The Kray twins were arrogant vicious bullying thugs who thought they were untouchable.Their criminal associates were arrogant vicious bullying thugs who thought they were untouchable.They pedalled protection" to shopkeepers,publicans,small businessmen and club owners who were unfortunate enough to have premises in what they considered was their manor.An inducement to pay was often offered in the form of a tyre iron inserted into the rectum which tended to concentrate the mind wonderfully.They and their cohorts strutted round the Vallance Road Triangle as if it was the mean streets of The Bronx. They fantasised about joining up with the Mafia,but the Mob considered the Twins to be Toytown Gangsters and the alliance never materialised. Their sphere of influence was proscribed by other equally violent London criminals,but within its limits they killed and killed again.They had that total absence of restraint that characterises the seriously flawed personality and strikes fear in everybody else.But their overweening arrogance was the cause of their downfall.Celebrating their acquittal at the Old Bailey on a charge of demanding money with menaces,they sent a bottle of champagne to a table in the restaurant where,by coincidence,a detective was having a rare night out with his wife.His name was Leonard Reed,known throughout the Met as "Nipper".Outraged by their behaviour he went to his boss's office the next morning and proposed the setting - up of a Task Force to bring down the Krays for good.Within 3 years the twins were starting 30 year sentences. Those are the facts,but they must never be allowed to get in the way of a good story so the Urban Myths began to circulate.Today unless you either lived or worked within their area of influence your only access to the twisted world of the Krays is via the bandwagon jumpers who have been milking their sordid fame for nearly forty years. Forget the stories of "Respect".To the Old Bill and to their fellow cons they were known as Gert and Daisy. The film version of their lives is mostly a nonsense.The use of the Kemp brothers can only be considered as a gimmick,and an unsuccessful one at that.They have all the menace of a couple of day - old chicks. Andrew Rigeley and George Michael would have been more convincing. Miss B.Whitelaw does her best with the cockney accent but it isn't as easy as she obviously thinks it is.If,as popular legend would have it,Mrs Kray totally dominated her sons,I cannot for the life of me understand how she didn't give them a good slap when they first went out thieving.Her generation were great believers in "Spare the rod and spoil the child".If she had,Jack the Hat,George Cornell and Frank Mitchell might all be alive now - and one or two others they kept a bit more quiet about.I must make special mention of Mr S.Berkoff who sneers and snarls away to his heart's content as the man who picked a bad time to pop into "The Blind Beggar" for a swift half. Mr T.Bell plays the twins' older brother Charlie whose wife once bravely provided an alibi for a rival gangster up on a murder charge.She stated that she was in bed with him at the time of the alleged offence - a revelation that can't have offered her husband too much comfort. Charlie in later life claimed he was a victim of the Kray legend,blaming it for his subsequent conviction and heavy dose of bird for drug trafficking. They were clearly what would now be referred to as a dysfunctional family and a team of Social Workers would fearfully follow their Burberry'd progress through ASBOs to the Old Bailey. But Reg and Ron in their slick Italian suits and with their showbiz "friends" who in fact hardly knew their names had grandiose dreams and they didn't include doing bird.Even the briefest study of the works of Robert Burns might have given the pause for thought.
Review of The Krays
