Ronnie said to me,
"In the mid '60s,
"The Rolling Stones
and The Beatles ruled the pop world,
"Carnaby Street
ruled the fashion world,
"and me and Reg ruled London."
"We were untouchable."
When they walked through the door,
there was danger.
The Krays were a new breed.
I see Reggie and Ronnie beat the man
to pulp until he couldn't stand up.
They had a talent for two things,
that was violence and publicity.
In all clubs
you get an occasional drunk
and sometimes
they have to be slung out.
They wanted to be bigger than just,
if you like, "East End gangsters."
They are as much part of the '60s
as any of the other famous people.
They were known from one end
of this country to the other.
They had an aura of glamour,
but underneath the aura of glamour
was criminality, violence and blood.
I think they're inclined to be,
sort of
..well, animals, really.
They were taught that to be hard
was the way you survive.
Let's be honest, they did like
to inflict violence on people.
It appears the government
told the police to back off.
And at that point,
the Krays were able to do
pretty much whatever
they wanted to do.
They're doing protection rackets,
they're threatening people,
they're k*lling people.
They were evil, dangerous b*stards.
You have to be careful
of making heroes
of people that don't deserve it.
Their mum, she was lovely.
Lovely lady.
You felt good when you met her.
Knock knock.
"Hello. Would you like a cup of tea?"
"Would you like a piece of cake?"
I'd say, "Yes, please. Cup of tea,
piece of cake, lovely."
For the life of me, whatever
she might've heard about the boys,
she didn't believe 'em.
To her, they were her little angels.
They idolised her.
She idolised them.
DIRECTOR: Thank you.
My name's Maureen Flanagan and I met
Mrs Kray when Charlie Kray,
her first son, had asked me,
do you go to home visits to do hair?
Cos I was a hairdresser.
Erm, I'd only been married
a few months.
This is 1961,
I was there every week.
The more I got to know Violet Kray,
the more she confided in me.
She had son Charlie first, and then
apparently she became pregnant
and she had a little girl,
which she really, really wanted,
but this little girl died.
My nan and Violet,
the twins' mum, were sisters.
My mum was their first cousin.
My nan lived in 174 Vallance Road,
Nanny Lee was 176,
and the twins were 178,
so we was all together.
Old Charlie, when I was born,
I got to know him
as a nice, kindly old man.
But he was horrible to her
when she was younger.
He beat her all the time,
constantly jealous of her.
Violet, the twins' mum,
she was heavily pregnant
and he beat her really badly,
kicked her in the stomach.
She went into labour,
and she cried out for him
to go and get a doctor.
He went to the pub.
She had to deliver the baby herself.
The baby was born A little girl.
She lived for three minutes
and she died.
She never forgive him for that.
And then, of course,
you had the twins.
And I used to try to console her
by saying,
"There you are,
God sent you double."
And she used to say,
"Oh, he sent me my boys.
"I'm the only one round here
that's had twins."
"People stop me
and say how beautiful they are."
Well, they were.
And you could tell right away
that the favouritism with the twins
and later, as I began to know her
more and more,
the favourite was Ronnie.
And this is because she always
referred to the diphtheria episode
when they were just
coming up for three years old.
NEWSREADER:
'Every year, 3,000 children
'die like this from diphtheria.'
This child need not have died.
He could have been immunised,
and so protected against diphtheria.
She took them to the hospital,
and after a day or two
the doctor thought it was best
if they separate them.
Reggie, being the stronger twin,
he got better.
And she took him home,
and they wouldn't let her
take Ronnie home,
because she said they said,
"He's really bad."
But she turned up
one day with her sister,
and the doctor said,
"No, you can't remove him."
She said, "Yes, I am."
She wrapped him in a blanket
and carried him home
from the hospital to Vallance Road,
where she put him in the bed
with Reggie. And she said to me,
"Do you know,
within two days he was better."
I think she always thought
she was gonna lose Ronnie,
and therefore all her life
she made more fuss.
But he was definitely
the weaker one of the two.
Ronnie always had problems.
I said to me mum, like,
"What were they like at school?"
Cos they went to the same school
and, er, she went,
"Well, Ronnie was always
different."
He was always
Reggie would play with his mates.
Ronnie was always
a little bit distant.
Sort of, things bothered him more.
Reggie was very protective
of Ronnie.
Always looked out for him
because he knew Ronnie could
take care of himself physically,
but he knew that
he had to watch him.
They grew up with hard men.
They had two grandfathers,
instead of being nice,
polite, normal men,
might work on the railway,
or on the roads or whatever,
they were both ex-boxers.
That's how they were taught that
to be hard was the way you survive.
Boxing was terribly important.
They were both
very, very good boxers.
In fact, erm, Reggie,
I think, of the two of them,
could have gone on
to have a professional career.
I think he was London Schools
boxing champion at the age of 16.
Very, very handy with his fists.
They could both hold their hands up.
Big time.
Didn't care about anybody.
Reggie could have been
a professional boxer.
But Ronnie was too mad.
Too undisciplined.
Boasting now about
how he bit a kid in the ring,
and the ref said,
"Oi, oi, oi, no biting."
They were also influenced
by gangster films.
The twins were influenced
by Hollywood.
They were influenced by the Warner
Brothers B movies in particular,
the gangster movies.
They used to pay their little
sixpence to go into the cinema
and I think later in life,
that's where they got
the clothes idea from.
The big names
that created the gangster genre,
these were the people
that they were fascinated by,
particularly their style,
how they held themselves,
how they spoke.
You better see a doctor, Mac.
You're in bad shape.
It had a big influence
on both the twins,
but in particular on Ron.
When he was still a teenager,
he would have an Italian barber
come to his house every day
and give him a shave.
Cos he found out that that's what,
that's what Al Capone had done.
So they were mimicking
these characters.
I think Ronnie thought
he was a character
in a Hollywood gangster film.
Someone like George Raft,
for example.
And I think they liked the glamour,
the glamour,
also they liked the violence.
I mean, let's be honest.
They did like to inflict violence
on people,
but being younger
and watching films like that,
and you lived in quite
a deprived sort of area,
it was sort of something
that they sort of wanted to do.
I think they was always
gonna do something like that.
I don't think they would have
settled down in a job.
I think they would
have been fidgety.
They didn't want to work
like their father.
There's not much to be
in the East End.
If you were born in the East End,
you stay in the East End,
so you couldn't get out.
You either ended up a gangster,
or a car thief, or a plumber,
or worked down the docks
or something.
They went to Billingsgate market.
And, er, that didn't last very long.
Erm, getting up at five
in the morning
and being there at quarter to six
and wearing dirty, erm,
old trousers.
They didn't possess a dirty pair
of old trousers and an old jacket,
so that's how they grew up.
Could go and earn a living,
but they didn't want to.
They wanted to do it in the way
they always saw themselves -
as something bigger and better
than the boys they grew up with.
FAST-PACED MUSIC
So, in March 1950,
they're involved in a fight
outside a dance hall in Hackney,
aged 16.
And it's the first time they've
got their names into the newspaper.
So, what I have here
is a genuine piece of history.
It is the actual scrapbook
owned by Reggie Kray.
So, over a 15-year period,
he's cutting out newspaper cuttings,
and putting them lovingly
into this book.
Hugely important document
and shows that even at an early age,
Reggie wanted to be famous.
He loved reading the newspaper
cuttings about himself.
So, here we have their first
appearance in newspapers as youths.
"YOUTH IS BEATEN UP BY g*ng."
The magistrate states, "This boy
has been beaten by beasts."
"These people think
they are above the law."
"They have to be taught a lesson."
There is a second article.
The headline reads
"RAZOR THREAT TO GIRL WITNESS."
So, in the text, "A prosecution
witness had been threatened"
"that if she gave evidence,"
"a razor would be put
across her face."
The article goes on to list
the specific weapons
used in the attack.
A piece of bicycle chain,
two lavatory chains with handles,
and a cosh.
It's quite a vicious attack.
This is the start of them
appearing in the press.
All through the '50s,
there are incidents of them
getting involved in scraps,
getting involved in some more
serious fights as they got older.
Their father, Charlie Senior,
one day, they heard him shouting.
He didn't know anybody was in.
He come in, pissed, drunk as usual.
Violet, the twins' mum, was doing
some ironing or something.
And he punched her in the nose
just for nothing. No reason.
But Ronnie was upstairs in bed
and he heard, he heard his mum cry.
Ronnie's come down the stairs,
heard the commotion,
he's looked at what's happened.
He's punched his father on the nose,
made his nose bleed.
He went, "You touch my mother again,
I will f*cking k*ll you."
And that was it.
He never touched her again.
Never hurt her again.
So, by the mid 1950s,
they're in their early 20s.
They are definitely
increasing their aspirations.
They are looking
for something exciting.
Something they can get
their teeth into,
maybe a business that they can use
to their advantage
to build their reputation
and to start earning some money.
The Regal Billiard Hall
in the Mile End Road,
they took it over in a classic way
that extortionists always do
in so much as if there was
trouble in the Regal, they said,
"We can do away with the trouble,
if you pay us X amount of money."
And if they didn't pay the money,
if the owners didn't pay the money,
then the trouble got worse.
And, of course,
the trouble was actually created
by the Krays themselves.
It wasn't a place
where straight people went.
It was people that were at it.
People that had been in prison,
come out of prison,
and they'd just been released
and they would go there.
It was like a g*ng hut for a group
of young men to get together.
It was a place to meet.
They were gonna use it as a base
for their criminal enterprise.
Weapons and stuff
were left in there.
Swords and all that stuff
were left in there, the bayonets,
all stuck in there.
When they went anywhere,
they'd go to the Regal,
get 'em out and go.
'My name is Gerry Parker.
'I was born in the East End
of London
'to a lovely Jewish family in 1926.'
I worked,
I did work with Jack Spot.
Yes, I worked with Jack Spot.
Jack ran the whole of the East End
before the twins.
He was very powerful.
All the traders used to give him
money when he went past.
Couple of pound, two quid,
three quid, you know.
"Morning, Jack, blah, blah, blah."
But he knew, Jack knew in his way,
that these boys were coming up.
I think he respected them.
Because they were dangerous.
I mean, if you had a fight with them
they wouldn't give in
till they'd stabbed you or shot you.
One or the other.
So they got stronger by the day.
They built a reputation, they did
build a reputation very quickly.
Very quickly.
'My name is Chris Lambrianou.
'My connection to the Krays was
I stood in the dock
'on the longest m*rder trial
in criminal history.
'I was sentenced to 15 years,
alongside them.'
They were dangerous people.
They weren't shy of using a knife,
or using a tool, or whatever.
They were out to make a reputation,
which they accomplished.
Their game was 99% protection.
They gave their name
to pubs and clubs.
And, er, the owners would say,
"Oh, don't start no trouble here,
my friends are the twins."
You know, that's how it worked.
And each week they get a few quid.
The people that the Krays preyed on
were money getters,
that's who they preyed on.
But the dodgy kind of characters -
p*rn*graphy, er, drinkers,
bars, gambling,
that's where they got their money.
And if you had problems,
people would walk away.
They wouldn't go to that club.
And the Krays could give them
plenty of problems.
Well, what happened was, erm,
I joined chambers where
I was the first woman
to get a tenancy.
Well, one Saturday,
I was taken to see the clients,
who were Ronnie and Reggie Kray.
They were both sitting on the bed
at the end of the cell,
which was just a concrete slab,
but they were extremely
smartly dressed.
Their mother had come
early in the morning
to the court to dress them up
and clean them up,
and give them the clean clothes
and clean shirts,
and to Brylcreem them.
And they sat there,
and they looked like two owls.
They were very solemn.
Unsmiling, white faces
and very dark black, shiny hair,
and extremely polite.
There'd been a longstanding feud
between two gangs of young men,
the Watney Street mob, er,
from Watney Street in Stepney,
who were made up mainly of dockers
and young dockers,
and the Bethnal Green mob,
which was really the Krays.
And in 1956,
er, there was a serious event
..in the Britannia pub.
This ends up with Ronnie Kray
and a couple of associates
doing some serious damage
with what's described as a bayonet.
It's quite a vicious attack.
Once again, Reggie,
inside his scrapbook,
has recorded what
the Hackney Gazette has had to say.
"The victim received
a stab in the back,
"causing a wound
four and a half inches deep.
"Defendants then jumped
into two waiting cars,
"which were driven away
at such a speed
"that they attracted the attention
of the police wireless car,
"which gave chase.
"The car was searched,
and on the front seat was a bayonet,
"together with a machete
and a crowbar."
"There were marks of blood
on the side of the car."
So, as a result of the court case,
one of Ronnie Kray's friends
gets seven years,
but Ronnie Kray
gets three years in prison.
I think the separation of the twins
when Ron went to prison
is important.
These were identical twins, er,
used to being together all the time,
used to sleeping in the same room.
What happens, though,
is that you see
the different characters
that are starting to emerge
when Ron goes to prison.
Reg becomes far more business-like,
Reg sees opportunities.
When I first met Reggie,
Ronnie was away.
Reggie was brave, game.
Smart, going places. Nice motor car.
Always clean, collar and tie.
Afraid of nobody,
and much to be admired.
Reg opened the Double R Club
in the Mile End Road.
It was gangster chic in many ways.
But the Double R
became a venue to go to.
Relative to that area
in the East End,
yes, it was quite a classy place.
The club is doing very well.
He's got Charlie Kray,
their older brother, in to help him.
And whilst Ronnie is away,
this club isn't having any trouble,
and is a good place to visit.
And takings are on the up.
Quite a good little businessman,
was Reggie.
I think, deep down,
Reggie was a villain
who would have quite liked
to have been straight,
or at the very least semi-straight,
but there was never
any chance of that.
Their Aunt Rose,
that's their mother's sister,
died on Christmas Day.
Ronnie thought the world of Rosie,
he thought the world of her.
He was in prison at the time
and he, he asked to wear, erm,
a black armband,
in the anniversary
of his aunt's death.
And the governor refused.
He said no.
So Ronnie got into a fight
with one of the officers,
and he picked up a little stove
that was in the governor's office
and chucked it at him.
And after that, he was sort of,
he went on a really bad
downhill sort of spiral.
Spiralling out of control.
He was really ill.
He was really ill.
Ronnie is having
a bit of a bad time,
and this absolutely tips
Ronnie over the edge.
Ronnie is now uncontrollable.
He's deteriorating,
and not recognising his mother
and Reggie when they visit.
So the prison authorities
move Ronnie Kray
to Long Grove mental institution.
Inside Long Grove,
Ronnie Kray is diagnosed
with schizophrenia.
He's given Stemetil,
which is a new drug,
erm, heavy sedation drug
to be taken twice a day.
The medicines he was given
quietened him down
in fact, restored his balance
to the great extent that,
by May, he's itching
to be out and about,
because time in a mental hospital,
in those days at any rate,
did not count towards
one's prison sentence.
So it's decided that Reggie and he
will dress in the same suit.
Reggie arrives for his normal visit
on the Sunday,
he's got a suit
and a cashmere overcoat.
Ronnie puts on the cashmere coat.
After a short period of time,
Ronnie leaves, Reggie's left.
Reggie, after a time,
said to the nurse,
"It's time I went now,"
and the nurse said,
"Well, you can't go."
He said, "Why not?"
"Well, you're a patient here,
Ronnie."
"No, I'm not. I'm Reggie."
Reggie is held for questioning,
but released,
because he doesn't know
what's happened.
He's just come to visit his brother.
Within six months,
he's moved back to prison.
He goes back to Wandsworth,
where he's quite happy.
London prison, London friends.
Serves his sentence out
and is released.
So, in escaping,
it has had a good effect,
because Long Grove are almost
washing their hands of him.
He's back in prison,
and he's out quicker
than had he remained in Long Grove.
It was easier to get on with Reggie
before Ronnie came home.
People were always saying to me,
"Wait till you see the brother."
"He's worse than the other one."
But he was worse.
He was very much worse.
Ronnie has periods where
he is religious in taking his pills.
He doesn't drink.
As soon as he stops
taking his pills,
which he did on regular occasions,
the descent into madness
starts again.
Some days he'd be fine.
Another day he wouldn't.
He put on a lot of weight.
Years ago, when they was younger,
you couldn't tell the difference.
His appearance
was totally different.
He did look quite unhealthy.
You know, when they get that sort of
puffy look about 'em.
When I first knew them,
I could hear Ronnie upstairs,
shouting and screaming,
absolutely hysterical.
And she'd go out to the bottom
of the stairs and say,
"Reggie, Reggie!" And Reggie would
come out on the landing,
she wouldn't call Ronnie,
she'd call Reggie.
"Has he took his medication?
What's the matter?"
"It's all right, Mum,
it's all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah."
"He's gonna take it now."
She knew that medication
calmed him down.
He confessed to me how mad he was,
out of the blue.
What happened, I was having a drink,
and all of a sudden Ronnie says,
"What did you say, Mick?
"Why are you telling me this?
"What do you mean by it?"
"A lot of people are calling me
and Reggie grasses,
"you know that, don't you?"
"Why are you telling me this story,
eh, Mick?"
And there's only me and him there.
But another fella came in,
one minute,
I was out the door, gone.
So, I went round the house
the next day
and Ronnie said, "Oh, I'm sorry
about last night, Mick."
He said, "You might think
I'm a right prat."
He said,
"I'll tell you what it is.
"I have to take these pills,
you see.
"I've been experimenting
in not taking 'em."
"When I don't take 'em,
it's m*rder."
Reggie, you could talk to,
but not Ronnie.
When Ronnie come out,
he was more sort of whatever,
if he said, "We've got to do this,
we've got to do it,"
you had to do it.
He was more, whatever,
the predominant one.
But they still had to agree
about it.
Cos if they didn't,
they'd have fights.
They'd fight every day.
They were like
a bad husband and wife.
People used to say,
"Don't interfere with them,"
"otherwise they'll turn on you.
Leave 'em."
The twins used to have
the most terrible scraps.
I saw it happen one afternoon.
I was there,
right outside the front door.
They started in the hall,
shouting at each other,
and then went outside,
and Ronnie hit him.
Me and Violet went to the window,
"Oh, my God, Violet,
they're fighting."
And she, "I'll go out in a minute."
But they really fought each other
as though they wanted
to k*ll each other.
Ronnie was a paranoid schizophrenic.
So he wasn't a businessman, Ronnie.
Are we talking here
about clever people?
Are we talking about people
who've got brains and logic
and, and, and top-line criminals?
No, we're not.
What they were good at was violence.
People were frightened of them.
At the start of the 1960s,
they'd built their reputation,
and they built it on violence.
They got a name, er,
as being thieves' ponces.
So, if any of the boys went out,
had a jump up, which meant they,
they stole lorries,
or they did blags,
which was out on the pavement,
taking wages,
wage snatches and stuff like that,
they would get to know about it,
and they'd want their corner.
They had done nothing.
All they had was fear.
Get money off of those
that have earned it,
get money off of those
that have got it.
That's the way they thought.
They just intimidated people.
They were powerful.
They were much feared.
But I think Reggie and Ronnie,
particularly Ronnie,
always aspired to be better
than they were,
to move into a higher class
of society, if you like.
They wanted to be bigger than just,
if you like,
"East End gangsters."
I think that was the aim.
NEWSREADER: 'At the ABC Cinema,
Mile End, they made film history
'by staging the East End's
first royal premiere.
'The stars came thick and fast.
Charlie Drake to begin with.
'They were all going to see
that slice of East End life,
'Sparrows Can't Sing.
Barbara Windsor stars in it.'
Ain't it a shame
Sparrows can't sing
Think of the joy
Sparrows might bring ♪
It was the first day of sh**ting
in the East End of London
on the set of Sparrows Can't Sing.
Suddenly, all these black cars drove
up into the middle of the shot.
And out of them got about, er,
five or six guys
dressed in dark suits,
and, er, they said,
"Who's in charge?"
and everybody was,
the crew was pointing at me,
because I was the first AD,
and they said,
"That geezer over there."
So, these two guys came over to me,
which later on turned out to be
Reggie and Ronnie.
And they said to me,
"Who gave you permission
to sh**t here?"
"Nobody asked us."
And I said, obviously,
"The police, you know,"
"because we have permission to sh**t
in all the streets of East End."
And he said, "Nobody asked us."
And he said,
"You could get into big trouble."
And I said, "Like what?"
They said, "Like getting k*lled."
And they put the so-called
protection racket on us,
and we had to employ
two of their
..minders.
We shot in the Kentucky Club,
which was their headquarters
at the time,
and the two protectors of us
were appearing in the film
as extras.
Reggie and Ronnie,
they loved being around on the set,
and they were very friendly to us.
And the bar was opened for us,
you know, and one day, er,
the bartender charged some money
for one of the crew members,
you know, and two seconds later,
I I saw him being dragged out
into the courtyard in the back.
And they were beating him up
for taking money from the crew,
and they said,
"These are our guests," you know,
"And you cannot charge them money."
Celebrities were attracted
to the Kray twins,
there is no doubt about that at all.
They had a definite appeal,
and they loved all that.
The night of the premiere
of Sparrows Can't Sing,
they held the party
at the Kentucky Club,
and I was behind the bar,
and they all marched in
and everyone was
they was all like that, in there.
And Barbara
she was dancing around, Barbara.
And, er, it was a lovely evening.
The Krays were extremely
violent people.
But there's a glamour to crime
as much as there is
a glamour to somebody
from the theatre or film,
and it's clear that certain people
saw it as a badge of honour
to have their picture with the Krays
as much as the Krays saw it
as having a picture with them.
Judy Garland, they had in the club,
and then they took her round
to Valance Road. Oh, my God!
Can you imagine when she told me,
Mrs Kray,
"Guess who came here.
I've met Judy Garland,"
"and I sat her down and gave her
a cup of tea,"
and Ronnie said,
"You know what that song you sing,"
"you sang in the film,
that's my mother's favourite song."
Somewhere over the rainbow ♪
And she'd say,
"Your mum don't hear me sing.
"There's no music or anything."
Not that she needed it.
And she sat down and sang
Over The Rainbow for Mrs Kray.
Once in a lullaby ♪
The East End became, briefly,
a fashionable place to visit.
You start to see a change in the way
that the East End is regarded.
And you saw people
moving towards the East End
a lot more for their nightlife.
It was the thing to do.
Barbara and everybody, you know,
it used to be the thing to go there
because to rough it up
in the East End of London,
because it was dangerous.
You saw gangsters,
members of the aristocracy,
sportsmen,
all kinds of people coming together
in this very unusual environment
that we hadn't really seen before.
This isn't the underworld,
this is something different.
And we've not seen it since,
actually,
this was absolutely unique
at that time.
Barbara's husband was arrested.
He was a gangster.
So I went down to the Old Bailey
to apply for bail,
and it was the usual thing.
Settled address, er,
strong community ties,
er, charitable activities,
all the cliches,
and then married
to a distinguished actress.
And the boys in the press gallery
go barmy.
"Who? Who? Who?"
And, er, it, it can't be hidden
any longer.
So, er, Barbara's name
is in the frame,
and she is absolutely furious.
Barbara was furious with me,
and she came up to me
outside the court
and she said,
"You f*cking little cow!
"They won't sell me with
a pound of sugar in this business"
"now you've let the cat
out of the bag."
And but in fact
it was quite the reverse.
The press fell in love with her.
They thought she was
the cheeky little c*ck sparrow
who stood by her man.
Well, you do what you like,
and I'll do what I like.
Ta-ra, everybody. Oh, and, Charlie.
Yep?
I'm glad you're back.
You've got lots of West End types
moving into the East End.
Yet the Krays want to be moving
from the East End
and dragging that across
to the West End.
They wanted to expand their empire.
They wanted to be more than just
a couple of East End boys done good.
The West End of London
had always been
a honeypot for villains.
It was a place of sex,
drinking clubs.
It was a very attractive place
for gangsters to go to.
This was a big shift for them.
What enabled it, really,
was the 1960 Gaming Act,
which legalised gambling in a way
that had never been possible before.
The twins had an opportunity
to take over a West End club,
Esmeralda's Barn.
They took it over
for a pittance of money.
It was lovely.
Yeah, they painted it all up.
They got me painting it up as well.
What we did, we put on
CHUCKLES
We put on tuxedos.
Black tuxedos with shirts on,
painting up Esmeralda's Barn.
We was smothered in white paint.
They took Esmeralda's Barn over
because it was upper class.
They weren't gamblers,
neither of them.
Ronnie just thought it was stupid
for you to go on a table with £40
and lose it.
And he used to call them dopey,
mummy's boys.
Of all the people to call people
mummy's boys, Ronnie Kray!
Erm, but a different mummy boy.
They're terrified to go back
and tell their mother and father
that they've lost, just lost £500
and he said, "But they've lost it
to me." Laughing.
So, you had a lot of people
who came from the higher end
of the cultural sphere,
so you had Francis Bacon
and Lucian Freud.
And a lot of them had been involved
in what had previously been
the underground
aristocratic gambling circuit.
So, one of the more prominent
customers at Esmeralda's Barn
was the Conservative peer
Lord Boothby.
Good evening, Lord Boothby.
Sound and vision on.
Tonight, this is your life.
He was one of the great
political personalities
of the 20th century.
Adolf Hitler had the pleasure
of you calling on him in 1932.
What happened?
Well, he I was led
across this long room,
he was sitting at the end
in a brown shirt
with a swastika around his sleeve
and as I got up to him,
I was pretty frightened,
cos I knew he was
a fairly formidable character.
He rose to his feet, clicked his
feet together and said, "Hitler!"
And I, for once,
rose to the occasion
and I clicked my feet
and I put my hand up and said,
"Boothby!"
LAUGHTER
Boothby had worked
as private secretary
to Winston Churchill
early on in his career.
He never had
the ministerial career
that he'd hoped for,
but he'd gone
from frontline politics
into journalism,
and broadcasting most successfully,
and became a household name.
I'm all in favour of general,
genuine, all-round self indulgence.
LAUGHTER
That's what I go in for,
and I think it's
absolutely splendid.
And I love it and I am a Lord.
Esmeralda's had everything
that he liked in life.
It had drink,
a convivial social atmosphere,
the chance to gamble.
And Ronnie Kray and Boothby
were united
by a common interest in sex
with young, good-looking men.
I was aware of Ron's h*m*,
because he talked openly about it.
Ron would boast about his affairs.
But he said, "It's all right",
"because I'm a giver,
not a receiver."
He was fearless, you see.
He really wasn't frightened
of anybody.
Or ashamed.
When he was quite young,
he spoke to his mum
and he said, Ronnie went,
"Mum," he went, "I'm not keen
on women in that way."
"What's that, then?"
He said, "I'm not attracted to them.
I like men."
So she went,
"All right, that's all right."
Didn't take any notice. She went,
"It's up to you, boy," like that.
She was very, very,
she's very broad-minded, Violet.
Very broad-minded.
Erm, I don't suppose his dad
was very pleased. Very h*m*.
One day I was in the sitting
in the kitchen,
waiting for Ronnie
to finish eating his lamb stew.
He's got a dog at his feet.
And, er, the door opened
and old Charlie, their father,
come in.
And the old boy said,
"Son, what I've heard
about you today,
"what they tell me about you,"
"I've never heard anything like it."
He wasn't actually calling him g*y,
or whatever like that,
he was just telling him
what they'd told him
in whichever one of the bars
he'd been in.
And Ronnie, he's got up and run over
and started hitting old Charlie
and they start having
a bit of a scuffle,
and the dog bit old Charlie
on the leg.
He liked me, big time, yeah.
He used to say, "Why don't you
come round my mum's for dinner?"
I said, "I can't,
I'm going out with my girlfriend."
"Oh"
Wherever he went,
people used to see him
and he'd sit there,
"Hello, how are you? Like a drink?"
Stuff like that.
And he'd sit there, put his arm
round the back of 'em, like that.
He would do that.
But I took no notice. Didn't care.
Ron Kray became close to Boothby.
He became close to him via
this kind of h*m* underground
that existed in the '60s
when their sexuality was ill*gal.
The pivotal figure
is a man called Leslie Holt,
who was a young guy
in his 20s in the East End.
He was, er, a boxer.
He worked as a croupier
at Esmeralda's,
sometimes a driver
for the Krays as well.
Leslie Holt was having an affair
of some description
with Boothby, yeah.
I remember a fella saying to me,
"Here, see that kid over there?"
I says, "Yeah."
He said, "He's been telling me
he goes up and sees Lord Boothby."
He said,
"And Boothby gets him to bend over"
"and smacks his arse
with a slipper."
Boothby started being invited
to Kray's private parties,
and they were notorious parties.
This is an extract from a document
in the MI5 files on Lord Boothby.
"Boothby is a kinky fellow
and likes to see odd people.
"And Ronnie obviously wants to meet
people of good social standing
"as having the odd background
he's got.
"And, of course, both are q*eers."
"Both are hunters of young men."
What happened was
Boothby, Holt and Ronnie
meet up in Boothby's flat
in Eaton Square.
Ronnie has also invited
a photographer to turn up.
And a number, ten to 12 shots
are taken with Lord Boothby,
Ronnie Kray and Leslie Holt.
So, following the photographs
on July the 12th,
the Sunday Mirror run a story.
"Public men at seaside parties.
PEER AND A GANGSTER: YARD INQUIRY.
"The peer concerned
is a household name,
"and Yard detectives are inquiring
into allegations
"that he has a relationship
with a man
"who has criminal convictions"
"and is alleged to be involved
in West End protection rackets."
Now, what you've got to remember
at the time
is that we just had the,
er, Profumo scandal.
The Profumo scandal
had nearly brought down
the government of the time.
And it was felt generally
they couldn't take another scandal.
They just couldn't take
another scandal.
The Conservatives are successful
in burying this story,
because, ultimately, it turns out
that the Labour party
also have an interest in burying it.
One of their own, er,
an MP called Tom Driberg,
who had recently been
chairman of the party,
was every bit as involved
with the Krays as Boothby was.
The Mirror Group paid £40,000
to Boothby, er, for damages,
even though the story
was absolutely true.
And at that point, the Krays
were able to spread their wings.
They had carte blanche to do pretty
much whatever they wanted to do.
The fact that the security services
have been investigating the Krays
as well as the police,
all of that was cast aside
for the good of the reputation
of the British establishment.
And I think that was
a defining moment in their career.
The papers left them alone.
The Old Bill,
nobody knew anything about them.
Whatever they knew,
they kept it for themselves.
Everything was going rosy and dandy.
They really thought
they were untouchable.
And in a way, they were.
But they just pushed it
a little bit too far.
Ron was always living out
his gangster fantasies.
And extreme violence,
ultimate violence, m*rder,
was very much part of that fantasy.
Cos that's what gangsters do
on screen.
Someone had to die.
Welcome to our World! Where we serve you cookies to ensure you get the best viewing experience on our site.
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register