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Never heard of Benny Strong?
Benny Strong is the face of London crime. But not one you’ll have heard much about. Now he wants to talk. He wants to talk about all the naughty things he got up to running with The McCowell crime family what ruled East London. About the night Telly Savalas and Yul Brynner come down the club. About running with Manchester United’s notorious Cockney Reds. About the time he met Princess ********. About Scotch Tam Davison’s car lot. About card games down the lock up. Back when potato crisps was made out of real oil, when Zebra crossings LOOKED like zebras, when the Thames flowed mostly through the East End, when Barb Windsor used to show northerners round her downstairs bidet. Benny strong wishes to confess it all. BUT HE IS NOT A GRASS. And he is not a nonce.
Young Benny in love:
“I met my very first girlfriend in the Streatham ABC. Cathy had this beautiful red hair, wore braces that you didn’t want to punch, had a basic grasp of knives, laughed when I said “now laugh”, and had this beautiful red hair. I afflictionately nicknamed her “my purse.” It was a joke between us but there was a serious side to it. She was always always aware of that. We was together for two years, from the ages of thirteen to sixteen.”
Weekend recreation:
“Up Seven Sisters Road it got very, very tasty. In the late sixties wearing a team scarf meant you was game for a ruck which, unfortunately, led to a lot of infants getting a kicking. But their dads knew the score. No excuses. End of chat. They’d all heard about The Red Army, which was named after the American military. We was the most feared mob outside of the mob, and even if the Italian-American mafia had come with guns we’d have brought it to them on the little side streets around Old Trafford (but probably not in a small Italian restaurant on their home turf, to be fair).”
Meet Benny’s McCowell crime family:
“We in The McCowells made sure there was no crime whatsoever in Manor Park and the surrounding areas. We did this by not committing any crime whatsoever in Manor Park and the surrounding areas.”
Meet the other firms:
“The Metcalfes were a different matter. They was south of the border, deep down in bandit country, and it was them was said to have introduced the words please and thank you to Lambeth. The Metcalfes was actually one fella, Phil Metcalfe. He didn’t have any brothers and that was tragic (too, he didn’t have any sisters, but he made up for that with a wide and treasured collection of aggrieved dogs). You see you was no one unless you was a family. So Phil Metcalfe kidnapped one.”
The grasses
“Some witnesses was people you’d known and it was the saddest thing in my life to sit there in court number one day after day, and watch people you’ve had a cup of tea with, had a fag with, taken turns to use plyers with, giggled during funerals with, stand up in court and tell a pack of facts about you.”
Hear too from those who lived in Benny’s world down the decades, the girlfriends, the Manchester grafters, the aristocrats, the visiting mafia, the prison educationalists. This Gangster is One of Your Own is nothing less than a social history of London crime since colour TV. This book has to be read to be believed. And even then you don’t have to believe it.
