I told him I could advance him his share of the Sunday Telegraph’s £150 fee and drove to Sanderstead with it. I remember Charlie being excited at having met ‘some lovely guys in Newcastle who had bundles of money’. At that time, I don’t believe Charlie had any idea what his newfound friends were going to put to him.
What I find nauseating, given the tragic outcome, is that those ‘lovely guys’ would have known within minutes of meeting Charlie that he was not – unquestionably not – a conniving drug baron, capable of all they later claimed he was. They would have seen the man as he genuinely was – amiable and likeable, but ineffectual and without two ha’pennies to rub together. Yet they pursued him, preyed on his vulnerability at a traumatic time in his life, to get themselves a result.
Like all Charlie’s friends, I found the charges outrageous – incredible – but that he’d been arrested for something was not really a surprise. I knew from experience that it didn’t take much for the police to show interest in Charlie Kray. Driving home after a party at my house, one of my wife’s distant relatives was involved in a drunken domestic row. Police were called and the young woman boasted that she’d been at a party with Charlie Kray. Three TV stars and a national newspaper editor were also there – among a hundred guests – but she mentioned only Charlie, and, shortly after 3 A.M., two officers arrived at the house wanting to know if he was there. I found it interesting that the young woman omitted to mention anyone else at the party, and wondered whether the police would have found it necessary to turn up if she had.
I don’t know what purpose those boys in blue thought their visit served, but it was a clear indication that, more than twenty years on, the name Kray still sparked police interest. And if further proof was needed, I got it in 1993, when a financier named Donald Urquhart was murdered by a motorcycle hitman outside his home in Marylebone. Charlie did not know Urquhart and certainly had no idea why he was gunned down. But he was arrested and questioned for several hours anyway. And, of course, KRAY BROTHER QUIZZED IN MURDER PROBE made striking – and legally safe – headlines.
It was grossly unfair, of course, and the next morning Charlie came to see Sue and I to ask if there was anything we could do about it. There was: we had to get some positive publicity. Fast. I rang the London Tonight TV programme, offering them an exclusive live interview that evening. They jumped at it and, shortly before 7 P.M., Charlie was interviewed by Alistair Stewart, who was clearly delighted at being handed a scoop on a story that had made all that day’s newspapers.
Charlie was excellent in that interview, very focused on making the point that, again, the Kray name was causing him problems. But, two days later, the soft, insecure side of his nature let him down after I set up an interview on the Richard & Judy morning TV chat show, which had a national audience.
We were flown to the Liverpool studios and all the way there – and in the hospitality room before he went on camera – I coached Charlie on how to handle the interview; urged him not to allow himself to be side-tracked, but to stick to the point – which was the curse of the Kray name. I could have saved my breath. The first question Richard Madeley asked was: ‘What was it like with the twins in the East End in the sixties?’ and Charlie was off, naively reliving all the oft-told nonsense again. I was furious and gave him a hard time afterwards for blowing a perfect opportunity to get his feelings across to millions of viewers. But that was Charlie. Whereas Alistair Stewart led him on the hard news angle, Richard and Judy wanted only the usual rubbish that had been in the papers on and off for thirty years, and Charlie did not have the hard-nosed confidence to steer the conversation his way.
It was this lack of arrogance and self-importance that made him so different from the twins. They were forceful personalities who always wanted things their own way, but Charlie was gentle-natured, easy-going, and never forced himself on anyone. While the twins would be quick to use violence if they felt wronged, Charlie would make his point with passion, not aggression. Like the twins, he was good with his fists, but never used them outside the boxing ring. His brothers wanted him to be part of the violence, but Charlie did not want to know and, much to their annoyance, tried to distance himself by moving away from Bethnal Green with his wife, Dolly. He preferred to stay at home with her, but, one evening – after much persuasion – Charlie agreed to go to a meeting with the twins and their Firm. After listening to their violent plans, Charlie went to walk out, prompting Ronnie to make fun of him ‘running back to his wife’. It was one of the few times Charlie lost his temper, as he told the twins what he really thought of their so-called friends. He tried to convince them to end the violence, but, of course, the twins never listened to him. What did their soft-hearted brother know?
If all the newspaper talk about Charlie being a feared gangster hadn’t been so serious, he would have found it funny. The twins had a reputation for ‘demanding with menaces’, but Charlie always had difficulty asking for money – even if it was rightfully due. When he was short of cash, he’d even get me to ring HarperCollins to ask about his royalty cheque, because he did not want anyone thinking he was pushy!
Charlie was well mannered and courteous, too, and, despite all that had happened to him, loved to laugh. It was this, as much as his effortless charm, that endeared him to women. Barbara Windsor, for one, thought the world of Charlie in the sixties – and still did when I arranged a reunion backstage at one of her theatre performances. She always talked about his ‘Steve McQueen good looks’ and, while I was collaborating with her for her autobiography, she confessed to being bitterly disappointed that he had not left Dolly to live with her. Naturally, I felt that readers of his own story would want details of his relationship with Barbara, but Charlie was so discreet and gentlemanly, in an old-fashioned way, that he declined to reveal anything that would embarrass her.
If you get the impression I liked Charlie Kray, you’re right. Indeed, I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like him. There was nothing to dislike; nothing at all. That’s why those Chelmsford Prison guards shook his hand so warmly, after delivering him to Albany Prison. That’s why Prison Officer Jenkins wrote such a glowing testimonial. And that’s why so many people from all walks of life, and from all over the country, were quick to go to court to speak up for him. He was a genuinely nice bloke, a decent, warm human being, who appreciated even the smallest kindness, rarely spoke badly of anyone and always showed respect, often to people who didn’t deserve it.
Sadly for Charlie, the positive side of his personality was not an image the media was prepared to portray. And, again, I have personal experience to prove the point. When the Sunday Telegraph sent a journalist, Justine Picardie, to interview Charlie two months after Gary’s death, I met her beforehand to ask what line she was proposing to take with the piece. She wanted to know the real man, she said, so I told her she was in for a pleasant surprise that would be good for her article: the person she was about to meet was nothing like the one she had read about, and she had the chance to get information he had never told any journalist before. Ms Picardie, all coy smiles and compliments, seemed most keen on writing something fresh and original on Charlie. On the basis of what she wrote it was clear she had her own agenda.
What appeared in the magazine was a sarcastic, shabby piece that, in my opinion, matched the writer and, more significantly, missed the point spectacularly. I’d explained that Charlie was broke and in deep grief over his son’s death, but Ms Picardie portrayed him, unjustly, as a cash-conscious opportunist, making a mint out of his brothers’ notoriety. She claimed he was marketing Kray twins’ T-shirts, using David Bailey’s iconic photo. He was not; he had never even seen one. She claimed he had a ‘practical involvement’ in the selling of the Kray name and was protecting it from ‘unwelcome outsiders, muscling in on the act’. He did not, and was not. In fact, at this time, Charlie was out of favour with Reg, over some imagined slight, and was not in contact with either him or Ronnie. Often, the first Charlie knew of what the twins were up to w
as when he read it in the papers.
The article bore little resemblance to what I’d seen and heard at the interview and I wrote to Ms Picardie pointing out her inaccuracies and the unfairness of her piece. Unsurprisingly, she did not reply.
I was angry and embarrassed at making a serious error of judgement on Charlie’s behalf, but he was typically philosophical: after all, he’d been living with a negative press since his release from prison. And with such cynical journalists continuing to put the knife in, he was stuck with it for ever.
How sadly ironic that the name Charlie bore with pride for so long should cause him such misery and shame.
How tragic that a name synonymous with violence should cut short the life of someone so gentle.
To everyone who knew him, he was Champagne Charlie – a true gentleman who would throw a party, but never a punch.
And that’s how I’ll remember him.
About the Author
Charlie Kray was the elder brother of the Kray twins – Ronnie and Reggie, who were jailed for a minimum of 30 years in 1969 for two murders. Both are now dead. Charlie died from heart failure in April 2000, while serving twelve years for drug offences.
Robin McGibbon first met Charlie Kray in 1975 when, as managing director of Everest Books, he published the first edition of this autobiography. Since then, he has worked as a sub-editor on the Daily Express and written and co-written ten books, including the autobiographies of Christopher Lambrianou, who got caught up in the Kray madness, Barbara Windsor and Eamonn Andrews.
McGibbon, who has also produced a Talking Book of his conversations with all three Kray brothers, lives in Kent with his second wife, Sue.
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Copyright
Harper Perennial
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This Harper Perennial edition published 2008
FIRST EDITION
First published in Great Britain by Grafton, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, in 1988. Reissued by HarperCollins in 1997 and 2005.
Copyright © Charles Kray 1988, 1997
This Perennial edition © Charles Kray and Robin McGibbon 2008
Robin McGibbon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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