally i couldn't give two hoots okay so he said 40 minutes earlier my partner marcellus and i had burst in uh to his place a spartan suburban mansion in a commuter town just outside London. Our aim was to tax the drug dealer, that is, to steal his drugs and money.

Mucus now dripped from the man's bloody nose and the detritus of kidnap and torture soiling his Lacoste T-shirt and pastel blue tennis shorts. Wow. This guy writes some violent poetry, this author here. The steel plate of his wife's state of the ironthe-art iron was now smeared with the smudgy brown mess of burned human matter, mostly skin and follicle. Damn it. Gross. That is so fucking gross.

Using the same controlled monotone voice, which I had learned from the psychological warfare manuals now used in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. I whispered into the godfather's ear, tell me where the pound notes are and I'll turn the iron off. You'll never see me again. But he refused to play ball, shaking his head desperately. There followed a few seconds of struggle while Marcellus kicked the chair backwards and wrestled the detainee's shorts and his underwear off oh no within the same motion i thrust the near melted hot tea fowl onto his naked bollocks oh god ramming it home hard for full effect following it through with multiple blasts of steam god damn it all over his dick oh my within two hours i was on my way back to liverpool with

320 000 pounds in the boot of my lexus and 20 kilos of cocaine secreted at a safe house in east london before i left the drug dealer's mansion however uh before i left the drug dealers where am i oh yeah before i left the drug dealer's mansion however, I wasn't able to resist going back for the biggest thrill of all. What was that? As he lay semi-conscious on the floor, coated with a thin film of vomit and bile, I lifted his head and looked into his defeated and terrified eyes. Now I would show him just how bad I really was. I took

my balaclava off. His eyes screamed in horror as he recognized my features. Yes, I told him. You've just been taxed by the devil. I really do exist. Now what the fuck are you going to do about it? Yeah. He said, in my game, revealing your identity

to a victim was a cardinal sin, but I couldn't resist this encore. Showing him who had done this to him, challenging him to seek revenge. Of course, I knew that he never would. I was just testing myself, and with that, I disappeared into the night. Now he's Batman. Also, in the town. Yeah, in every fucking movie.

Remember, I've seen yours, too. it's the same shit you know you may know who we are but we know who you are it's good fellas it's every fucking gangster movie that's ever been put out it's all it is literally everything yeah he's just he's he's not done a single thing original except for it is clever to be uh steam ironing somebody's dick that's that's certainly yeah i don't think I've ever heard of that. No. I mean, if you told this to an author and the author was like taking, you know, putting it into his own words, that was, and he was a little hacky, that's probably how you would do it, I would think, right? Probably, yeah.

You just make it sound as much like familiar things that you think are cool. So here are his rules of taxation. He's got like, you know, instructional sections to here. This is satanic versus rules and politics of taxing. This is called. Yeah. If you are a tax accountant, you might join a professional body such as the Chartered Institute of Taxation. They have rules to keep budding tax men in line, such as client confidentiality.

However, if you're going to become a successful taxman in the drugs world, you must learn the following. Oh, boy. The Code of Conduct for the Stephen French Foundation of Tax Studies. This is funny. That's what he puts in. That's what the guy put in there. Rule one, never tax the same person twice.

Oh, makes sense. If you tax a man once, he can wear it. He may well put it down to experience an occupational hazard, a necessary evil. However, if you tax him a second time, he will get angry and it's human nature that he will seek revenge. When Omar kept robbing Avon Barksdale, he had to come back at him. He had to find him because he was fucking making a fool of him after a while. This is because a frightened man is a dangerous man. And if you tax him twice, he's going to think to himself, every time Frenchie is skint,

he's going to take my money. I don't know what that means. That's very British. You'll force him into taking some action against you. I had the monologue to deal with this. I've taken the goods from you, but you have nothing to fear from me ever again. even if somebody asked me to do something against you in the future i'll have to tell them that i can't do it because we have a history that i've already done something to you i don't want to evoke feelings of fear or panic you just had a iron on a guy's balls and then you told him that

so my jay i don't want you to have any fear or panic here buddy i don't want you to have any fear or panic here, buddy. I don't want you to feel uncomfortable. He looked in his eyes and saw both of those. No shit. So my advice to you is to wear this tax like a shirt that doesn't fit and just get on with your life. Take the L is what he's saying here. He said the psychology behind this rule goes back centuries to Machiavelli. He said that men would often put up with great tragedies befalling them. Nevertheless, the same men would explode with unpredictable fucking ferocity if you managed to slight them in the smallest possible way and, as a result, would spend the rest of

their lives seeking revenge. This is what my victims would see a second tax as, a slight against their honor, dignity, and self-respect. Makes sense. Rule two, never chase dead money. Dead money is simply cash that is difficult to retrieve. The best tax is when you get the goods first time, often by surprise. But if you learn of a particularly big stash and you go after it and fail, write it off.

Don't bother going back for it because you'll be in a nest of vipers. Remember, it's only your greed that won't allow you to go. Or. Remember, it's only your greed that won't allow you to go. Or, yeah, it's only your greed that won't allow you to go. If it's dead money, it's likely you could die in the process of going back for it. Smart. Three, never give the goods back once you've stolen them. Well, that's the point of that. This seems pretty self-explanatory.

However, after you've taxed someone, 101 reasons to give the stolen goods back might present themselves for instance the gangster you know might also be mates with the victim and he'll come lobbying to get the gear back on behalf of his pal or the victim and his allies might kidnap one of your gang and hold them for ransom until the goods are restored nevertheless no matter what shit comes your way you must must hold firm because them's your wages. So it doesn't matter. Be like Stalin, basically. If they take your son, go, I don't care.

Kill him and fucking hang up the phone. So rule four, never tax someone you know. Yeah, I've been saying this for one minute, and he also heard the second Biggie album here. Instead of the Ten Crack Commandments, he's got the Ten Tax Commandments. He's got the Ten Tax Commandments. He is a media just consumer. Oh, absolutely. I'm not even saying for one minute that you do it deliberately.

Sometimes it might be done by pure accident. For instance, you might not know when you tax someone that the gear is owned by a mystery third person in the background who might turn out to be someone you know. Or you might be giving some duff into the ID of your intended victim, and when you attack the feller, he turns out to be an associate. If so, you have to make amends. Crossing the line on this one can literally lead to murder. Can't rob your friends. Yeah, that's bad. Rule five, never leave physical evidence on the victim.

Well, no shit. Yeah, clearly. Following a nice touch, the difference between jail and a 15,000 pound holiday in St. Lucia can be as minute as a molecule. Don't leave any DNA on the victim. And remember, injuries are the most compelling evidence in court. So that means kill them, but don't hurt them yeah but don't leave any dna there are two other legal factors related to this rule both of which are vital to the tax man police intelligence and police corruption the two being interrelated it's not what the police know it's what they can prove

all villains are aware of this my police intelligence file consists of at least four to five boxes of shit that police claim I've been involved in. Nevertheless, it doesn't fucking matter because none of it can be proven. The important fact is that my actual police record is only a sheet long. So, from four or five boxes of crime, they have only ever managed to boil it down to one sheet's worth of convictions that's because i make it a top priority to never leave physical evidence behind now police intelligence can work for you or against you and this is where the police corruption comes in for 1500 pounds i could find out what sort of investigations were going on in relation to me during my taxing days especially at a one particular policy and station in Liverpool. That's the truth. They used to pay off mob guys, paid off cops all the time just to know what was happening, who was being investigated, when indictments were coming down, all that shit. So here's some other rules here.

Choose your victims carefully. Rule A. Don't prey on a criminal organization that's bigger than yours. In the jungle, you won't see a lion trying to feed on a rhino. Do you get me? As a tax man, you look for an antelope that's come into the wrong part of the jungle or one who's come to the waterhole to feed. If you want to be involved in the nefarious world of drug taxing, you've got to make sure that you can hold your own.

Fair enough. B. Draw up clear lines of demarcation in your business plan it sounds like he's going to run a fucking food truck like this is one day i might be taxing someone the next i'd be doing a legitimate drug deal with some proper dealers but don't chop and change and confuse one with the other get this in your head if you're doing a deal don't do or do a deal don't suddenly think i'm going in your head. If you're doing a deal, don't do a deal. Don't suddenly think I'm going to tax this person because you're getting greedy. People will soon stop doing business with you and your rep will suffer at the hands

of the office politicians. Office gossip, he said, basically. Drug dealers have office gossip. In these kinds of situations, it was useful to have a good checker. A checker was a kind of bodyguard come middleman come referee who made sure that a drug deal went well between two parties who did not know each other well and had yet to build up trust everybody and his brother wanted to sell drugs but you needed a good checker to make sure that you didn't descend into anarchy

um through a c guard your reputation with your life this is law 5 in the 48 laws of power one of my favorite books you've got to build your rep as a tax man with fear and violence and then you've got to defend it what i'm talking about here are the everyday slights made by your co-workers designed to undermine your power everyone will understand what i mean when i say gossip is the devil's radio oh boy don't let anyone say a fucking word jesus d never show fear in front of the lads yeah you gotta look you gotta look the part tough if you look if you crumble on the job the lads will laugh at you they'll say things like go and get the piece of wood out of that skip and strap it to your back get some backbone lad

if you want to get involved with the graft there was a rice mill near the docks and they'd say and get the piece of wood out of that skip and strap it to your back get some backbone lad if you want to get involved with the graft there was a rice mill near the docks and they'd say if your arse is going to go go get a job in the rice mill and hump bags don't sell drugs my fear was always under control but i watched many fall by the wayside by lacking a good pair of town halls okay i don't know what that means. Balls. Oh, got it. A town hall is a ball, apparently. I guess there's a lot of potential people in there, I suppose. So E, the last one, it's not all about race.

That's his last one. The reason why I was always taxing white geezers was because I didn't really know any white people, and this made them practical risk free targets. Sure it also made it easier for me to make them suffer as I didn't trust any white geezers in the first place. I was brought up not to like Johnnies as in John Bull the Englishman. However later in life my opinion changed. So eventually he gets caught for this and he's sent to prison. Somebody turns him in, obviously.

Okay. Your life is never your career in this. It's never that long. You got a shelf life and it's based on if you keep doing it, people are going to hate you. Yeah. Someone's going to turn you in eventually. It's going to come to you. You're going to get pulled over and have a shitload of guns on you and some coke.

He said he went to prison. to you you're gonna get pulled over and and have a shitload of guns on you and some coke he said he went to prison he said i kept my head down and didn't mention that i was a world-class kickboxer and definitely didn't mention i was the devil that's probably for the best i don't kickbox and i got no horns nor tail normal guy he said however some inmates took my low-key demeanor as a sign of weakness um I'm a big athletic man. The claustrophobia of prison soon started to wear me down. My only escape was the visits. One day, my mom came to see me.

Other times, other people came to see him. One particular day, he got a very different kind of visitor that he was not expecting. He thought it was going to be his mom or one of his lads or something like that. And it wasn't. Instead, it was Vince McMahon, the now former CEO and everything else of WWE. And he said. How is it you've come to arrive here? Oh, my God. You don't understand.

I can use a guy like you. I can. I can use... No. No, I understand that I don't do the wrestling anymore. No, I don't... Okay, listen. Listen, pal.

Pal. I'm doing a different thing now, okay? That can happen over there, but you are going to come with me, Pal, pal, I'm doing a different thing now, okay? That can happen over there, but you are going to come with me, put these overalls on. Yeah, there you go. Okay. We're going to do a different type of thing.

It's going to be in my basement. It's just in my basement. It's just me and you. I'm going to round people up, and I'm going to oil them all up, and I'm going to get overalls on them and get their shirts off, and they're just going to grapple for me, and I'm going to call it like an announcer. I'm going to go, Oh God, look at him. Oh God. And then afterwards you both pose for me. And, and then Eiffel tower me after that. Now, you know, I want it, but that's, that's, we'll see how the night goes. We'll see

how the night goes, but at least, at least do that. No, I, Dexter doesn't know anything about this. He's a, doesn't know anything about this. He's in the car sleeping. I told him I was going to get a hamburger, and then I ran down the block and I found your house. Okay, he has no idea. I got to do this quick. Instead, I'm getting a beefcake. I'm getting a beefcake.

Look at you. Oh, God. Oh, God, come with me now. And poof, his head explodes. Rains down 1099s and lawsuits and civil lawsuits overalls and bow ties and sexual harassment lawsuits and everything else so he said that his mom came and said this would be good for you and then he took that as like a horrible thing even my own mother wants me in jail he said oh my god jesus christ but then he said

that um uh he said that uh he got a knock on the door from a cell he got fucked around by a by a guard basically no by a guard a guard fucked him around a little bit and kind of gave him some shit so he talked to a friend of his who was a big-time gangster who then talked to the guard and then the guard kissed his ass from there on wow still goes on in the united states in that one book not even in like new york or somewhere like that in fucking phoenix in the maricopa county fucking jail yeah the sean atwood book that i was reading of him being in in there was saying that there was a group of it was it was uh sammy the bulls kid and a couple other gangsters they said they had their own fucking thing they had

food brought in for them by the guards they could do anything they want their cells didn't close and everybody else's did like shit they could literally do anything they wanted because they paid the fucking guards off so and that happened that was like 2008 sammy's back out i know i know he's back out yeah that's insane this was his son that was running shit in the jail they're doing his thing but it's all about money they you know because if you have the guards too right i think so who knows if you have the guards though you can do anything you want because control everything everyone's terrified of you. The guards can do anything to you. So fuck if you have them on your side.

Anyway, this guard particularly another guard came in and told him that Andrew John had been shot dead in Liverpool. Oh, no. His buddy, Andrew John. And he said he looked at his cellmate and said, that's my brother. And his cellmate said, what? And he said said that's my brother and his cellmate said what and he said that's what's my brother he's been shot so um he was very upset later on his actual brothers or maybe not maybe his friends came to see him and visit him they smuggled in a two ounce piece of weed two ounces that's a lot okay he can't mean two ounces he has to mean like two grams i would think

two ounces is an ounce is a fucking you know it doesn't fit in your hand so gram piece i could see yeah that's a couple of joints that's a fucking that's a that's a log it's half of a quarter pound that's a lot it's the biggest butt i've ever seen yeah so they work for high times he has to mean that well based this, he has to mean it. He said, usually this is a quote. Usually I'd have stuck the weed up my arse to get it past the screws. Obviously, he said. However, that day my head was so up my own arse that I simply put the lump in my hand and walked brazenly past the screw.

He spotted it immediately. What's that? He growled. I told him I fucking need this. You're not taking it off me. My brother's just been killed.. What's that? He growled. I told him I fucking need this. You're not taking it off me. My brother's just been killed and that's that. He looked at me and could see my head was done in. Go on.

He said, you can get through it. You can go through with it just this once. He said he showed me some compassion. I've never forgiven him or I've never not. I've never forgotten him for that kindness. How about that? That's great. He said back in my cell, I cut the toes off a sock to make a black armband in remembrance of Andrew.

But my God, you couldn't do fuck all in there without some shit bag trying to have a go. As soon as I came out of my cell, one of the inmates started sneering and jeering. What the fuck have you got that on your arm for? He said. I grabbed him by the bottom of his jeans and pounded him with my fists before throwing him off the fourth floor landing the bottom oh like it's fucking the ass of his jeans yeah uh luckily the safety net caught him there's nets so people can't kill jump off of those and kill themselves but he had broken his arm the screws came for me but there were no

witnesses then some of the lads said to the sky to the top screw frenchie did what he had to do the other lag the other lad was bang out of order as a result the matter was dropped and nothing more was said i wonder if that's how often that's said in american prisons somebody's been shanked with like a sharpened toothbrush and they're laying there and they go hey you know what i mean jesus christ that lad was bang out of order that's what happens he gets stabbed with a sharpened toothbrush um now he gets out and um he has more busts obviously he reconnects with curtis warren at this point and curtis is arrested and steven's on his own again he's dealing drugs then he's

working collecting debts for cartels and shit like that. Also continues his stealing and robbing and taxing. He gets caught again. This time he gets caught after on a plane with drugs. So he was trying to import that way. And he says, you have to be quite thick skin not to feel embarrassed about being escorted off a plane full of passengers it's the stereotype of the big black criminal being shackled and led away in front of gossiping straight slightly fearful white crowd loving

the drama of it but i had actually continued uh conditioned myself not to care to keep the focus on my next move you can't be worrying about what the man in the street thinks about you well not if you're a criminal no you've got to be thinking about how you're going to get from a to b and most importantly how you're going to avoid incarceration yeah that's it so he was facing 20 years at the time um and uh he ended up getting a lawyer saying uh that i've been sent to you by one of your friends you're going to be going home tonight tonight and he said what are you out of your fucking mind he goes if i'm going home tonight you can have a grand out of the five grand that that they stole from me the cops and he said i didn't know what he had in mind but he refused the thousand dollars he said he

flipped through his legal papers and started reading the statements about this whole thing and he said that uh he said something with this woman, Mona. He said about the pressing engagement with Mona. After I had burned Mona, we had stolen his Mercedes and driven up to Scotland. During that journey, I got stopped by a police car for speeding. I gave them a false name, Peter Perlow, backed up with a matching ID. Apparently, the copper who had stopped me had said in the statement that the man driving me had a distinguishing mark on his forearm.

He'd gotten mixed up. My distinguishing mark is actually on the back of my arm. He said, so the lawyer told him, when you go upstairs to do the ID in front of the copper, say fuck all and just show them the inside of your forearms, because that's what the report says. Don't show them the outside. When they ask you to see the outside of your forearms because that's the report says yeah don't show them the outside when they ask you to see the outside of your arms refuse so he ended up doing that and it got him off the guy couldn't identify him so he ended up not getting in trouble for the shit so bring up

the scar of when he got stabbed when he's blocked his own throat yeah that's exactly what it is it's not on the inside you're a liar fuck yeah Fuck yeah. Now, Curtis Warren, he goes on to say, this is later on in an interview, he says, We are from the same hood, but I was a man to be feared, whereas Curtis was more of a businessman. He came to see me one time and showed me his bank book, and in his bank book he had 80 million quid. And 80 million pounds. 80 million fucking pounds in there, in his bank. Yeah. I said, why are you still doing this?

Can't you make a lifestyle for yourself? Can't you retire? Forever. Yeah. Forever. And he said to me, Stephen, what am I going to do? Go home and watch daytime TV? Sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. I'm a career criminal and I always will be. Oh my God. You know, you don't have to be. He said that he spent basically Warren's been in and out of prison the whole time. He says, Stephen says, I feel sorry for Curtis.

I hope he can have a life when he comes out, because he was in prison at that time. I mean, you feel bad for Curtis for being so dumb, honestly, with all that fucking money. And, you know, Steve, and it's tough. Steve has kids. He's had to deal with his kids and all that. I mean, where are his kids in this? I don't hear about family or him doing anything for his family. He's robbing people in and out of prison.

I mean, you feel bad for Stephen French Jr., don't you? A little bit, yeah. I feel bad for all the Stephen French's, I swear to God. Not nearly as bad, though, as I feel for these Stephen French's. Stephen French, president ando at the signitary in the nashville metropolitan area he went to southeast missouri state university um stephen french some dipshit looking guy on instagram holding a guitar this picture was super douchey or a terrible drug trafficker one or the other step. Stephen French, he's Georgia Tech School of City and Regional Planning College of Design.

He's the professor of city and regional planning at Georgia Tech. Stephen French, he's an author who wrote Three Rivers, Michigan, some book. I don't know. And then finally, Stephen French, an American actor who does a lot of voice work and shit like that. A real-life cinephile. A real-life cinephile. He did a voice on the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. He did some stuff like that.

Maniac, All My Children, The Michael J. Fox Show, Match Game. He worked on the Match Game as the announcer. He's the announcer. The match game with Alec Baldwin. He's the announcer for five seasons. They got five seasons out of that shit? Yeah. Those game shows when they pump that shit out.

1994, a daughter is born and he says it's his an epiphany. Yeah. He cannot be the devil anymore. Yeah. I got to change it up. Can't be the devil with a daughter, I guess. No. That's not how it works there.

So he's like, how could I do that? He said that from a moral point of view, how could I be responsible for misery and deaths and drugs and all this type of shit? He said it was a true epiphany. It's the only way I can describe it. I was filled up with warmth love and happiness a single tear rolled down my left cheek it was kind of a sentimental it was kind of sentimental and fuzzy it was fuzzy wuzzy wasn't there the devil just said fuzzy wuzzy that's amazing a few months before my change of heart uh they lawyer told him, look, you got to change your path here.

You know what I mean? Don't fuck around. But he did. He started doing legitimate shit. He became what he describes as Britain's number one legitimate debt collector. So, I mean, it's all the same whether you're doing it for drugs or for some fucking finance company. They still send the same guys out. Like back in the day, Hunter Thompson in the Hell's Angels book said like a bunch of the Hell's Angels were debt collectors.

That's what they did. Fascinating. They'd go knock on somebody's door, scare the shit out of them, and they'd cough up money for a fucking washer dryer that they still owe on from some appliance store. That's what they did. Give me 40 bucks. I'll see you next month. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'll see you then motherfucker have it ready he said that he had a security company that became very successful had a bunch of lucrative contracts to provide guards to building sites and commercial commercial premises all over the uk he said at

its height the business employed uh ex-bodyguards for the Saudi royal family, ex-servicemen, ex-cops, and all this type of shit. He said he was doing wonderfully. But he also is living a double life, collecting drug money and doing all of that. I guess one of the drug dealers initiated a war against his security business, stealing from places they were protecting. So if they were protecting somewhere, they somewhere they targeted on purpose to fuck him um eventually uh there was a 30 000 pound contract on his life from the way he puts it but um he said that he ends up talking to the guy and working it all out somehow i don't

know how that worked diplomacy so he's diplomacy yeah yeah. He's a politician, this guy. He tries to go straight after that, and he switches to property development in the mid-2000s. Okay. And real estate he's doing, and he's also playing the stock market. What? That's very nice. At this time, he said, at my leisure, this is about 2007, I still do debt recoveries, arbitration, and act as a security consultant. I work when I feel like it. On an average, I earn 250 pounds an hour, more on a good day.

Sometimes I can earn up to 5,000 pounds for a day's work or a half day's work. And yes, the tax man's getting him. I ain't going to make the mistake of stealing his money, the government's money. So in other words, he's doing great. He said, I finally reached the point in my life where I was happy and contended. I was rich, but no longer had anything to do with the underworld. The devil was still inside me, but I had evolved into a totally different person. I finally had my demons under control.

I'm good now, says the devil. I'm good now says the devil i'm good he ends up now calling himself the fighting preacher okay not the devil not the warrior yeah now he's found god and he heads up an anti-gun led an anti-gun group called the peace program really oh yeah um doing all sorts of shit an anti-gun campaigner and all this type of shit uh 2013 he's due to perform on an mma show actually supposed to get into that we're gonna have the devil in here all ready to go for it and then he's arrested and we'll talk about why so they yank him right off the bill and um he's the guy who runs the the mma thing said uh he has been training well in the gym and claimed he would bring a lot of fans with him but to be

honest he's not sold anything like the amount of tickets we would have expected we hope for bigger he's like a comic on a shit show going no seriously book me i'll bring a ton of people and then they three people show up and you're like thanks thanks a lot. So, yeah, he apparently, the drama started, according to this article, at about 1.15 p.m. when officers were called to the Il Palazzo office complex on Water Street. And they were told that a gun had been pulled during a meeting between a group of men. One of the men suffered a head injury and was taken to the hospital for treatment. Now, when the police believed the man involved in this was inside

the Hilton, the area around the hotel in Liverpool, was then cordoned off and they had a giant standoff. Then, though, they realized that wasn't where the guy was, so they switched it to the waterfront where witnesses reported he's arrested.

He's in a suit, suit and tie in a full police showdown, cordoned off and everything being taken away by officers there. They put him in the back of a van and all this type of shit. They then taped off a section of the river behind the museum and recovered a gun from the water. Oh, he threw it. One man said, I came around the corner and people were there watching they had a guy on the floor in a gray suit with a bald head and they were barking out all sorts of orders there was five or six police with their guns out he added they taped off the walk and had police people looking around to see something in the water i asked a woman if it was real or if it was training the woman said uh the woman said it's fucking real it looks like yeah then they said the police

helicopter was here and the next thing i know there was a couple of police cars screaming down here there were quite a lot of people so they gather up everything what they also uh two other men were arrested on suspicion of possession of a firearm. They said that they'd been taken to police stations. Firearm recovered. Blah, blah, blah. Now, what he tells these people is this is what he tells the journalist, Stephen French. Because of the pressure of everything, I became undone and became crazy. So I went, oh, gee, original gangster.

Yeah. He had to explain it to them. Yeah. He said that original gangster. Yeah. He said original gangster. Yeah. He had to explain it to them. He said that original gangster. Yeah. He said original gangster. It was a confrontation with a guy named Paul Smith at a luxury serviced office where their debt collection business was based.

And, uh, the lawyer claimed that the guy that Jesus Christ, he claims that he pulled the weapon on this man because he was in fear of his life. He's the devil and he's a world kickboxing champion. Who does he need a gun for if they don't have a gun? You know what I mean?

Also, he's the one that's been screaming about anti-guns. That's the other thing. Well, then he said, so I went OG, original gangster. Quote, I bought a machete because I was going to behead this man. He said this in the press. In the press, he said this to people. Holy hell. I had enough.

I was going to murder him, and I was going to go to prison happy. Cut his head off, take it to the police, and say, lock me up. Walk up to them with the head. Lock me up. My mind wasn't thinking straight. So he pulled out, they said, a 90-pound Sig Sauer air pistol. It's one of the replicas of air guns. It's not even a real gun that he bought at a store hours earlier.

And the skirmish spilled into the public lobby before this receptionist. And the receptionist said, I decided. Oh, no, he said. I'm sorry. This is Frenchy here. He said, I decided I'm going to kill him and buy a chopper, a machete. Then I buy an air pistol. Now, if I get a real gun, I'd know I'd shoot him and kill him.

So I decided I was going to pistol whip this man who was causing me the problems. Yeah. Yeah. He said, I went to his place of work and I pulled the gun. He thinks it's a real gun. Then I tell him, you're an idiot. It's not even real. Is there a replica written down the side?

Come on. I whack him and I whack him and he runs out of the place my blood is up so I chase him out of the office inside the office no closed circuit television I have chased him outside the office and there is closed circuit television I'm on camera I did one bad thing one really bad thing there was a young girl on reception and I go over to her and I frighten her to get this the closed circuit television to give me the evidence but unfortunately for me i was it was recorded at a separate location then i knew i was going to prison and so snatched he is going to prison because the judge tells him you sir may fuck off three years in prison for this. Oh, my. Yes.

They also recovered the machete from the water as well. So it wasn't even a robbery. It was just bad for the guy. So, yeah, they said that the judge said there's no doubt that in his day, French was a serious criminal. But I think like most criminals, there comes a point where they want to go straight. This is his lawyer. I'm sorry. He's getting old.

Where do old gunslingers go when they retire? What do they do when you live in a world when criminals in their 20s can easily get a hold of a gun? They don't care who Stephen French is. They will pull the trigger and equalize the threat. There are two problems French has faced. One, will other people let you go straight? And two, can you live with the status and power that being a gangster gives you? I think French has struggled with those demons.

Okay. He says, though, he'd like to issue an apology, French would, to the whole of Merseyside or Merseyside or whatever the fuck it is. He said that he feels terrible. Quote, I pistol whipped a punk and I believe I saved my life. I apologize, but, you know, I'm not sorry if that's what you're getting at. Thank God for it. Yeah, thank God for that. So that's what he keeps saying.

He said in 2005, too, he talks about how to be safe around violence. It's called Coast to Safety. C-O-A-s-t coast he says c concentration concentrate on your environment oh observation use your eyes scan the environment those are the same thing those are the same thing yeah uh a anticipation this comes with experience if you're in a club and a drunk stumbles into you once and blames you and it happens again and he again blames you and becomes even more aggressive, if you're there for the third time when he sticks a pipe pot in your face, you failed to anticipate the danger. Right. Yes.

Strike first. Yes. Speed. Damn it. After the drunk fell on you the first time, you did not move speedily out of his vicinity, the situation remained live with potential for violence. There's nothing cowardly in speedily walking away from a potentially high-risk incident because you have anticipated its development. Yes. And T.

Transportation. Timing. Damn it. We'll make our own. Timing. This is a combination of anticipation and speed yeah you have to you have anticipated after the first drunken stumble and round of abuse we get it by now so october 2015 he's out of jail uh-huh and he shows up in the director box which is like

the owner's box at a soccer game yeah for uh liverpool here okay at an anfield he shows up he's sitting next to like players like ex-players and like dignitaries and important people and social media goes crazy because they're like that guy's a gangster you got a criminal up there the fuck are you doing he says quote from the sweat box to director box in nine months only the frenchman can do shit like that that's what he says he's not even french he later added i yeah he later added i attend the match when i want and nobody will stop me wow okay i'm not gonna stand in as well i mean not me you are the devil so i mean that's fine he sat along several uh senior liverpool players at the game and praised the players who he met so he did very well in 2015 he's handed an extra 10 months in

jail for quote perverting the course of his parole and justice so he's having problems he fucking diddled it good he was like fuck it i'm stuffing another finger in there and they're like that's too many it's too much you're making it uncomfortable 10 months sweat box for you sorry 2016 he's out and he's making a film yeah he does want an academy award that's why i laughed when he said that which film is he making supposed to be called frenchie the urban legend yeah it's called fucking the town snatches your fucking back to the future good fellas back to school fucking shaft god damn yeah he did and everybody was a movie star too his mom was a the other guy's a movie star frenchie the urban legend um frenchie the bullshit artist the but while he

he bragged about receiving help from samuel l jackson for this film i don't believe him visiting the con film festival and an interview conducted just days before he's recalled to prison uh he says quote i have a production company the The Americans have spoke to me. They want to buy the rights to the film. I don't want to sell the rights to the film. I want an association with deal. I've got my own production company and if they want to make a movie on me, they've got to allow me to do a production with them. If they don't do that, I'm going to do an independent film.

We're very close now. We've got the scripts. We went to con film festival. The film is going to be called Frenchie, the urban legend. They offered him 200,000 euros. He said no. He said, I refused because I need 30 million pounds to affect social change that I want to affect. So if I can't make 30 million, what's the point?

He wants 30 million for his pocket? Apparently so. Eventually he wants to make that. You've never been in a movie, man. Tom Cruise commands that money. He's going to do it. He's like, if I get all the back end and I put it in the theaters and it's a huge hit, I can do this.

So he said, well, if you let... Sorry. No, no, no. I was going to say, if you let him interject, he'll say, quote, people say to me, who the fuck do you think you are? Which is exactly, that's what I was trying to get to. Who am I? I'm a very, very confident man.

I have great self-belief. I have great self-belief. I can leap over my house, but that doesn't mean I can fucking do it. That's ridiculous. He then bragged that he would become the next Suge Knight, which is not a good thing. Don't do that! Not a good thing.

Bad. Bad, bad, bad. We've done an episode on him. So he is the next Suge Knight, because you've followed in his footsteps in one way, you've got a crime and sports episode anyway. Done. He then said that his latest venture,

Ultimate Enterprises, he said quote we're involved in education training sport and music i've got some rappers oh no i'm going to be like suge knight but i'm not going to exploit my rappers i'm not going to kill them or do anything bad to them well that's pretty good. He said that once he got put back in jail, he said, January, this is my year. You will see me on the TV quite a lot. And he wasn't wrong. Slam. Because in January 2016, he's arrested,

so he was on TV more. He's arrested in relation to a domestic assault. He's really fallen down here. he's he's on the right path where it gets worse too yeah yeah he attacked a business associate with a fucking machete and a fake gun that's very suge night yeah yeah they they're going on here he's arrested he's put in jail because it's a breach of his parole obviously to you know be arrested for all this type of shit july 28th 2016 he's supposed to appear in court as he's arrested again after he's let out for the initial this time for rape oh my rape and threatening to kill a man is what he's arrested for this different people the rape and the threatening to kill um yeah thank goodness

yeah he pleads not guilty he denies assaulting the woman by beating her on two separate occasions and a charge of making threats to kill a man as well he's his lawyer calls it a malicious allegation he says it's false and has been supported and engineered by prosecutors and police well all charges are supported engineered by prosecutors and police. Well, all charges are supported, engineered by prosecutors and police. That's the definition of them. But he's saying it's personal. August 8th, he's in prison. August 8th, 2016, he's in jail awaiting trial for rape because he's, you know, all this shit.

He is attacked by being smashed in the head by a fellow inmate wielding a snooker ball in a sock. They found a snooker ball. They found a snooker ball. See, I knew it was heavy. I knew it was like a croquet ball or something. He was apparently in church. He was in chapel kneeling and praying when he is attacked from behind with it. Hitting the head while he's kneeling and praying.

The source of this, of the information, said he was in a chapel. He was getting blessed with his head bowed they were fucking blessing him someone came up behind him with a snooker ball and a sock and hit him with that thing from behind the attacker then ran straight into the screws and cowered behind them he's in the protection wing now he ran to the guards and was like i didn't kill him fuck. Fuck. Protect me. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. He received medical help but did not need hospital treatment. Frenchie here. Oh. The devil. You've now pissed the devil off.

A 60-year-old devil. Yup. The source said, thankfully, it didn't fully impact with his head. It was a lucky escape. So they said they wouldn't comment but they did say that the level of violence in our prisons is unacceptable safety in our prisons is fundamental for the proper functioning of our justice system and the vital part of our reform plans yada yada yada so october 2016 is the rape trial he says he said he's mad he said this is all lies and

because of these lies are why i was attacked in a prison church, hitting the head with a fucking snooker ball. I missed the birth of my granddaughter and my daughter. You had granddaughter and daughter at the same time, hopefully with different people. Hopefully that's not the same girl. He said, I am many things, but I'm not a rapist or a woman beater. I forgive all those who bear false witness and

testimony against me and i look forward to meeting my new daughter and granddaughter but not in a prison visiting room i remain unbreakable love light and hope all right schmidt wow um yeah he is found not guilty of rape wow uh prosecutors dropped the charges he had branded malicious after that uh he he does actually though uh he is convicted of something here he's convicted of uh making threats to kill a man here they offered no evidence on the rape and assault charges and accepted a guilty plea of making threats to kill so um they said that she was undermined. The prosecutor said that a complaint made by French was investigated and her response was unsatisfactory,

the accuser. He said that together with messages she sent to French undermined her police interview. This is the prosecutor. She, in quite graphic terms, gives a contrary account to that put forward in her interview. The Crown have taken that decision both for the public interest and any evidential reasons not to proceed with trial. So, yeah, he ends up doing that.

He pleads guilty. He pleads guilty and then says, is a latin term meaning under constraint so he adds that in there they said that the woman described French as domineering and overheard an argument between apparently there was a this is another incident here there was a woman and her kid and apparently this kid heard what the woman's son heard what sounded like spitting uh his mom spitting at french and

then he found her lying on the floor in pain so they think that whatever they think he attacked her but then they said he didn't he ends up basically saying to this young man if you get me arrested i'm going to kill everyone in your family okay that's why he's in prison so um that's how it works the um the judge said uh that there is no suggestion you were responsible for violence at this point and this was not necessarily an argument of your making but it does seem to be the case that there is a side of you that can on occasions flare up and that's what happened the judge said that uh you know he said you're going to kill everyone in his family and he said i dare say you don't have to when you make a threat it's effective the judge said and the french interrupted and said that's not what

i said your honor and the judge said that's the offense you have admitted. You, sir, may fuck off 16 weeks in prison. Not years, not months. Weeks. Four months. And a five-year restraining order. So there's that. And there was that. August 2017, he's arguing with another gangster on social media.

Why would you? A guy named Sam Walker in here fighting on Facebook, which you could tell they're a little older if they're fighting on Facebook. Yeah. So they're fighting on Facebook because this is amazing. Apparently the Walker guy took to Facebook after a newspaper revealed police are investigating claims that French may have been assaulted by Jimmy Savile. Oh, what?

The pedophile when he was a kid, okay? When he was a child because he was poor and then Savile used to come and molest poor kids. So apparently they're fighting each other and they're calling each other liars and it's the whole deal. He wasn't assaulted. This is what Walker says. the whole deal wasn't he wasn't assaulted he's this is what walker says quote he meaning french says if the authorities would have believed him 40 years ago then hundreds of victims would have been saved well if you was that concerned about the victims and why didn't you expose him when you wrote your book savile was still alive then that sparked a bunch of messages back and forth

he called french a disgrace french shot back at him he posted an image of french in a teletubbies costume um it was a lot um it was a lot walker encouraged people to share this he got he got a lot of attention out of this it got 1500 views a bunch of likes and yeah so french posted a series of replies including two recordings of his own he's got like 9 000 views on those so people are following this back and forth here um at one point french dismisses this walker guy's allegations as lies and calls him the seagull stalker don't know what the fuck that means um yeah um french wrote why he's doing this my regular friends and followers you're going to have to excuse me but i have to answer this man. I'm sorry if you were bored by all of this, but this guy has lost his mind, so I must address him on my page.

People are worried I'm not okay, so judge for yourself. So they went back and forth for like a long time. They're going back and forth. I haven't taken out the garbage. I've exposed the rubbish. Sam the seagull stalker walker lie after lie he can't stop so i am going to stop therefore no more talk holy shit um he this is how he describes himself he's the fright the fighting preacher and he maintains only god can judge me

oh boy he says i was born into difficult circumstances, born into shit, crawled through shit, had to swim through shit, and I had to wash the shit off me through the blood of Christ. I'm going to heaven. I know I'm going to heaven. Can't get enough of this guy? He's exhausting. You can follow him. I don't know if this is him or not, and I doubt it is actually, but it's probably somebody fucking doing his thing. But there's a guy named Big Bad Frenchie with a Y,

says it's Stephen French, has his picture up there, says he's from Toxteth, all that kind of shit here. And it says, I'm the devil. What are you going to do about it? Gave up my taxing empire to hand in statements. Oh, parody. It says under the thing. Okay, it is a parody is a parody okay so there you go it's a parody account of his so i don't know follow that watch him argue with people on facebook i'm sure i'll get arrested again eventually just wait he's got to yeah something will happen but either way that is steven french a weird one a lot an english

kickboxer and a whole shitload of crime there. He's the fucking devil. He should have just kickboxed only. He was doing great. Wouldn't that have been so much easier? Oh, my God. This is getting ridiculous. So anyway, he didn't, though.

He did this. And if you like that show, tell the world about it. Get on whatever app you're on, whatever platform, and give us five stars. It really does help the show a lot. Helps drive us up the charts. So thank you for doing that, and thank you. Follow us on social media, at Crime and Sports on Twitter and Facebook, or at Small Town

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And trust me, they all cross over over they're all pretty interesting to everybody you're going to get every other week you're going to get two new episodes without fail this week what you're going to get is for crime and sports we are going to talk about michael jordan's scandals all of his scandals because no one's been squeaky cleaner than him in the media yeah i mean no one yeah that guy wore a hitler mustache on television and no one. That guy wore a Hitler mustache on television and no one said a fucking word. He could still sell underwear wearing a Hitler mustache. That says that he's bulletproof.

Well, we'll talk a little bit. There's a little bit of the gambling, a little bit of the conspiracy theory about his dad, a little bit of the quitting basketball, and then a whole lot of his personal life, affairs, paternity suits, and one of the fucking a divorce settlement that could choke an elephant it's wild we'll get into all of that and then we will talk about for

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you can also get that shout out very easily by going to paypal using our email address crime and sports at gmail dot com to make a donation that said jimmy let me hear the names of the greatest fucking people in the world who want to hear all the good stuff. Hit me with them now. This week's executive producers are Jordan Bennett, Liz Vasquez, Michelle Hansen, Britton Edwards, Stuart Allen, Catherine Shelley, Siobhan Mann, and Brandon Earl.

Thank you, guys, from the bottom of these cold black hearts. You're amazing. Other producers this week are Rob Wilson. Happy birthday. Dana Stewart in New Orleans. Peyton Edwards. No, that's Meadows. I've said her name a million times.

Sorry, Peyton. You fucked it all up, Jimmy. Even if you donate all the time, Jimmy will still mess your name up. Even if he's met you in person. The family Earp had a baby. Welcome to the shit show, Amber Melody. Nicole Ann Beaver. Emile Goldager.

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Corporal Carl Kirshner is coming to Milwaukee. Can't wait to see you, Carl. There you go. Looking forward to it. Wear the Green Beret outfit. Reverend Alexander Jacobson, Rabbi Shmuelovich and Shitta Perlman, Janice Hill. All the people are coming out today. Frank the South African Bird Washer, Michaela Bruce. Margaret MacArthur.

Kevin Coffey. Oh, he drove through El Paso and thought of us, the poor bastard. Ah, poor guy. Your mom's chest hair. And Steve Schnell. And we miss Steve in Pittsburgh. Or Philly. God damn it.

I'm pretty upset about it. Shit, we love him, too. Yeah, that sucks, man. Carolyn Averstead. Barbara Lange. Jennifer Stump. Kay with no last name. Tim Schroeder. Daniel Alexander. Connie Kupp. Josh M. Sarah Bader, Nick with no last name, Martin A. Miller, Dinara with no last name, Shelby Drake, Jennifer with no last name, Kyle LaChapelle, Renee Pollard, Taylor Johnson, Susan Chan, Eminem, Jen Gerber, Chloe Selene Webster, Sam Denton, Alex with no last name, Barbara

DeLeon, Joanne Brown, Anthony Blesington, John Wurtz, Cameron Borg, Braxton Jones, Emily Zutterman, Chelsea Anderson, Christian with no last name, Ali Leip, I think, Leip, I don't know, Mark Otto, Danielle Adams, Margaret Schenk, almost called her a skank, I'm sorry, Danielle Adams, Margaret Schenk almost called her a skank, I'm sorry Margaret Amanda Romero Caitlin Price, 1978 Kathy Ann, Christine, no that's Christy Mize, George with no last name

Shane Light, Monica with no last name MCF, Karen Grover Doyle, yeah Grover, Doyle Hudson Linda Wassaloo Wassaloo? Robert Pinnell, Tasha Wood Whitney Ellis, Brandy Archer, Cork with no last name, Hannah Kruger, Sean Rodkey, Carolyn Crampton, Ryan Hesse, Mike Rodgerman, Nicholas Benning,

Courtney Lipparelli, Christopher Daly, Bud Buds, Ed Gaines' mom, Nicholas Willman, Jacob, oh boy, Reicher's, Sheila Wigging, Will Wigton, oh boy, Laura Johnson, Dory with no last name, Stephen Olson, Bill with no last name, Catherine Metzger, Catherine Rachel, Christina Black, nope, that's Katrina, Katrina Black, Kelly Carbell, Austin Bacasa, Greg Pudwell. That's a tough name, Greg. Sarah Patrick, Christy G. Proto Mancini. Oh, boy. Christopher Hemaballs. I don't know what that is. You got this one. Holly with no last name. Mary with no last name.

Frasier Davies. Amanda McKenzie. Gregory Stosich. Carrie Knight. Markle. No, that's Markle. All right. Ryder.

It's probably Mark Ryder. And I put it. The L's right next to the K., that's Markle. All right. Ryder. It's probably Mark Ryder. And I put it. The L's right next to the K. That's what it is. It's Mark Ryder. God damn it. Tyler Vale. Bad typing.

Valey. Curtis Lind. Breanne Young. Melissa with no last name. Corey James. Dane Brummett. Zoe. Zoe Lewis.

Callie Inman. Kyle Azcuda. Azcueta. Oh, boy. Mason K. A couple more shots. He Kyle Azcuda, Mason K. A couple more shots, he would have had that, I think. You were close. Martin Summers, Leonie Turner, J.S., Richie Riggins, Ethan Johnson, Jade Aaron, Amber Anderson, Joe Licciardi, Licciardello, Liccia, Liccia, whatever it is, Josh Nutt, P.J. Hartwig, Fishlips

with no last name, John Shepard, Hope, Luther Jackson, Brendan Moran, Evan Dixon, Lexi Vergara, David Barberis, Kendall Stanley, Nadia Garcia, William Allen, Megan Koenigs, Darren Henricks, Jess Stevenson, Chris, nope, that's Kirk Stevens, Mike Ninmo, Rosanna Bongeremanino, Danny DeBear, Sean McQuire, Eric Stump.

It was not. You're shaking your head like, no. Jeff and Nancy Guest. No name at all. I don't know who that is. They had an email address that I'm not going to read. Gwendolyn Lloyd, Kevin McKell, Michael, I think, Tracy Laird, Tyler Anson, Don Belknap, Cara Glidewell. That's a tough one also, Cara. Maggie Dutt, Valerie Valetta, Valenta, Terry Wade, Eden Centeno, Cindy Harris, Hunter Curley, I think, John Castleman, Abby Banks, Alex Stoernick.

Josh with no last name. Luke Thompson. Lindsay with no last name. Anjali Warner. Adam Chulsky. Jen Rodriguez. Lindsey Dowell. Jory Steinkraus, I believe.

Eric Fortney. Fortney. Chris McGinnis. Robert B. Matt Williams. Probably not. Ryan Mowry. Laura Bailey.

Jackie Gorski. Jessica Bellassai. Bellassai. That's what that is. Tammy Hedrick. Jay Moore probably not that one Allie Montgomery

come on they're coming out of the woodworks the guys the guys dating the bus what's her name the lady that owns

the lake Jeannie he's dating her that's insane Jesus Christ maybe he is that's why he's contributing to us

he has the money to do it Allie Montgomery make your money Jimmy's future ex-wife Annie you don't want that connie hamilton jabbar made me this money long time ago sorry doodle sin susan o'neill laurie ferguson zachary traxler ryan wetzel kralis kralis uh borden tana tana is zelly jesus

stephen merrick spencer merit um mitchell gildea, he's on Twitter and shit, too. He's a terrific guy. Austin Pritchard. Also Matt Pritchard. Ciaran. Ciaran? Ciaran Byrne? Lucius Part One. Princess Mel Delia.

Deja. That's Deja. Brianna Anderson. Andrew Chavez. Cereza Ford. Amanda Howell. Hannah Weiss. Angie with no last name.

Brandon Morris. Jason Brinkman. Hollywood Johnson. Jeremiah Williams. Chris James. Terry Woods. Chris Keller, Colin Ward, Crystal Bussey, Michelle Young, Sarah McMurdo, whoa boy, Jeremy with no last name, Terrell Burris, Sarah Potts, Justin Dibble, Rob's kid probably, Angelo Gilly, Calvin Cotton, Walter Bentley, Nicole with no last name, Ryan Zazeski, Paige Cameron, Gene Schleyer, Stormy Moore, Andrew Taylor, Judith Godwin, Sarah Steiger, John Tummer. Dumber. Shit. So am I. Todd Shepard, Ryan Mountain, Hunter Devine, Jacob Nason, Nisan, Connie Harlan, Shelby Burt kendall johnson diana allen and all of our patrons you

guys are unbelievable thank you so much everybody for all that you do for us we appreciate you hope you uh enjoy your shout outs and your bonus episodes especially thank you so goddamn much for all that you do for us if you'd like to find us further on social media very easy to do that head over to shut up andGiveMeMurder.com There's links to everything right there. You can find us on social media or you can just Google Crime and Sports Podcast hosts. We're the only fucking ones or we better

be either way. That said, thank you for joining us. Hope you enjoyed a weird episode. Beware the devil everybody. Live alert. Be alert. Remember COAST everybody. C-O-A-S-T. And live from the Crime and Sports studios, we will see you next week. Bye. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Crime and Sports early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

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