The Krays and boxing

[orbtastic]

Don’t you like having the laughters?

[Cyclops]

Don’t you like having the laughters?

As long as they open up my book of life.

[Giancarlo]

Monty Python did a sketch in the style of an expose based on Ron & Reg - Doug & Dinsdale - The Piranha Brothers


Presenter: One small-time operator who fell foul of Dinsdale Piranha was Vince Snetterton-Lewis.

Vince: Well one day I was at home threatening the kids when I looks out through the hole in the wall and sees this tank pull up and out gets one of Dinsdale's boys, so he comes in nice and friendly and says Dinsdale wants to have a word with me, so he chains me to the back of the tank and takes me for a scrape round to Dinsdale's place and Dinsdale's there in the conversation pit with Doug and Charles Paisley, the baby crusher, and two film producers and a man they called 'Kierkegaard', who just sat there biting the heads of whippets and Dinsdale says 'I hear you've been a naughty boy Clement' and he splits me nostrils open and saws me leg off and pulls me liver out and I tell him my name's not Clement and then... he loses his temper and nails me head to the floor.

Interviewer: He nailed your head to the floor?

Vince: At first yeah

Presenter: Another man who had his head nailed to the floor was Stig O' Tracy.

Interviewer: I've been told Dinsdale Piranha nailed your head to the floor.

Stig: No. Never. He was a smashing bloke. He used to buy his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me.

Interviewer: But the police have film of Dinsdale actually nailing your head to the floor.

Stig: (pause) Oh yeah, he did that.

Interviewer: Why?

Stig: Well he had to, didn't he? I mean there was nothing else he could do, be fair. I had transgressed the unwritten law.

Interviewer: What had you done?

Stig: Er... well he didn't tell me that, but he gave me his word that it was the case, and that's good enough for me with old Dinsy. I mean, he didn't *want* to nail my head to the floor. I had to insist. He wanted to let me off. He'd do anything for you, Dinsdale would.

Interviewer: And you don't bear him a grudge?

Stig: A grudge! Old Dinsy. He was a real darling.

Interviewer: I understand he also nailed your wife's head to a coffee table. Isn't that true Mrs O' Tracy?

Mrs O' Tracy: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Stig: Well he did do that, yeah. He was a hard man. Vicious but fair

(Cut back to vince)

Interviewer: Vince, after he nailed your head to the floor, did you ever see him again

Vince: Yeah.....after that I used to go round his flat every Sunday lunchtime to apologize and we'd shake hands and then he'd nail my head to the floor

Interviewer: Every Sunday?

Vince: Yeah but he was very reasonable. Once, one Sunday, when my parents were coming round for tea I asked him if he'd mind very much not nailing my head to the floor that week and he agreed and just screwed my pelvis to a cake stand.

Presenter:Clearly Dinsdale inspired tremendous fear among his business associates. But what was he really like?

Gloria:I walked out with Dinsdale on many occasions and found him a charming and erudite companion. He was wont to introduce one to eminent celebrities, celebrated American singers, members of the aristocracy and other gang leaders,

Interviewer (off screen): How had he met them?

Gloria:Through his work for charities. He took a warm interest in Boys' Clubs, Sailors' Homes, Choristers' Associations and the Grenadier Guards.

Interviewer:Was there anything unusual about him?

Gloria: I should say not. Except, that Dinsdale was convinced that he was being watched by a giant hedgehog whom he referred to as 'Spiny Norman'.

Interviewer: How big was Norman supposed to be?

Gloria: Normally Spiny Norman was wont to be about twelve feet from snout to tail, but when Dinsdale was depressed Norman could be anything up to eight hundred yards long. When Norman was about Dinsdale would go very quiet and start wobbling and his nose would swell up and his teeth would move about and he'd get very violent and claim that he'd laid Stanley Baldwin.

Interviewer: Did it worry you that he, for example, stitched people's legs together?

Gloria: Well it's better than bottling it up isn't it. He was a gentleman, Dinsdale, and what's more he knew how to treat a female impersonator.

[Giancarlo]

They only bummed their own

[bennie]

Remember the photo of Bruno visiting Broadnoor and having a brew with the Yorkshire ripper .

“Had a coffee with Peter Sutcliffe. Nice guy. Speak as you find. Never did anything to me”

The meeting Bruno had with Sutcliffe was set up by the disgusting Jimmy Savile, who conned Bruno. Big Frank had no idea that he was the Ripper.

[Counter-puncher]

The “how would Lenny McLean and Roy Shaw do as a pro” brigade

If I'm not mistaken Shaw was a boxer in his youth. Lenny was largely an illusion. He may very well have been the toughest door man in all of England, but it's a well-known fact that these fights being billed as matches to the death were largely fixed or were guys who were damaged goods in some way.

whereas everything ever written about Bartley Gorman was the absolute gospel truth....




viewtopic.php?f=9&t=196328&hilit=dale+f ... &start=275

[Counter-puncher]

They wrote their own book

The reviews for that are well funny!

"5.0 out of 5 stars A good book for entertainment
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 September 2013
Verified Purchase
It opens up people's book of life and tells me many things that I would never have experienced in my life. It was simple and funny in places. It's easy to read and it gave me laughters. If you are interested in this sort of stories and perhaps you are related to anything mentioned to the book, this is a nice choice. It's more like a personal diary than any other sophisticated novel, quite suitable for people like me don't want to think hard after work.
One person found this helpful"

so, ok, hang about, right...

so, that book is intended as a parody, no?

and nobody who has reviewed it, gets that it's a parody?

[HomicideHenry]

The “how would Lenny McLean and Roy Shaw do as a pro” brigade

If I'm not mistaken Shaw was a boxer in his youth. Lenny was largely an illusion. He may very well have been the toughest door man in all of England, but it's a well-known fact that these fights being billed as matches to the death were largely fixed or were guys who were damaged goods in some way.

whereas everything ever written about Bartley Gorman was the absolute gospel truth....




viewtopic.php?f=9&t=196328&hilit=dale+f ... &start=275

Well I can say that much of what Gorman did say has been backed up by either newspaper accounts or by reliable eyewitnesses, take of that what you will.

For example Roy Shaw claiming he never heard of Bartley Gorman until many years later, when sure enough there is a newspaper article from the 1970s of Shaw saying he would fight Bartley Gorman, though that fight never materialized--- just like Bartley Gorman said in his autobiography.

I know I have interviewed Peter Fury a couple of times and he told me that Gorman basically had 300 fights and never lost a single one. Peter generally has the respect of most people in the boxing business more than John Fury, so his testimony is found to be reliable.

I am sure that there is exaggeration. There is an old saying that there is a flare of fiction in autobiography, but of all the so-called hard men from the British Isles the only two who basically told the truth seems to be Bartley Gorman and Cliff Fields.

[Counter-puncher]

[Steveh583]

[coghaugen11]

I knew them well.

[gp.]

Freddie said they wrapped him in a mattress and tied it with wire, weighted him down and then buried him in the English channel out the way of the shipping lanes.

What a poor quality mattress that must have been, that you could wrap a body in it.

[Coco]

Freddie said they wrapped him in a mattress and tied it with wire, weighted him down and then buried him in the English channel out the way of the shipping lanes.

What a poor quality mattress that must have been, that you could wrap a body in it.

Wrapping someone in wire with a few weights and dumping them in the channel seems a great way of getting rid of a body

[Cyclops]

They wrote their own book

The reviews for that are well funny!

"5.0 out of 5 stars A good book for entertainment
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 September 2013
Verified Purchase
It opens up people's book of life and tells me many things that I would never have experienced in my life. It was simple and funny in places. It's easy to read and it gave me laughters. If you are interested in this sort of stories and perhaps you are related to anything mentioned to the book, this is a nice choice. It's more like a personal diary than any other sophisticated novel, quite suitable for people like me don't want to think hard after work.
One person found this helpful"

so, ok, hang about, right...

so, that book is intended as a parody, no?

and nobody who has reviewed it, gets that it's a parody?

As impossible as it is to believe, it's not a parody. It came out during the time when there was shelves full of books like this. This might have been the worst of them all but they weren't trying to be funny. They really were two idiot brothers from Wales who thought they were the new Krays and wrote a book about themselves. They're not doing the Kray thing anymore but they're still getting nicked for silly stuff.

The reviews read like someone has written something in another language and put it through Google Translate.

[JamesPhilips]

Why do people worship the Krays? Nasty people who served up Street children to rich nonces?