TRASHFUTURE - *UNLOCKED* Britainology Part 1: A Clump from Dave Courtney

Episode Date: July 21, 2020

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Britainology, in which Milo makes Nate watch something terminally British and then explains it. This week, we're watching a documentary about self-described celebrity gangster Dave Courtney, a crime doorman who thinks he runs Britain.   We'll be releasing more episodes of Britainology on Patreon, so if you want to hear more then check out our bonus content here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture   If you want to watch the original documentary, it's available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqARxpCpZU4   Our theme song for this series is from the 'Visit to Primrose Hill Extended Version' of the 1993 Blur song 'For Tomorrow,' which Nate picked because it was formative in teaching him various aspects of London geography and it's premium old millennial / young gen xer nostalgia bait. You can listen to it on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/track/3mvdN3a4p4SaOnpUBGWan2?si=B8IQ7g1PSfGqFw_P1dSY9Q

Hi everyone. Just a quick heads up. This week's regular episode will be out at midnight UK time on Wednesday morning. And in the interim, we'd like you to enjoy the first episode of a new bonus series that Milo and I are putting together, entitled Britonology. It's a chance for Milo to force me to suffer through something unbelievably British and then explain it to me. And for our premiere episode, we're discussing the phenomenon of the celebrity gangster. And more specifically, a self-described celebrity gangster whose claim to fame is being a doorman, a man named Dave Courtney. Hope you enjoy. Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of Trash Teacher. You're hearing the voice of me,

Milo, but you're probably thinking, what's going on? Well, I'm joined in the studio by Nate. Hello. We are here in the studio now that lockdown has been slightly eased to a tiny degree. And rather than going to the beach at Southend and giving everyone coronavirus or getting coronavirus from everyone else, we've decided to come to the studio and do the next best thing. Yeah. Talk about, well, Milo can explain a little bit more than this, but I would say we're here to talk about, we wanted to find the most absurd, ridiculous British documentary about a particularly dumb British thing or maybe even more granular detail English thing. And we said, if we could find something basically England's hardest cunts or something like that, we'd love to talk about it.

And Milo found it. Yeah. So this is the start of what I'm hoping is going to be a new double bonus series where I basically torture Nate by making him watch the most cursedly British slash specifically English things I can find. And it's a series I'm tentatively calling Britonology because I think it's going to be like, you know, I think there are certain there are certain Americans who have done great work in defining what kinds of American guys there are. But I think there's been less work done on what kinds of British guys there are. And I thought like the best place to start with a kind of British guy is the East End slash South London boomer who thinks he's a gangster. Now, like I think the sort of the eponymous like I don't know.

So for our American listeners, I think the really important thing to grasp here is that there have been a succession of British gangland celebrities like gangsters like the Craze and the Richardson's and Mad Frankie Fraser who are all like actual gangsters in the 60s and murdered a lot of people. But for some reason kind of popular figures and were like friends with like famous actors and stuff. It was like a whole weird vibe. Yeah, you basically could go to like a really fancy club in London in the 60s and meet Twiggy and Reggie Crae for some reason. Like it's just one of these things that happened. But I would also specify that it's important to understand that and correct me if I'm wrong here, but the British native conception

of London South London has always been kind of a backwater and East London is way broker than West London. In fact, so much of East London was damaged in the war that most people who could got out and went to Essex or elsewhere in the home counties. Yeah, exactly. If we're talking if we're talking old school British gangsters, you're talking East London and you're talking South London and generally the East London gangsters and the South London gangsters didn't like each other very much. But to anyone else, they're just indistinguishable. It's the same type of guy. And Dave Courtney was born in Bermondsey, which I cycled through Bermondsey on my way to the studio and I saw a Russian mom with like her six year old in heels and a sundress. So that

gives you some impression of what Bermondsey is like now as opposed to when Dave Courtney was growing up there where apparently it was just hard cunts. Yeah, so today we're going to talk about Dave Courtney, who is my absolute faith. Like if you have a spare afternoon to spend on the internet, go down a Dave Courtney rabbit hole because he is my favorite person who is like he has created an entire career out of pretending he was a gangster. And I have found this documentary that was made in the year 2000 by Channel 5, which is the worst British television channel produced by a company. I don't know if you caught this name called Crimefellas Media. I didn't catch that in the beginning, but there were some amazing details.

Yeah, and it's called Dave Courtney's Underworld. Now, initially, when I saw the title, I thought this was going to be Dave Courtney presenting a documentary about like, oh nuts, because you often Dave Courtney will often be interviewed in documentaries about famous gangsters. So Dave Courtney, but oh yeah, I met him down in a pub. Oh yeah, he was a tough bastard. And then that's kind of the extent of Dave Courtney's expertise. But no, this is a documentary specifically about the underworld of Dave Courtney. So the thing opens. And they've got like it's Dave Courtney doing a book signing of his new book about how he's an hard bastard. And they've got a talking head guy who is I believe a news of the world crime journalist

that's later revealed, who gives the following quote, he says, he's confessed to two murders and he's decided to confess to a further two in the book. So someone like this is not a nice man. Although he is at first sight, a gentleman, you'll never find a more charming man. And at this precise point, there's a smash cut to Dave Courtney, who is wearing a bright lemon suit over a black shirt. The outfits as a whole rabbit hole, we can go down later on in this because, my God, he dresses like the best way I could describe it is if Elton John in the 70s reimagined the world of Al Capone, that's how Dave Courtney dresses in real life, at least in this documentary 20 years ago. Yeah, there are incredible combinations of outfit going on. There's

this hounds tooth, there's Rupert the bear shit. It's absolutely unbelievable. He dresses in a court gesture costume for a court appearance and then punches a cop in the face. Oh, we will get to that. So just for a bit of context, I'm going to read a passage from Dave Courtney's Wikipedia page, which honestly, like Dave Courtney's Wikipedia page is one of the funniest pages on Wikipedia. I don't know who wrote it, but they have an eye for the amusing. So Courtney often focuses on his links with gangsters such as Reggie Cray and Lenny McClane. Although in the case of the former, he was nine years old when Cray was imprisoned. Courtney has claimed to have been shot, stabbed,

had his nose bitten off. I mean, this is a man in full possession of his nose and stated that he has had to kill to stay alive. He makes the claim that his involvement in a car crash on the M20 was an attempt by someone who had a grudge against him to kill him. His house in Plumsted called Camelot Castle is decorated with Union flags and the cross of St. George, a painted depiction of himself as a knight and a large knuckle duster. Oh my fucking god. Like painting the outside of your house to be like a mural tribute to yourself as St. George is the most powerful kind of British guy you can be. We can go down the whole different avenue talking about the murals and the weird decoration at his

very garish and strange house because I think what's important to understand before anything else does he have a house called Camelot Castle? Yes. It also is a huge piece of shit and they make no effort to disguise this in the documentary. It looks like fucking garbage. There are so many scenes of him in his pants in his kitchen. We're all like the cupboard doors are hanging off. Yeah, I just the best way it looks like a relatively large family house that they have painted on the outside and have done no work to on the inside and it just frankly looks like absolute garbage and that's what makes it so amazing is that he's got like a 70s Rolls Royce and all of his suits and stuff but it just there's a weird kind of, I don't know, famously,

I joke about this with Cynthia sometimes, famously people talk about how like the European or particularly the British conceive of the French as being like characterized as imagine a caricature of a like a rooster, a proud rooster, clucking atop a huge pile of shit and I feel like that's not wrong but it's also you can turn that around on a certain type of English guy who's really into a lot of the sort of symbols of how great England is and like, you know, over the top and fucking the the Dunkirk spirit and blah, two World Wars and one World Cup but they live in a fucking shithole and it's amazing. Like it's just so, I don't know, like incongruous and to me as an outsider, of course, I see, I'm just like, am I am I seeing this? Is this normal to you guys?

The same way that I imagine British people must feel the first time they visit America, they go to New York in August thinking it's going to be London temperatures and it's like 95 degrees Fahrenheit outside, everyone's walking around normally and they're like, wait, is this an emergency? He's like, no, no, it just sucks here. And everyone's wearing like an I remember 9-11 t-shirt. Yeah, exactly. And being like, I'm walking here. Oh, fucking walking here. Yeah, so it's an amazing thing, but you find yourself very disoriented watching it if you're not from here because none of it's familiar. It's just like, this was on TV. Do these people know they're being filmed? That's what's astonishing about it is that this whole thing feels like a

mockumentary, but it's completely serious and all of these people are completely real and they have like online presences that you can look up. I think one of the points where that most comes into sharp focus, which we'll get to later, is the two aspiring filmmakers who are trying to make a film about Dave Courtney. Anyway, so we kind of move on with the documentary. There's a bit where he has a photo shoot and he's like in a white suit, like the man from Del Monte on a motorbike holding a gun just with loads of big men standing behind him. This is like a running theme of it. It's just Dave Courtney having photo shoots with men who are much larger than him, as though to prove a point about how many large men he knows.

They are described at one point by one of the amazingly named guys. I think this was Mickey Goldtooth, who refers to Dave as basically knowing or having 500 flat nose geezers working for him. It's just the words that come out of these people's mouths. You're just like, this is a joke, right? This is not meant to be taken seriously. The word geezer is said so many times unironically in this documentary. I've heard the word geezer in that hour and 10 minutes more than I did in my previous life before that point. I had only ever heard the expression because of Ali G segments I'd seen online and the lyrics of, was it Mike Nelson's The Streets? Other than that, I've never heard that word in regular. I take that back actually.

One time I had someone to help with the fucking boiler at our old place and the guy was like, I don't know, I just met the geezer. I mean the gentleman. It's okay, you can call me a geezer, it's all right. A gentleman in question, a geezer of good standing. So then it cuts to some talking head interviews with old friends of Dave Courtney's who all look like people who would sell you meat out of their coat in the back of a pub. One guy who keeps coming up amusingly is called Brendan and his opening gambit is, sometimes someone needs a fucking good hiding and Dave would be the one to give it to him. Yeah, I have a strong, he's filmed in such a way as though they're doing a really shitty job to

do like the IRA fucking blackout silhouette surrounded by green light like he's being filmed. I don't know, like he's stealing the pipes from the inside of a club or something and this is just like, it feels almost like a French film from the 70s, like with that weird like neon kind of, yeah. And then it cuts to an interview with another friend of his Seymour who says, a lot of things he's had to give people a clump for, he's made sure he's justified, he's got morals and I respect him for that. This is another thing that keeps coming up, people keep referring to giving people a clump, which is an expression I've never heard before in my entire life. And my Nan is the cockneest person you will ever meet in your entire life

and does talk like this, but she has never, I've heard thick ear, I've heard a clip around the ear, I've never heard giving someone a clump, but these people, they're on top of it. Phone your Nan and ask her for authenticity, right Milo, that's what you got to do. Exactly. And so then it cuts to Courtney himself who's like talking about, you know, his position, he goes, my main input into the criminal world is I'll provide morale, I'll make the criminal game look like a career. And then he's at his mum's house, and he's dressed entirely in black at this point, he's wearing a black suit, a black shirt, and a black tie. And then his mum is like kind of bustling around the kitchen,

making tea, talking about how he used to be a nightmare as a teenager. Then it suddenly cuts to him outside his mum's house, but he is now in a bright, yellow window pane check jacket, looking like Rupert the bear, smoking a cigar. And he's just like gesturing at this children's play area and he's like, this is where I learned to ride a bike, where I first learned to steal cars, where I first got acquainted with gangs, it's just like a set of swings. It's just basically a garden variety shitty looking estate in South London. Like there's nothing particularly hard about it, it's just,

it just looks like any, any place in this country, like anyone who's followed us online, seen photos of things we've posted in England, like, wow, does every building look like it's about to collapse? Yes. Yes. Yes. It absolutely does. Now, this is when we get to like the first bit of the documentary where I think it really starts like ratcheting up the level of insanity, because the voiceover is like, we decided to talk to one of Dave Courtney's former teachers at school to see what he was like as a tear away teenager. And then it's like Dave going like, yeah, John Edwards, he was the only teacher who ever got fruit at me at school. He was a real cool geezer. And then it cuts to this guy, John Edwards, who one thing looks at least 10 years

younger than Dave Courtney. Like there is no way Dave Courtney is 41 at the time of this filming, and he looks like he's 65. Yeah. He looks outrageously old. And here's, I don't say this lightly. Dave Courtney is the baldest man I've ever seen. Like you think you've seen a bald man. Dave Courtney makes Telly Savalas look like he has a full head of hair. Like he, like he just, he just looks like you've dressed up a big circumcised penis in a suit. He is, he is very, he's like a tanned egg. It's the strangest thing. So anyway, his teacher comes on and it's like, it's really astounding because he just starts, he just starts talking about what it was like at school. And he's like, yes, well, it was like Dave

was a bit of a, was a bit of a difficult teenager. But you know, I have to say this, Dave Courtney is one of the most talented men I've ever met. And then he goes, if it obviously took the criminal path, but you know, he had a talented, he had a talent for acting. It could have been another Bob Hoskins or a very good stand up comedian. It's like, he's just like listing all of the things that Dave Courtney would have been amazing at. It's like very convenient. I mean, I would say that for one, making up stories because they're entertaining definitely seems like the thing that he does a lot of, because as you'll get into as a little quick spoiler here, you come to the realization that if the only thing that the police had to do to

unwind his criminal empire was just to call the pub owners and be like, hey, don't hire that guy. And that was it. Probably doesn't mean he's fucking running the government like some kind of Shadow Moses Island shit. Like, yeah, this is, well, that is an awesome bit that we will get to whether they're like the conspiracy theories about why the police were trying to bring him down. One of Dave Courtney's big things is that he's constantly obsessed with the idea that the police are out to get him. But also he keeps like on record saying like, yeah, I've murdered like six, seven people. It's like, well, that's sort of, that's kind of within the remit of the police, Dave.

So then he starts talking about how he got into crime virus local boxing gym. And there's just like footage of like Dave in a boxing gym watching some sparring go on. And it's just like a fat guy just having the shit beaten out of him. And he's just like smoking a cigar and looking on approvingly. And he starts talking about how the gangsters would come in the boxing gym. And they'd all have like nice cars, nice girlfriends. And he's like, and they were dressed immaculately, which as you can see is something that Dave Courtney really takes forward as an example. So he starts talking about how he started like messing around on the streets, whatever. And he's like, but then when you find a way to make money, that's when it becomes criminal.

Now, here's another interesting story that we get to. So the voiceover is like a, he got his first taste of proper crime when his brother got into a fight in a Chinese restaurant over a dispute about his order. This is just the succulent Chinese meal thing. This is the British version of the succulent Chinese meal. Well, I mean, he winds up getting sentenced to three and a half years in prison for what he describes as a machete knife fight in a Chinese restaurant. His description of it was like, it says that him and his mates went in there because his dad, it's not his dad, his brother had got into this fight with the people who own the Chinese restaurant. And Dave describes the

various Chinese waiters as being armed with swords. And he's like, I had to fight me way out. I mean, I don't know how many buttons you have to push in order to have all the staff of a Chinese restaurant come at you like fucking, you know, chess boxing or something like that was just everyone armed with knives. But I mean, clearly he managed to push those buttons. So you have, or the story is completely made up one or the other. I personally think that if I were to get into the mind palace of Dave Courtney, that it probably has something more to do with him just coming into the restaurant like, are you Chinese bastard? And then fucking some knives got pulled and then he went to prison for that. But instead, he turned it into this thing like it was, I don't

know, Battle Royale or some shit. And he came out on top. And the cops were really impressed, but they still had to arrest him. Yeah. Yeah. Sir, we do, we do salute your effort in dealing with the scourge of Chinese people running takeaways. But unfortunately, we will have to arrest you for hate crime. This is this, that's not Milo talking. That's actual real to real tape footage from the Met police in the 70s. So it goes to prison for three and a half years. And he's like, it was an enlightening, invaluable experience. Actually, I'm doing sort of generic East End voice, but like Dave Courtney's voice is like more annoying than that. It's like hard to the voice I'm doing is a bit more like Lenny McClain. Anyway, so he gets released from prison. And it starts

thinking about how in the early 80s, he starts working as a doorman, and he's offered some less than legal work. And then we cut to Dave talking and he's like, if anyone needs something done, and they don't actually know an ardent nut, they know the doorman down the club. So it's like a job center for people like myself. Incredible. Like, what kind of person do I need? And how should it not be? So basically, he amasses this empire of doorman. And that's basically his his entry into the crime world is just he he runs a network of doorman all up and down the country. And that's it. Yeah. And this is where we first see Mickey Gold tooth and Marcus who are these two doorman who keep coming up who at this point, they don't really say anything. They just sort

of confirmed that they used to work for Dave Courtney. Then we get some more voice over and it's like Courtney was known as an enforcer. And then we cut to him talking about his career as a debt collector, which I think is going on at the same time as his career as a bouncer. Who knows? And he goes, in debt collecting, it's easy to justify the violence used to get the money back because they've nicked it. So whatever I do, I've got me Robin Hood out on and then it cuts to him in like a suit throwing punches at the camera. I appreciate you recreating that dialogue because he was that's filmed him him talking in his Rolls Royce and it's filmed from the far side of it. And so invariably, I could not understand a fucking word he was saying other than Robin Hood.

Yeah, like it's I'm pretty good at deciphering, especially southern English talking. But my god, that guy at times was like, what the fuck is he saying? And there's a huge guy sat in the passenger seat of the car who says nothing the entire time. He's never named in the documentary. He's just like, there cannot be a shot of Dave Courtney without there being a larger man also in I don't know what he's trying to prove with this just like look how many because he is not a large man. It's not at all. But he has he promises you numerous times he can summon 500 flat nose geezers, or he can summon a six foot eight 20 stone glass region with a bulge in his vest. Is that a bulge in your vest or are you pleased to see me? Yeah, he just often boast about the

size of the man that he knows. It's like, it's actually like being at primary school and that thing like, oh, my dad will fucking knock your dad out. Like, yeah, it's basically apparently to work for Dave Courtney, it works the same way as recruiting in European basketball, you just have to be huge. You don't necessarily have to be good at anything, just to be fucking gigantic. The only Chinese man that he likes is that gigantic yelling. So anyway, then it comes back to Courtney is like, I use a psychological approach, I approach him with as much respect and dignity as I can and give him the opportunity to rectify this mistake. And also letting know that by doing that, I'm justifying what I might do to him later. So this is we're beginning to get

an insight into the way Dave works. And then it cuts weirdly, there's like another smash cut and it's like him sat with his mom on the sofa. And he's going, my mom knows if I go and do something that is justified, but I've never had to tell her about cutting people's fingers off or whatever, but she has read it in the books, but she knows I wouldn't do it for nothing. And then his mom just goes, that's right. Yeah, the scenes with him and his mom are bizarre, just utterly bizarre, because he really seems like be hamming it up. And she seems to either suddenly not speak English, or just be completely resigned to the fact like, oh yeah, you know, he's a good boy took care of me. But like that he's boasting about going going overseas

and murdering people and so on and so forth. Yeah. And this is, this is like a weird, we're coming to some boasting now, because the way that he boasts is very interesting. And it's like, not, he like, he doesn't boast in the way that criminals normally like, like if you've watched the Sopranos, right? Like, like Tony Soprano is always like, not confessing to crimes. Tony Soprano is always saying like, Oh, that guy, I don't know, he disappeared. Like it's like that kind of like, whereas Dave Courtney is like, Oh yeah, him I murdered him and he's where he's buried. Like it's like Dave, you're being filmed. So now we got we get some more from Brendan here. Brendan is like, some people are such big, crazy bastards that you can't go and talk to him. You've

got to kill him first. So you're the one getting interviewed by the police and not the one in a box. And then we cut to Courtney, who's talking about using the CCTV at nightclubs to make sure he has an alibi for murdering people. And now we would like go and talk to the bouncer gets it, go out the back way, go murder someone, come back in the back way and then be in the club for hours so you'd have an alibi. And it just doesn't seem like the sort of thing you would say on record if that was actually your alibi for murdering someone. See, I thought I crossed my mind. I was like, damn, have they, is there a statute of limitations on murder in this country? Absolutely is not. Yeah, it's a very odd like, yeah, I don't know. I feel like Dave Courtney is

in need of some criminal advice on how to be a better criminal because it doesn't seem to be going well. Then there's like this weird, uh, hang on, what happens? Yeah. So then he starts talking about his job again. So he's like, like in any job, sometimes you get it wrong. I've kicked in the wrong door, I've thrown furniture through a window, grabbed hold of a bloke on his set and he said, no, this is 37 B. And then him and the huge bloke in the car just like chuckle. We're talking about somebody basically being taped up in the boot of a car, getting ready to get murdered. So he's like, once I had a bloke tied up in the car, gagged in the boot, they drove him up the motorway to me. He thinks he's going to be killed. He's piss himself.

He's shit himself. They get him out, showing to me, wrong geezer. And then he's like, Dave, this is like, this is really dark. They fucking love it. It's amazing. But it's once again, it's it's kind of this like, this doesn't strike me as the kind of behavior of being a serious criminal who doesn't expect to get caught. Like if you were to tell me, oh, yeah, everybody in London knows that everybody in actual London crime knows that Dave Courtney just made this shit all up. But it's entertaining because it takes the heat off actual criminals. I would believe it. Oh, 100%. Because then we get, we get this like stage scene of him, like in a houndstooth jacket, putting on a knuckle duster and knocking on a door. And then they're like, and then they cut

to like, okay, now it's the mid 90s. So this documentary was being made in sort of 2000. So this is kind of relatively recently in the, in the, in the law of the documentary that and then they're talking to Ian Edmondson, who is the news of the world crime reporter that we had at the start of the documentary. And he's going, Dave Courtney was the yellow pages of crime, whatever you needed, he could do a massive debt collected, someone shot or someone wounded very badly as a warning. I didn't, I didn't shoot him, but I did wound him very badly as a warning. There was just a little bit about that. It was a very like partridge or, or if you needed someone, for example, wounded very badly, he could also do that. It wasn't, it didn't just limit to debt

collection and shooting. It was quite versatile. Let me get Brendan again. He's like, he knew a lot of people and a lot of people used him as a connecting point. And then they started talking about how his like bouncing business has now expanded nationally, which is when we get the astounding quote from Mickey Gold tooth, they've had about 500 flat nose geese is working for him national. And then we come to sort of like the crux of this documentary, which is that Reggie Cray. So that's one of the two Cray twin brothers who is in prison in Maidstone calls him to organize the security for the funeral of his brother, Ronnie Cray. Now, by this point, the mid 90s, like the craze aren't a thing. Like they're like, they're still famous, but all the crimes they did

were like 30 years ago. Like they're not still involved in like gangland feuds. Like no one's going to try and murder the craze for some shit that happened 30 years ago. So he's just got to do this career because like a lot of people are going to be there, right? But Dave is like hamming this up. So at this point in the documentary, Dave is dressed in an Indian silk jacket. He's like, he's just like he's stealing shit from Narendra Modi's wardrobe at this point. I do not know what's going on. And then he's like, the craze weren't too popular. Reggie thought maybe someone would try and desecrate the body in that. Like, can you imagine like sending armed men to a funeral to steal the body of a gangster and desecrate it in some manner? But then and then so he starts

describing the funeral. And this is my favorite part where he's like, honestly, he's like the flowers, they were the most beautiful flowers you've ever seen in your life. There were over a quarter of a million people there. The biggest funeral since Winston Churchill. Now, what's great about this is that they're showing you footage of the actual funeral itself because it's like pretty recent. And well, it will not surprise you to know that there were not a quarter of a million people there. There are like a few hundred people maybe on the street and then like, but Dave, he keeps insisting that there were a quarter of a million people there. I don't know where he's getting this figure from. It's like it's like it's like bath party shit. He's like they were a

quarter of a million people there. I mean, very, very, yeah. The footage looks so not impressive at the funeral that if you had told me that that was actually a reenactment for this documentary, I would believe you. Because it just seems kind of cheesy, like it doesn't seem. But basically, he apparently makes a bad impression on the Met police by telling them that actually, you think we don't have guns. We just don't have firearm certificates. Yes. Famously a thing you say to cops like, oh, don't worry. I've got guns. I just do not legal. It's so good that he just like, he just starts going up to the cops and trying to do like, like, oh, well, I could, I could have been a cop. Like he's doing like David Brent shit. He just

says like, I talked to the chief police. I said, my men can do anything a copper can do. And he said, the one thing you haven't got is snipers. We've got firearms cover. And I said, nah, the one thing you've got, I haven't got his firearms certificates. We've got firearms. Don't worry about it. It's like, Dave, you're talking to a policeman. Like, I can't like for our American listeners, I can't stress to you enough how illegal guns are in Britain. Like you can go to prison for 10 years for like just having a gun, like even if you haven't done anything with it. Like, so this is like, again, crimes 101. I feel like Elon Musk and crimes, like we're not doing too well with Dave here. He just like, he just loves confessing to crimes. I don't know what it is

about this man. It's like, his thing is he's incapable of doing a crime and then not telling because like he wants to do it so that he can tell people later. I don't want to necessarily blanket apply this to the whole broad spectrum of British guy that Dave Courtney is similar to. But there is the feeling of a goldfish let loose in a swimming pool that thinks it's a great white shark. Like, you know, a domesticated terrier that thinks it's a pack of wolves. Like it's just this idea that because you got away with boasting this absurd shit, it must be true. Yeah. It's like a domestic terrier that knows some wolves, some very large wolves that it can phone up at any moment.

One point. He had 500 wolves working for him. Exactly. He was paying him in raw meat. Then we come back to... He sold it out with a boot of his car. Yeah. And then he starts like, and then like, what I love about Dave is that he always, when he's in the middle of an absurd lie, still bothers to like relate that absurd lie to reality. So he starts repeating the two, the quarter of a million people figure and he's like, well, there were a quarter of a million people there and the church only seated about 150. So obviously, you've got the question of who do you let in?

Just loving that. Dave Courtney is being presented with a quarter of a million people and he has to choose 150 of the hardest bastards to let into this funeral so that, you know, Ronnie is given an appropriate send off. I mean, it's also hilarious too, because in the grand scheme of things, it comes down to like, they picked you not because you were not because you were some gangland genius, but apparently they're like, I need a crime doorman. And that's what you are. You're the crime doorman. You have that niche cover. Exactly. And so then he starts talking about his like, his logic and how he like chose the team for securing the funeral and he's like, I picked the blokes based on what was going

to scare people. You're not going to throw a stone at the cars or whatever. If you see a 20 stone, six foot eight, Glaswegian with a lump in his pocket, because you know, he's going to rip your arms out of their socks and bash you around the head with them. And just, okay, fine. So once again, Dave Courtney knows large men. This is what you need to remember. He will describe in great like homoerotic detail the size of the men that he knows. There's a weird scene later in the film where he like, he just shows you this just like huge black guy that he knows and just starts like rubbing his belly, but he's like, look at the size of this bastard. It's like very strange. Then there's like an interview. So basically there's this bit where he's in Tenerife,

and he discovers which they've obviously like reshot for the documentary. He's like dressed like Ray Winston in that film sexy beast. So he's just like by the side of the pool, like brick phone with his shirt on like belly out. It's a great scene. And he's like getting the phone call about how the police are shutting down his door empire of bouncers of 500 flat nose geysers. And then we cut to an interview with, it's either Mickey Gold tooth or Marcus, I always forget which one is which, but they're ubiquitously together. And he's going, the police fought a civilian shouldn't have that much power, that much control over such a large number of dormant. Oh yes, the bouncer spets NAS, like Dave Courtney and his private

army that was now a threat to the British government because he just knew too many large men. Like you can't have one man in control of that many fucking massive units. Otherwise, you know, who knows what could happen. We could all be, we could all be speaking cockney at this point. Dave Courtney could be president for life, but the police are nipping it in the bud. And then they cut to Dave and he's like, I'm afraid you cannot beat a system. If I'd carried on, I'd be in prison by now. And so then we get some more voice over and they're like, he decided to remodel himself as Dave Courtney, celebrity gangster. And then we get this like montage where it's like him having more photo shoots with huge men. And there's so many huge

men in this photo shoot that the main effect it has of just making you realize that Dave Courtney is quite small. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like him on a motorcycle, him in the car, guys shooting off blank rounds from pistols, like it's just normal stuff. Yeah. Holding Uzzies, holding, holding pistols. Some of them look like they're absolutely replicas and not actual real guns. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Like just, it's just kind of corny in a lot of ways. Like joining the Bouncer IDF and being issued with your Bouncer Uzi. And so then, and then they cut back to the, to Mickey Goldtooth, who's like, there would have been riots in the streets if we hadn't done the security at the Cray Funeral. And it's like, riots about what? Yes. About the guy being dead. Like,

the reason people were at the funeral, because there were so many insane people in that part of London who thought he was a legend. I mean, yeah, exactly. It was probably more like people rubber-necking than anything else. Like, will you see Britain's artist cunts, you know, walking in and out of the fucking church? That's the only reason to go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like Dave Courtney is effectively just policing people who are just like less successful versions of Dave Courtney. They're all just people who want to pretend that they're a gangster. Try to argue your way in the guest list to Ronnie Cray or Reggie Cray's funeral. Like, I'm sure there are people who tried, but they probably come off, would come off worse than Dave Courtney, which is a feat in the grand

scheme of things. Oh, 100%. And, and then it's in this like, it's in this kind of back half of the documentary that we start getting some more guys. So the first, the first kind of, and the, like, we get so many guys in this documentary who like could only exist in the 90s. And these aren't the gangster guys. These are the media guys who are like obsessed with how the gangsters are going to be the next big thing. So we cut to this guy called, this is November 98 now, we cut to this guy called Piers Hernu, great name already, who, who was interviewed Dave Courtney for front magazine. Again, like that is, that is a magazine that existed for six months in 1998. And he's like, and he goes, and so also the thing he's very mind about Piers Hernu is he looks

exactly like Pete Docherty. He's got like the messy hair thing going on. And he's like, yeah, well, Dave, he's a funny guy. I thought I'm looking for columnists. So I said to Dave, would you mind writing a page every month? And we used to say, he writes whatever he wants, try stopping him. It is such a, like when I was years ago, I watched this documentary about the winner of discontent like 1978 to 79, but it was filmed on BBC, I think BBC four in like 1998. And all of the commercials were like, we took ecstasy. This is what happened. Like, it's a very weird late 90s British vibe. And this documentary absolutely exists in that space. And it's just sort of like, wow, you could be a huge cunt in London and just get away with it.

It's amazing. Yeah. And all those guys have podcasts now. And so then he gets, he gets asked to write a book. And then they interview this guy called Ray Muti from Virgin Publishing, who is like kind of, this guy to me is one of the most interesting people in the documentary, because he's like kind of simultaneously like repulsed and aroused by Dave Courtney. Like every time he's interviewed, he like talks in riddles. And he's like, the public's appetite for celebrity criminals never ceases to amaze me. We were targeting the lads market mostly. So we jumped on that bandwagon and it proved to be very successful for us. But then he just keeps making a point of like,

how much he like personally doesn't approve of Dave Courtney's criminal activity. And then we get some more voiceover and it's like, gangsters were also popular in music. New York musician, Tricky, was so intrigued by Courtney that he tracked him down to make a record with him. This is where I started getting Q and on about this shit. Tricky is not real. Tricky is one of the strange phenomena of the 90s in the sense that I remember hearing a lot about him more so than most other British musicians. And bear in mind, you know, I would have been, I turned 14 in 1998. So I remember this stuff from TV. Like a side note here, when Madonna released the album, I can't really fucking remember what the, I think it was Ray of Light,

that had the song Ray of Light and Frozen and stuff. And was it William Orbit produced it? Like that sort of British rave electronic music thing became really cool in America for a moment. And so bands like the Chemical Brothers, the Prodigy, there are a couple others there that were being really big. Like the orb, things along those lines became popular enough. And I mean, this was back in the day when like record companies were making obscene amounts of money because they just held you hostage. There was no way to get the music besides buying a fucking $16 CD back in the day when like, you know, you can get a gallon of gas for 88 cents.

And they were all run by guys with like mohawks who were wearing like really small sunglasses. Exactly, exactly. Like when you think about the agents looking really cool in the matrix, like that was based on the idea of what was cool, strange time. And so there was a lot, but there's also like kind of a lot of weird runoff from that period that you entered into pop culture stuff in America. When you think about like lock stock and two smoking barrels, the ascendance and then rapid descent of Guy Ritchie films, like Snatch being the absolute pinnacle of that, but obviously like lock stock was a huge one too. I think- Yeah, lock stock is going to come up in this documentary.

Layer cake was another one, which it was a little bit later, but that kind of like, let's say 96 or 97 to like 03-ish, there was a ton of British pop culture stuff. I think layer cake was about 2004, yeah. Yeah, the lot of stuff that was really popular, like weird or like cult popular in America. And that's how like, for example, I was super excited when I could buy the Low Fidelity All Stars album in 1999, because I thought it was the coolest fucking thing ever. Now it sucks. There was one or two good songs on it, but it sucks. But like, there was a weird kind of, I don't know, it was an aesthetic that had an appeal. And this part of the documentary,

you start to realize, okay, those people are all completely insane, but it was, they are absolutely part of that world. And it's a time capsule in the weirdest way. And it's very interesting that you bring up layer cake because like, kind of Dave Courtney is a Guy Ritchie parody. Like he is, he is like a made up character who's like murdering people in the pub and like going around talking about pikes at the top of his voice. Whereas like, he thinks that he's Daniel Craig in layer cake. Like he thinks he's like the mastermind criminal who's like, you know, he's too smart for everyone. And he's getting out because he's decided to become a celebrity gangster. When in fact, he was never a gangster and he's never going to be a

celebrity either. I mean, I would also point out too that as you mentioned, lock stock and two smoking barrels gets mentioned numerous times because Dave Courtney is convinced that Vinnie Jones' character is based on him. When, if you know anything about Vinnie Jones or British football, it's based on Vinnie Jones. It's just Vinnie Jones being Vinnie Jones, except instead of, you know, grabbing Paul Gascoyne's fucking nuts in the middle of the pitch, it's him running around yelling at people basically and being a hard man. Like that's it. It keeps, it keeps coming up. He keeps repeating this claim that, oh, yeah, well, you know, Vinnie, Vinnie Jones, I was based on me and he just keeps saying it to people and people were

going like, oh, really? And it's like, you have no evidence for this. Immediately after watching this, I watched like a 10 minute documentary about basically, literally it was something along the lines of like the hard men of English football. And Vinnie Jones was just doing this like litany of different ways you can injure your opponent when no one's looking and like, all right, it clays in the Achilles tendon. That's a classic one. Like this is that nonstop. Like if you know anything about him, like he got his entry into football while working as a guy who just carries bricks on a construction site. He's completely out of his mind. Like he didn't need Dave Courtney to inspire him. He's just that fucking insane.

Oh, exactly. And so then it cut, so we're still at this bit where he's talking about the music. And so he's describing this, this musician. So you actually remember this musician, Tricky, and he was British. Yeah, yeah, he's British. He moved to America, but like he, because they keep implying he's American by saying like, oh, like New York musician, then I saw the guy talking and he's like almost like putting on an American accent, but he's definitely British. He's British. He's 100% British. Yeah. And once again, in full dad mode, I completely forgot to connect it to Tricky. Tricky's one of the people that like was constantly getting mentioned in that era, but that like never really had any big hits. I would say in a similar vein,

Tricky was like, Tricky and Massive Attack were sort of considered in the same level of coolness, but Massive Attack had way more popular music in America. And they didn't really have that much popular music in America, but the stuff they put out was more popular than anything Tricky ever put out. And I think if you listen to Tricky, like you understand why, because it's not good. Despite his seminal work with Dave Courtney. And so then we get to this fantastic part where Dave is describing it. And so he's like, the music in New York is gangster rap. And the one that's doing it is Tricky. So like the only gangster rapper is truly not true in the sense that gangster rap is absolutely a West Coast phenomenon. Yeah, 100%. What would I know?

What would we know? He's cut up famous naughty men talking about their exploits and put it onto his record. So this is like, he's interviewed several people, including Dave, and he's like spliced bits of things they've said into this record. And he's going, so in a way, I've made a record and it's very good. It's something I'm very proud of. Yeah, if you listen, they play a snippet of it. It's just Dave Courtney talking over like some shitty fucking dark beats from 1999, like exactly what you'd expect it to be. We'll have to see it if we can find it for the outro music for this episode. And so then they're interviewing Tricky in the back of a cab. My notes about this guy is, okay, so this guy can't be real.

Because he's like, he sounds British, but he's sort of doing an American accent, so very weird. And he's like, he's like, Dave is one of the funniest guys I've ever met. Sure, he's done murders, but it all depends on the circumstances. He's done it for survival. He's larger than life. He'd make a great actor. You make him sound like Owen Wilson. That's not what he sounds like. He just sounds like a South London black British guy trying to sound like he's American or like he's like slipped in some American pronunciation, but it just doesn't sound right. It's like me in an off moment on Trash Future when I accidentally say America or something like that. Like, I'm obviously not from here. Move in, but you're Dave Courtney. That's crazy. Wow.

And so then no more is said about the music at all for the rest of the documentary. Then Dave Courtney attends a film premiere in which he has a cameo as quote unquote, a psychotic businessman in a lift. And then they have this weird interview with Dave where he's pissing in a urinal while talking to camera. And he's like, they gave me the shortest part in the film and I'm a lunatic. I don't know why. Anyway, I'll give him my dormant tonight for nothing. And I've invited 85 of me mates. I've turned it into my do instead of his. Nah, it is his do, but most people here, they do think it's mine. And the documentary points out that other media like other camera crews are there filming Dave Courtney as well because all the British networks apparently want to

do celebrity gangsters now. Like this is just this thing. Yeah. So there's this like weird bit where like the channel five documentary people are kind of pissed off with the ITV documentary people because they've both been promised exclusive rights by Dave Courtney, who once again is just like a god of a business man. And we'll put this out that in America, like you absolutely wouldn't have a similar phenomenon because if you wanted to go around filming Shug Knight or something like that, who was the one of the people behind death row records, but like is absolutely, he's constantly, I think he's now in a life sentence for killing somebody, but Shug Knight who like on camera run ran somebody over with his car. Like

you wouldn't be able like at any moment if you got on his nerves, you just wound up getting your ass kicked. Whereas Dave Courtney wants media stuff so badly. If Shug Knight had had some kind of feud between two camera crews who wanted exclusive access, he would have just had his dudes beat the fuck out of both of them. Like Dave Courtney doesn't seem like he's capable of doing that. Well, Dave, Dave Courtney's got a ring the blokes up first and they've got to come from Glasgow. He started just like listing at one point cities in which he knew large men. He's like, I've got fucking Mr. Bristol, Mr. Manchester, fucking Mr. South End. I've got them everywhere. And it's like, I won't chat shit about Dave Courtney in South End because he knows a guy

who like lives on my street. Honestly, like Dave Courtney has better coverage than three mobile. Like he can have someone beaten up on any street in the UK. And so then we cut back to his house and he has this like gigantic mural of himself as King Arthur on the outside. So at various points, he's repainted this house. So I think from the Wikipedia, that's the latest version. At this point, he has himself as King Arthur. Like he's like on a horse. And then there's also like a weird statue of a horse in front of the house as well. And then they talk about him being a celebrity and he leaves his house and he like waves to people who are behind the camera who are never shown in shot. Like as though there are fans

outside his house, which they're like, definitely are not. There is no one waiting outside Dave Courtney's house for an autograph. And it's slowly revealed that he's constantly borrowing money from people he knows from the crime world because he's broke as fuck because none of this pays anything. And his wife, who is a woman he met, who was a dancer in one of his exotic clubs, basically he's like, I sort of wish he was still in crime because then we'd have more money. Yeah, his wife looks like one of the, you know, that that Roger Moore film, Roger Moore Bond film. I can't remember which one it is, but where the guy's henchmen are these two like huge women. I can't remember who have like buzzcuts. His wife looks like the black one of those two.

Looks like skin from the band Skunk and Nancy, which is also from the exact same era of fucking weird British music, except she has a little bit more hair. Her hair is shaved almost entirely, except like she basically has a high and tight. Yeah, she has this she has this like weird like quiff at the front, but like the rest of her hair is literally like a Charlie Brown hair. Like putting your hand on your head and they shave everything that your hand doesn't cover like level of like Joe soldier haircut is what she's got. And they have six kids. Yeah, it's very like, I have to say like Dave Courtney having a black wife was like a real really through me. I was like the prize to me too. Yeah, that was a definite.

And only when I see that many St. George's crosses everywhere, like that guy's racist. Yeah, like he's not. It's weird. Although we'll get to we'll get some shit with the wife. Then there's a scene where he's driving his Rolls Royce and he's like, I wanted to be a retired gangster before I was a gangster. So I got in and out. And now I'm living a lifestyle I wanted. Being a celebrity gangster is a contradiction in terms. And I'm like, yes, indeed. And then so the voiceover is like, his celebrity career isn't paying out as well as he'd hoped. And he's fast running out of money. And then they cut to this really weird bit where there's like an exhibition by these two guys, like a sculptor and a photographer, which include which is like

all of different gangsters. So and they've included Dave Courtney, but they're also people who like actual gangsters like the craze, the Richardson's that kind of thing. And then this sculptor, he is the son of one of the great train robbers. So quick bit of like the great train robbery is like, it sounds like something from fucking Red Dead Redemption, but it's like one of the most famous British heists that has ever happened. And it was the ringleader was this guy, Ronnie Biggs, who would like literally like lived on the run in Brazil for years after it. And then eventually he came home and was put in jail. I think he's dead now. I think they did it in like the early 60s. It's like weird to think of people robbing trains in the 60s. But yeah,

anyway, there was a huge court case like because they accidentally killed someone during the robbery and so like the whole thing. Now the biggest crime paper that happened is when the royal family decides to put a solid gold toilet in one of their residences that's technically open to the public for certain days and steals the solid gold toilet. This absolutely happened. It's such an amazing story. Yeah, you just you love to see it. You really do. One of the weird details about the great train robbery I enjoy is that they were all armed with pickaxe handles. It's so Britain. Because all these criminals are constantly boasting about all fake criminals. They're boasting about how many guns they have. British criminals overwhelmingly do not use guns because

they're so hard to get. And they're just so much trouble to like beating each other up with pickaxe handles. You know what? That's why you got to do martial arts because you got to have a bow staff and be able to fucking do crime with it, right? Exactly. And so then they've got this sculptor and he's like, I'm not here to glorify these people. I'm asking, what's it all about? Why are we turning cons into icons? I feel like you're doing him like an East London voice, but he to me has more of like the David Bedeal register, which conveniently happens to be the only English accent I can do convincingly. But why are we turning cons into icons? Like, he's got that sort of, I'm a twat, I fucking, but I'm an artist. He's got that twang as well.

It's like very, anyway, so he's talking about that. And then he's like, then he's like, you know, Dave Courtney, celebrity gangster. What the fuck does that mean? He's kind of doing that like far out like blur voice from the 90s. Like, you know, like, what the fuck is crazy? It sounds a bit like super hands from peep show. That's kind of the register that we're in. And then he's like, let me get some footage of Dave on a sunbed. And he's like, one of the most famous times I give someone a clump was on a sunbed. And they used that in that lock stock and two smoking barrels where Vinnie Jones give someone a clump on a sunbed. It's never been done before. Just by you, you invented no crime existed in

Britain until you were born. Exactly. All time you did it. Dave Courtney invented punching someone in the face. Anyone, anyone who's ever punched someone in the face should be paying royalties to Dave Courtney. Because that man has perfected the art of punching people in the face, giving him a clump, giving him a fucking good idea, whatever it might be. And so then the voiceover is like, he's beginning to understand the media. He knows his stories and cigars leave people excited. And at this point, he's going into a club and he's wearing a white jacket with black sleeves. And he's doing this interview for channel four about drug dealing. I don't know why later in the documentary, he literally makes clear that he's never done any drug dealing and that he

doesn't approve of it. So I don't know why anyway. And then we cut to this guy called Paul Wilmshurst, who's a documentary maker for channel four, who's like, every time we see him, there seems to be someone with a camera. I think it's the lock stock thing. They're, they're based Vinnie Jones character on him. It seems to me, Dave Courtney is an actor and he's playing the part of Dave Courtney. And he's very good at it because he's been doing it his entire life, which is the kind of sentence you could only say in 1998. I feel like, I feel like the thing that we just don't realize is that the first brick of cocaine arrived in London in 1997. And all these people are just completely, their minds have been blown and like, they've never felt anything like this.

Up until this point, you could just drink seven pints and have a cup of tea to get lifted. And now it's just like, nope. These people have done so much coke, they look like they're wearing clown makeup. It's like Dave Courtney, the thing is, he's an actor, but he's playing Dave Courtney. And who could be better at playing Dave Courtney than Dave Courtney? Got any more like, Gack Charlie. Yeah, man, Jesus, everyone, everyone he encounters that is not, you know, an art man basically comes across like, like there's never a moment in their waking life when they're not on coke. Yeah, they're all like British Wayne's world. Like everyone, all the media people in this are

just like, listen, mate, we're going to make a fucking movie. Yeah. Like a little Austin Powers in there. They are like Austin Powers. They're like, listen, we're going to make a movie about you. Dave and all the birds are going to shank you out of that sand. You know that the crazy thing about it is that in eight or so years, the first Austin Powers will be as separated from the current day as it was from the 1960s. Oh no. So in a way, if you wanted to do 90s Austin Powers, where it's just London media twats, it would 100% have the same nostalgic distance.

Oh damn, that would be an awesome film. And then we come back to the News of the World crime reporter again, who's like, Dave should be in prison. He's a very nasty and very dangerous person. And then, and then they cut back to Dave at this point, well, because they never include the questions that they're obviously asking him. So you have to kind of infer what the question probably was. So like, they're obviously asking questions about like how he feels about all these things that he's done. And this is like, there's kind of a whole section of the documentary on this, which starts approximately here. And he's like, they say I cut someone's finger off, he stole them from me. And he was going to this party down south. And

a lot of me blokes were going to go down here and cut him two ribbons. So I took it in and myself and I cut his little finger off. But if you ask him now, he knows and he'll thank you because he knows what the alternative would have been. Dave Courtney, walking saint, a man of famous restraint. Yeah, I mean, all of it seems so, I guess, downscale in a way. Like it's all just kind of these ridiculous things like I had to go down the club and give somebody a hard look. And that's like, that's why I'm a gangster because I'm really good at staring at people. Like none of it seems, I don't know. Dave Courtney going down the corner shop and flicking some boke in the nutsack and saying, watch yourself around South Croydon, mate.

It really does feel that way. It feels like, I don't know, everyone involved in the process of this documentary was both on cocaine and really into the mythology of a thing that they actually know isn't real. Yeah. And then what's great about, I love this section because it's all just like Dave talking about these things that he supposedly did that sort of everyone kind of knows that he didn't do, but are also like asking him how he feels morally about these things that he's pretended he's done. Well, hypothetically, Dave, if you killed baby Hitler, would you feel bad? No, because this lag fucking deserved it. And if you ask it, he'd say,

Dave Courtney gave me a clump and it set me on a straight and narrow. And then this is the point in the documentary where like the voiceover guy clearly begins to get tired of Dave Courtney and you just sort of begin to get like just bits of just like salt being sprinkled on the voiceover. It goes, 1999, Dave has hired the talk of London, which is like a big theater, to put on his own show, which involves talking about himself for three hours. Direct quote. Dave Courtney, Frodo podcaster. Yeah, this is like and grow like the Dave, Dave Courtney is Dave Courtney podcast. And this is when we're introduced to, I think hands down mine and mine and Nate's favorite characters from the documentary,

aspiring filmmakers, Johnny Knox and Nick Moorcroft, who want to include him in their feature film. We were watching this approximately the same time Nate texted me and was immediately with a picture of these guys and was just like a British come down. They look, they just, they both have that look of how to describe it. Too much hair bleach, too much cocaine, and are completely making it up as they go along. And they seem to have forgotten that A, cameras, film things that you say and those images can be transmitted somewhere else. Like it's amazing. Like they literally, it feels like they're doing a parody. Yeah, 100%. 100%. This felt like some kind of performance art of weird, I don't know,

Hollywood slash, you know, British film industry want to be sort of remoras who are there trying to sell a screenplay to a really, really credulous person. Yeah. Like if you were directing a film about two aspiring filmmakers who were on Coke and those two were your actors, you'd be like, come on, dial it back a bit. You've not done that much Coke. Then they're like, they even went backstage to wish him good luck before the performance. And one of them just goes up to him, just goes, you're a king. So like this should have come with a parental advisory for cringe. Like I did not realize how hard I was going to cringe watching this. In a way, I'm glad I didn't know in advance. Going back on what I just previous said,

because I probably would have skipped that scene because it's so painful to just watch these guys do that pathetic around a guy who's already pathetic to begin with. It's amazing. Now, this is another kind of British guy that we definitely have, which is like the kind of the middle class British guy, but who is desperate to achieve the status of honorary art not did like he needs someone like Dave Courtney to say, you're all right, son. At first I thought you was a pufta, but you're actually all right. That is what they create. And they're just like, they're desperate for Dave Courtney to say, oh, listen, if I was on the door, I'd want you by my side. But that is that they crave it so much.

It's the Gen X and later version of the person who believes that he would have saved the day at Dunkirk. It's just that, but it's the London domestic version of that. And so then we actually get some footage of him on stage during this show, which is incredible because apparently he's like not sold any tickets and all the people in the audience are like just mates of his. So there's this excerpt where he's like, so he says to me, you introduce that gangster to that Colombian and that's how the drugs got brought in. And I said, well, your honor, if I introduce you to that lady customer and she gave you a dose, is that my fault? I introduced her, but you put your cock in and then there's

just like raucous laughter at his like made up story of just like swearing at a jar. This is a weird aside, but if you're familiar with the David Mitchell novel, Cloud Atlas, there's a part that's set in more or less the present day or like in the 90s where it's about this guy who's, he winds up getting put in like a care facility because he has a mental breakdown, but he's a publisher and he's in the process of trying to negotiate a deal to publish like the hard cut memoir. And there's an excerpt of it and it's all written basically in like stylized slang versions of how these guys talk where like, there's no such thing as the letter H. And it's just written, it's all I say is he's cunt, you fucking cunt. And it's just like,

it's just that not stop. And I just, in a way, I feel like that little sort of object within the object of that book is basically anything Dave Court, like if you had to sit through Dave, Dave Courtney talking about himself for three hours unfiltered, unedited via documentary, it would 100% read like that book. Yeah, it would be like, it would be like reading the Australian Constitution. And then, and then so, and then they cut to back to the filmmaker guys. And so the weird thing is, they are like, they're asking them how they feel morally about giving a platform to Dave Courtney, even though they are themselves making a documentary about, it's weird. Anyway, so the filmmakers are like, I feel very sorry for some of the people affected

by him. But I'm pretty sure they affected some other people, if you know what I mean. And then the other one goes, yeah, you know, it's the chicken and the egg. No idea what he means by that. Then the other one comes back in and just like pointing at him with this sound. And he's like, it's like, John, I always says, let you is without sin cast a first stone. It's true. And it's like, you are aware that that's not like a thing he says, right? Like that's, he's like, that's John O's quote. I love my mate. He's so wise. He's always saying stuff like that we let you is about sin cast a first stone. And then, and then we cut back to the publisher guy again from earlier, who's like, well, you know, people have come back from wars who've killed

thousands and not an eye is turned. So I don't have a problem with it. No, the publisher of Tony Blair's autobiography there. And then we, and then we get peers, her new from front magazine again. I just, I really want to secure a copy of front magazine. I bet it was awesome. It's just like Dave Courtney slag at a week. He's like, well, we gave him a page, but you'll give him a documentary. So why am I in the wrong? Yes, I love that voice. He is the most David Badeal guy in in a way. I understand why David Badeal is so crotchety now, because if this is the world he was socialized into in like his twenties, and it's just not the way things are anymore. If this version of reality was what London was like in the late nineties, then I can imagine how furious

you were like nowadays, I can't, I can't even do cocaine and talk about gender. Like, because it just doesn't exist anymore. These kinds of people can't afford the shit. Like they used to be able to live in fucking zone one on paying like a hundred pounds a week. And now like you absolutely can't anymore. So you can't be this much of a fuck up. You have to move to Birmingham to be this much of a fuck up. You just can't do it anymore. That world doesn't exist anymore. And so then then we sort of move on to Dave Courtney's financial troubles. So we get this voice over section where he's in his Rolls Royce and they're like, he's relying on friends for money because his celebrity isn't proving lucrative. And then they're like his wife, Jenny, is a stripper.

And then they show her holding a picture in which like he is in a suit, but she is completely naked and they're like posing together. No, it's like the photo of Andy Warhol and John Michelle Baskiat, but like way hornier. And also it's Dave Courtney and his wife. But it's the same style. Yeah. And also like we're 42 minutes in and this is the first time his wife appears like whatsoever. And it turns out that she's supporting him financially. And then so Jenny's like, there isn't anything that Dave's ever done that I would say is wrong. And she's just like cooking bacon. In a kitchen that looks like dog shit. I must stress that though he lives in Camelot Castle, it's a very, very South London Camelot Castle. Yeah, it's the kitchen from the original

Camelot Castle. It's like that degree of decrepit. And then so they start talking about how the filmmaker guys have made another short film with him. And they're like, they've invited Dave to the premiere to participate in a very special stunt. And then they're like introducing the short film. And then Dave comes out with like a blank firing pistol and just shoots one of them in the head and they fall over and everyone in the cinema like screams. And he's like going, it's like the 90s were awesome. Like I wish I'd been this age in the 90s. Like just what what a hilariously unhinged time. But then 9 11 happens and then you have to become David Bedeal. Bye now. So then the filmmaker guys are meeting with him and they're discussing about this British

gangster film that they want to make in LA. And so Dave's like, it's a good script, but some of the lines are a bit much like apples and pears. I've never actually said they're real life, but it's very violent. It's giving me a semi yard on. I also love the idea of a bunch of British guys writing a screenplay about Los Angeles and like crime in Los Angeles. I kind of this film obviously never got made. They have no careers as film makers. I wonder why one of them actually does will come to this later. I couldn't maybe my one of them has disappeared from the annals of history entirely. But the other one, Nick Moorcroft actually has a career. Well, I'll be damned. I had no idea. Oh, thank you.

I am DB and Wikipedia. So yeah, basically like then the film, one of the filmmakers says something and you just have to imagine him doing like, like, you know, you know, in Lord of War, where Nicholas Cage does a line of cocaine. That's the entire outline of the Ukraine. That is what is done immediately before this sentence. This isn't you being a shark in a pond. This is you being a big fish in a massive ocean. If you can go over there and do the business without a baggage, you as an actor, proper going for it, people are going to take you seriously. And then Dave is just like smiling, smoking his cigar. I love that he says this isn't you being a shark. This is you being a big fish. And then so Dave goes, the bottom line is

I'm playing me and we want eight mil for it. What do I get out of that? And then the filmmakers become a bit defensive. And then they're like, well, Guy Ritchie's certainly done very well out of lock stock. You'd be looking at millionaire status without a doubt if it went off. And then and then it's Dave starts going, all right, and holding out his hand. And he's going, no, no, don't hold me to that. But he looks at the camera and says, you with the camera, don't hold me to that. He thinks he's going to get a sofa thrown through his window. Dave Courtney trying to collect eight million quid from this guy from Chelmsford. And so then we get to like, this is kind of like the final act of the documentary where Dave

is in going to court because he's on trial for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. There's a weird like just cut away thing, which they don't reference. It has no relevance to what's going on at the time, but Mickey Gold tooth shows you a tattoo of Dave Courtney has on his leg. He's like, you know, I wouldn't just get a tattoo of any geezer on my legs. You know, I respect that geezer. And then so then Dave is saying how like, you know, they're trying to bring me down with his court case. It's going to be my trampoline to the big time. They're going to wish they never took me to court. And then he's in court and his, his friends, he's so he shows up and he's dressed as a jester, like he's in a bright orange jet,

like with the bells on the hat. And he's like, chuckling to himself as he walks into court. And we're like, Dave court is finally completely lost his mind. Like, and then he's got his friends Brendan and Seymour, who we've seen earlier, they're outside holding like a carrier bag from like Jane Norman or some shit with £50,000 of cash in it, showing it to the press like, yeah, we've brought his cash bail. Britain doesn't have cash bail. They're just showing people a bag full of cash. Yeah, like cash bail is an American thing. Like it is. Yeah, I don't understand. They're just like showing people that they have money. I don't know, unlike Dave Courtney, who definitely doesn't

know. I think that's just a bag to keep Dave Courtney going for the next six months. So then, and then we're told we don't see any of this because it's happening in the court, but apparently Dave sees the policeman in the court, who's like accused him of perverting the court justice, and he punches him in the face. And then he gets released from court until he comes out. And then the voiceover is like, Dave's a little concerned that punching a policeman in the face in court may have some repercussions. He's pinned a note to his front door asking the police not to kick it down. And then there's like this Seymour, him and his wife are just reading all the news reports about his court case. And then Dave is like, when I was active, crime was about more

than narcotics. And now it's basically just drugs. They've got no morals. They murder each other over 10 grams. There are people who wipe out the oldest stoke over two million pounds. I love that line. Yeah. Just imagine just doing a genocide on stoke over a drug deal gone wrong. The people of stoke completely confused by this. And then they're like, there's this bit where the voiceover guy's like going like, you know, Dave is he's always trying to engage in self promotion. It's up due to the court case at the moment, he can't give any official interviews. And then there and they're like, but Dave is enterprising as ever. And then there's him on the street just

handing out posters of himself to like literal nine year old children. Like, do you want a poster as well? Then go on. And I'm pretty sure these are just like his children and their friends. It's amazing. Yeah. Imagine just like being a nine year old child and Dave Courtney coming out. Do you want a poster with my face on it? I don't know who this man is. She wants nor to grav. Do you want to go again, mate? That's what they usually want. Then we have this interview with Dave where he's like, I'm not making anywhere near what I was making as a criminal. And it's like, no, you're making zero. So anyway, then there's this weird bit where it's Charlie Cray's funeral, who's like the third Cray brother who's not a twin,

but was also sort of a criminal. And then they've got these flowers that they're going to take around there, which literally say geezer. When I saw that, I was just like, what the fuck is happening? And this is when like, and then Dave gives us this tour of his house and all the huge men that he knows that have come down to like visit for the funeral. And this is when he starts rubbing the huge black guy's belly guy, look at the size of his geezer. And it's like, we get it. He's a large man, Dave. And so you're kind of led to this to assume that he's doing the security for the funeral. But then it's just like, he hasn't been hired to do the security, but he's going anyway, although he's been advised not to bar the police. And so then we get this

like weird footage of him in his pants. And then he's like, I could go to jail for life at any time. There's a lot of holes in the ground around the world and I could do life if they dug up any one of them. Again, probably not the sort of thing you should say on record, but fine. And then we go back to the trial again. So the whole like, like funeral thing is just kind of glossed over because I'm not sure even when you can't really make sure in the footage that he's there or not. Yeah, like it's just not it's not limit not make clear to us. Yeah, he just likes making a point of like how he knows all these gangsters. He's very vague about the particulars, but he knows them all. And so then we're talking about the morning of his

trial and Dave is paranoid that his phones are bugged. And he's convinced they're going to go to any lengths to send his image and bothering to bug Dave Courtney's phone, a man who will just confess to a video camera to murder. You wouldn't need to bug his phone. You would be able to hear him on the phone from outside. Now I fucking murdered him. Yeah, and I buried a body right next to the pub. So then he's in court. And then then they start talking about this online dispute he's having with a man who if you're not familiar with British gangland law is literally called Mad Frankie Fraser. So Mad Frankie Fraser, very much a real gangster, very much a man who used to like torture people at the behest of the Richardson gang. And so he was one of these people who kind

of got rehabilitated a bit in the 90s and he had his own website called like frankiephrasesmadbastard.com or whatever. And so he's like slagging, but these are all like internet 1.0 websites. It's like fucking, you know, angel fire shit. Yeah, really, absolutely. It looks like that. I mean, it looks a total dog shit. And it's just, yeah, weird blast from the past. Yeah. And it's just Frankie Fraser going, Dave Courtney, he's a fucking slag. He's a fucking grass. And then like, is this interview with Dave Courtney, where he's like, if in court, they managed to prove that I'm a grass, I'll be shot. And rightly so, if that happens, I deserve to be shot. Someone do it to me. I'd rather be dead than have people think I'm a grass.

Somehow apparently, it's then proven that he wasn't. But that's never really made clear. Yeah, it's unclear. Basically, they kind of, he gets, he, he doesn't get convicted in court and that he gets the prosecution somehow to acknowledge that he was not in fact a police informant. It's never really made clear how that happens or what the hell is going on. And there's all these like entourage people cheering for him in the street outside. And then the voiceover is like, Dave has announced that he's leaving Britain because the police won't stop hounding him. It's like, you keep confessing to crimes. Stop going around and saying, I love doing crimes. It's a simple thing. And then the final bit is as his footage of him in the bath

with his wife drinking champagne and celebrating. And then Dave slaps her on the ass and goes, and that is why I love her. Absolutely fantastic. As a coder to this, I got, I got another section of Dave Courtney's Wikipedia page. In January 2009, he was given an 18 month conditional discharge at Bristol Crown Court on charge of possessing live ammunition without a firearm certificate. His defense of not knowing that the single live pistol round was live rather than a stage prop prompted Judge Ticehurst to comment, it perhaps undermines your street credibility and your stage performance that you cannot distinguish between a real round and a fake round. But perhaps that's not for me to say.

Let's just be perfectly honest. There is a huge difference between a blank round and a live round. Namely, one has a bullet and it's very obvious when you look at it, whether there's a bullet in there or not, or if it just looks like a shell casing with a crimped top and no bullet. So yes, fair point to make. Dave Courtney. Well, Dave Courtney's only ever fired blanks. It just assumes, yeah. And then the top YouTube comment is Dave Courtney is definitely the David Brent of the Underworld. I also, a slightly sadder note, there's a weird aside in the film, the documentary where he talks about how his stepson wants to become a gangster that he's going to dissuade him. But if he does want to do it, he's going to show him how to do it properly.

Apparently in 2013, his son, who did in fact become a stepson, who did in fact become a gangster, was then executed by his own uncle. Oh my God. Was shot through the eyeball somewhere in Greenwich, dead serious. Well, whoever did that will have some hard bastards coming to have a conversation with some big flat-nosed geezers will be going down there. Jesus Christ. But yeah, so I did, I found out about this fucking the guy. Was it Nick Moorcroft? Nick Moorcroft, yeah. So now I'm excited. Yeah. So if you go on IMDB, first of all, this guy still looks exactly the same. He's got like the same haircut and everything.

And so it says, Nick Moorcroft was born December 22nd, 1978 in Charleston, Essex, England. He's a writer and producer. And then I discovered in his filmography, he wrote the screenplays for the films Centrion's and Centrion's too. I've never seen them, but they sound extremely British. Oh yeah. So Centrion's was a like a cartoon thing that basically there was a guy, I can't remember his name. He was a British prisoner of war in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. And he basically, while he was there to keep himself sane, he made up all these cartoons about like a posh girls boarding school. And then they became like popular like comic book

cartoons after the war. And he like continued to make them. And then in like 2009, 2008, kind of that period, they decided to make like a modernized film about like the wild girls of Centrion's with Russell Brand in it. This might be another thing to watch for Britonology possibly. And yeah, this guy, this guy was behind it. That for me was just like the perfect guy, this guy who spent ages trying to, trying to be mates with Dave Courtney. Eventually his big break was that he got to write the screenplay for the Centrion's film with Russell Brand. I mean, to be fair, I would have presumed that neither one of these guys would ever have made anything in that regard because they seemed like such a complete fucking

idiots. But yeah, fair play guy from Chelmsford. Never give up. You can eventually make shitty British movies, whatever. And I think that is, that is a message for us all. But I got to say something though, one thing that's hilarious. He was born December 22nd, 1978. So he would have realistically been 21ish, 21ish, 21ish when this was being filmed. So like imagine being that much of a weird that you can't tell that a bunch of fucking uni students probably aren't going to be able to get you your big break in Hollywood. Oh yeah. That's how not street smart the fucking, the crime bouncer is.

Yeah. Dave Courtney just thinks that anyone who doesn't sound like they've swallowed a gun is like well connected in the light. There are two kinds of people to Dave Courtney. They were like people who are well connected in the crime world and then there are people who are well connected with like Hollywood and that. And so anyone who sounds like they went to school to Dave Courtney, it's like, well, they probably know Harvey Weinstein, you know, that's going to be, that's going to be my hit. Fucking incredible. Man, I can't wait to every time I watch this, have a great laugh and I'll be like, also voluntarily moved here.

So that's been the first episode of Britonology where I think we, we dissected one of the most important types of guy, the guy who thinks he's a gangster and also lots of fun cameos from 90s cocaine guys. Many of whom have grown up to become extremely sad, frumpy, Gen X comedians who are convinced that the world is going to hell because of the damn S.J. Dubs. So favorite kind of person. Or because a proper geezer never told them that they were actually all right. And you know what, if they could have just done that, we could have been spared a lot of hours about Twitter mentions. Very much good. But I feel edified and enlightened. I now know a little bit more about Britain. So thank you Milo for this session of Britonology.

It's always been a pleasure and we will see you next time.