We love a good cash heist in this country don’t we? Yes, Sir! It’s all to do with the historic and now non-existent lovable rouge element to the criminal underworld that goes back certainly to The Great Train Robbery, but probably to far earlier examples. Well, the legend of Robin Hood is a good starting point. When did that story start doing the rounds?
Look at Dickens. He wrote the character Fagin as a complete bastard, but it was only later he was portrayed in the musical versions of Oliver Twist as a quite favourable, if ultimately corrupt, character. People in this country actually like Fagin. I think most other societies would see him as the scheming, flee-bitten, fingerless glove wearing scumbag he really is.
So today we wake to the news of a £40m cash heist in Tonbridge, Kent. It’s where my brother lives but I’ve rung him, but he had nothing to do with it. He swears blind, Guv. He’d tell me if he did. Mind, he was at the airport… and did sound in a hurry to catch his plane to, where was it again, Moscow?
There’s no doubt that the perpetrators of this crime are a nasty bunch of people that you wouldn’t want to know, but the tabloid headlines this morning – although stopping short of praising the crime – did just report it glamorously, which underlines what I say about us just loving a bit of traditional criminal daring-do in the UK. The journalism won’t really concentrate on the fact the manager of the cash depot’s family were held at gunpoint and threatened with execution, something that will live with them forever, but sooner the fact that some chancres have grabbed the loot and given it toes into the night like a right pair of scally-wags. We just love crooks, plain and simple!
I wouldn’t be surprised that, during the obviously immense and frantic police operation to apprehend these people, they almost become folk heroes at the same time. The Ronnie Biggs thing. I hope not, I hope they’re found in some stinking bed-sit in Lambeth having spent four days in a blind panic.
The trouble they’ve got, I was informed by criminologist on Radio 4, is that the amount of paper involved is going to be immense and therefore their Achilles heel. Even if all the money was in £50 notes it would be cages of the stuff, and seeing as they’ve stolen used notes, they will be in mixed denominations and therefore far more bulky than that. Think of the weight. Apparently you’re talking about a lorry load. So where do you put that? You could dig a big whole in a field, line it with plastic and drop the whole lot in there, but who’s going to feel comfortable doing that?
The good point made on the radio is that criminal’s hang out with criminals, and therefore their peers are going to want to take the money off them. They are now there to be stolen from. They can trust no-one. And the only possible way to get away with this crime – which the independent experts they interviewed insist they will not – is to let the whole thing die down over the course of about two to five years whilst the Police exhaust all lines of enquiry. But to do that, they’ve got to keep quiet, and because criminal’s are idiots this is going to be pretty hard. They’ve got to carry on living their lives as if nothing’s happened, without any noticeable extra extravagance, and not breath a word to anyone, not even family or close friends, and not even after they’ve had a little drink. Won’t happen.
But anyway, back to the press coverage. I think it gets glamorous press because it’s an old fashioned crime. It’s essentially a bank job. The oldest modern day crime of the lot. It’s not happy-slapping. It’s not a racial attack. It isn’t internet fraud. It’s a dynamite-to-the-safe act of pure nerve.
I’m not completely against it myself, if I’m totally honest. The money belongs to massive corporations who have retail space in the mammoth Blue Water Shopping Centre. (Don’t ever go there, by the way. Ask my Dad, he has to.) So the ‘victims’ are all insured, they’re not going to go bankrupt. It’s not an old-woman’s life savings we’re talking about. But when I say I’m not COMPLETELY against it, let me make it clear I’m 95% against it. It’s the people involved that ruin it. They’ll be a bunch of Para-military criminals, they’d have to be to pull that off, and therefore not really be rogues at all. If it was a bunch of rouges that did it, gentleman rogues, who simply intended to spend some of the money on fine Brandy and give the rest back with a cheeky wink, I’d certainly approve. But that’s not their intention for the money, I’d hazard a guess. I think it’s more likely they’ll want to spent it on a bunch of mock-Tudors in Essex for all their family and a nice place out in Spain, right Babe?
They would be people like Ray Winstone played in that film, Sexy Beast. A film only ruined by the appearance of a certain Ben Kingsley.
I’m sure by tomorrow half of them will be arrested. The idiots. Why didn’t they steal Euros? They could have got rid of them! Once again I think we’ve demonstrated here that if only it was I in charge of large scale criminal operations in this country it would be a far better place to live, work, and play in. A better place for our kids.
Did a gig tonight in Manchester to a small audience that was made up of, largely, a group of aged blind people. I was told about this beforehand but had forgotten when I arrived. It was a laugh. They just chatted back at me and answered any question I put out at some length. We just had a chat. Sometimes my job can put me in strange situations.
I wondered why a group of aged blind people had come out on a Thursday night in south Manchester to watch comedy….? Then it stuck me – the perfect disguise. No-one suspects the blind. The clever, rich, disabled geniuses.
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