Stay Free - Russel Brand - Gangster To God - Notorious British Gangster Reveals How Christianity Saved Him - Stay Free #367

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00:00:17.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:00:30.000 Hello there, you Awakening Wonders!

00:00:31.000 Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand, and what a special day it is where we have the opportunity to talk about transition and transformation.

00:00:40.000 Many of you will have been following my journey of late, and this will give me the first opportunity to talk about those things in a new context with someone who's a little further down the path than me, who's experienced some very extreme Life experiences.

00:00:55.000 If you're watching us on YouTube, we'll be available there for the first 15 minutes, then we'll be exclusively available on Rumble.

00:01:02.000 Remember, you can become an Awakened Wonder, then you can join us for these conversations live and exclusive when they happen, as well as getting access to exclusive videos every single week and the opportunity to meditate with us and join our book club where we're reading Mere Christianity.

00:01:17.000 My guest today, Michael Emmett, has experienced a life of incredible extremes.

00:01:22.000 Extreme drug smuggling, extreme wealth, extreme addiction, extreme criminality and extreme incarceration before coming to Christ and walking a very different path.

00:01:35.000 Today we'll be having a conversation About the entirety of that journey, the important life lessons that have been learned and what we can all take from the transition from a life defined by material want, scarcity, longing and fear to the transcendence that is available to all of us on a journey of faith that Michael has undertaken and that I am with trepidation, vulnerability and I pray humility undertaking myself.

00:02:02.000 Michael, thank you so much for Thank you for joining me.

00:02:04.000 My pleasure.

00:02:05.000 That was a great introduction.

00:02:07.000 Thanks very much.

00:02:08.000 It was lovely to meet you the other day, participating in your podcast that you've currently suspended, which focuses, as I understand the podcast being Gritty Nitty, the journey of life in recovery, where you and a couple of other friends of ours in recovery from multiple addictions, our mate Tosca, our mate Mark Dempster, talk about various aspects of life in recovery, the challenges that people face.

00:02:34.000 You have an extraordinary Story to tell, in particular, I suppose, for those of us that have never been part of that world, the transition from living a life of crime, as they call it, defined by that what from the outside appears like ludicrous grammar, excuse me, ludicrous glamour, possibly ludicrous grammar,

00:02:56.000 I mean, you know some good slang.

00:02:59.000 And I wonder, can you, first of all, for those of us that aren't familiar with you, for the people who haven't yet read your book, Sins of Fathers, can you just tell us what your original condition and family of origin were and how you ended up pursuing what, to most people, is a pretty extraordinary life, in particular the various enterprises around smuggling?

00:03:22.000 Yeah, so early days, I mean, I've got, there's two halves of my family, yeah?

00:03:29.000 So one's my father's line and one's my mother's line.

00:03:33.000 So my mother, there was a judgment from me that one was really lovely and it was wrong because I've learned a lot about Um, spiritual stuff that makes me understand that we should not judge, because we don't know what lies beneath.

00:03:52.000 So my mother's family was like South London people.

00:03:56.000 They were flower people.

00:03:57.000 They were in the flower industry, Borough Market, Covent Garden.

00:04:02.000 And my father came from a very dysfunctional family, not out of choice.

00:04:08.000 He was extremely bright, extremely bright.

00:04:12.000 But there was a dysfunction.

00:04:14.000 They say my grandfather was shot in the Second World War.

00:04:18.000 He was slightly disabled.

00:04:20.000 And they called him Sticks.

00:04:22.000 And he killed himself by drinking acetone.

00:04:24.000 And they found him with the lining of his stomach coming out of his mouth.

00:04:30.000 And that was how my dad got brought up.

00:04:32.000 My mother got brought up in a family that were flower sellers. 0.98

00:04:36.000 They were old-fashioned.

00:04:37.000 Hello, mate.

00:04:38.000 Love the piano.

00:04:39.000 You know, that sort of bouffant hairstyle.

00:04:41.000 Full eyelashes.

00:04:43.000 And that's what it was like.

00:04:45.000 So we're talking about London in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, like, you know, so it's flowers and glamour and joy and tickling the ivories, playing the old Joanna, gathering around the piano on one side, but you described a pretty incredible darkness on the other side.

00:05:02.000 Am I right about the general era, post-war London?

00:05:04.000 Yeah, that's exactly what it was.

00:05:07.000 So we come out the flats, my father come from Battersea, Now, my mother's... My grandmother, I think she had nine or eleven brothers and sisters.

00:05:17.000 And my grandfather had sort of the same.

00:05:19.000 And they was out of Bermondsey, The Elephant and Castle.

00:05:22.000 But they were a fun family.

00:05:24.000 They were blessed to have sort of just kindness and love.

00:05:31.000 And they were really cool people.

00:05:33.000 Now, my dad's side, sadly, my grandmother Alice was lovely, but my grandfather, he suffered badly.

00:05:41.000 Now, I only learnt about it as I grew older and learnt about my faith, what the answer was.

00:05:48.000 And it breaks my heart that him and my father sort of suffered at the hands of that darkness, yeah?

00:05:54.000 And my dad tried to break out of it.

00:05:56.000 Now, when I look at my cousins, there's been a problem there, emotionally and spiritually.

00:06:03.000 But I grew up in the flats in South London, in Stockwell, And then I got taken down to Morden in Surrey when I was about six.

00:06:12.000 But I was impregnated with a madness at a very early age.

00:06:16.000 What were your dad doing for a living in that early part of your life to have the money to put you in what I understand was an alright school down there in Morden in Surrey?

00:06:23.000 Well yeah, yeah.

00:06:24.000 So my dad, he was a criminal. 0.93

00:06:28.000 He was a career criminal.

00:06:31.000 It was his career?

00:06:32.000 It was his career!

00:06:35.000 Stop it.

00:06:36.000 It was his career.

00:06:36.000 It was.

00:06:38.000 Excuse me.

00:06:39.000 War baby. 0.71

00:06:40.000 My grandfather, he used to be the rag and bone man in Battersea. 1.00

00:06:46.000 So my dad's duty was get up in the morning, go and get the awesome carp by Arden & Hobbs and come down.

00:06:53.000 So he suffered.

00:06:55.000 He used to nick early days the stuff out of Arden & Hobbs to take home to his mother to feed.

00:07:02.000 What is Arden & Hobbs?

00:07:03.000 Arden & Hobbs was a department store on the corner.

00:07:06.000 Sorry, Arden & Hobbs.

00:07:07.000 It's a department store.

00:07:09.000 At Clapham Junction, opposite the station.

00:07:12.000 So all the stuff used to get delivered there, the bread, and where he was up early to get the horse, he'd have a fever up outside.

00:07:19.000 So it was a nature to him, a survival.

00:07:22.000 And then he went to a very good school.

00:07:25.000 He went to university.

00:07:28.000 Back in the day, it was a technical choice, like a surveyor.

00:07:31.000 His dad had high hopes for him.

00:07:33.000 He'd run at White City for the England youth in the 440.

00:07:38.000 He boxed at a good level, but he had it in him to... He was dysfunctional.

00:07:44.000 My mother was completely opposite, so there was a mixture of opposites. 0.87

00:07:48.000 But somehow, the love that my mum had, He relished.

00:07:54.000 Four marriages, seven kids he had.

00:07:57.000 Now this part of the family, not to disrespect the other children because he loved them and all.

00:08:02.000 But it was an extension of his ego to prove that he had goodness in him.

00:08:07.000 So my sister Karen, she got the Bachelor of Arts at Liverpool University.

00:08:13.000 It was the happiest day of his life.

00:08:15.000 But I was like him.

00:08:17.000 Not out of choice.

00:08:18.000 Just out of choice.

00:08:19.000 And he was at it.

00:08:20.000 He had car fronts, used to sell car, you know, had a car front over in Endon.

00:08:26.000 He had a commercial lorry business in Battersea.

00:08:29.000 But he was a drug smuggler.

00:08:32.000 So it's like legitimate businesses selling used cars, legitimate businesses doing transportation, and one can see how that might align quite nicely with other aspects.

00:08:32.000 Let's drop that in.

00:08:44.000 It sort of started it.

00:08:46.000 Really?

00:08:47.000 Yeah.

00:08:47.000 I'm thinking like, so is this in the 19, in the 1960s and 70s involved in importing drugs into the United Kingdom?

00:08:57.000 So even while you're a little kid, this way of life, this business is established for you.

00:09:02.000 Not then.

00:09:03.000 Not in the 60s, but he was at it.

00:09:03.000 No?

00:09:06.000 So whatever he used to do, you know, he was around the infamous.

00:09:11.000 He was around the great train robbers.

00:09:13.000 He knew the twins, Ronnie and Reggie.

00:09:17.000 He knew Freddie Foreman, who was... Fred was his mate.

00:09:22.000 But also, he also... He didn't like the publicity.

00:09:28.000 So he lived quite cunningly.

00:09:31.000 He took his crime life extremely important.

00:09:34.000 He wouldn't be seen in the wrong places.

00:09:36.000 They knew about him because he could have a right fight, my dad.

00:09:39.000 He was a small guy, Irish descent.

00:09:43.000 But my sister and my brother, my brother died tragically, they were what he foresees as love.

00:09:52.000 Because he couldn't experience love, he didn't have the ability to receive.

00:09:58.000 And he could fire.

00:09:59.000 He used to do karate.

00:10:00.000 He used to run the course at Epsom Downs, two miles.

00:10:04.000 And I used to watch him, and he was such a fit man.

00:10:08.000 But he had the thing in here that I know about today.

00:10:11.000 He was impregnated with something that weren't right.

00:10:16.000 Yeah, a kind of a compelling darkness.

00:10:19.000 You've mentioned briefly that ecology, a crime that emerged out of London around that time, and for people that have studied, and that is a sort of word I suppose, that scene.

00:10:31.000 It's full, from the outside at least, as a simple observer, with incredibly colourful characters.

00:10:39.000 The Richardsons, of South London.

00:10:41.000 You've mentioned the Kray twins and the little cultures that formed around them, as well as the Great Train Robbers. 0.99

00:10:49.000 Indeed, I suppose there are Hollywood movies about the Great Train Robbers, about the Krays of course, on numerous renderings of their extraordinary life story, and the Richardsons too.

00:11:01.000 What do you, as a person that was growing up around that, think was uniquely interesting about those characters and about that way of life?

00:11:11.000 Why does it, whether it's American organized crime through the mafia and the sort of genre of films that has spawned, to London-based gang crime, or even Peaky Blinders and other regional iterations of crime, What, as a person that has been, is part of it, what has been in the past, been part of it, what is it about that world, do you suppose, that captures the attention at a cultural level of so many people?

00:11:41.000 What is it about those characters, having known them and been around them, that do you think renders them so magnetic?

00:11:50.000 Please, Michael.

00:11:51.000 Yeah, I mean, yeah, fantastic.

00:11:53.000 So, It's funny, because you teach children stuff, yeah?

00:11:59.000 Now, I wasn't taught to be a criminal, right?

00:12:02.000 In fact, it was opposite to that.

00:12:04.000 We wound up in Epsom.

00:12:06.000 But I used to see people... I mean, I was there the day Eddie Richardson came out of prison.

00:12:13.000 He'd come over to my dad's yard.

00:12:15.000 And I was about 17.

00:12:17.000 But prior to that, my dad's friends...

00:12:21.000 JC, Arthur, they was all renowned villains.

00:12:27.000 Bank robbers, blowsayers, prison escapes.

00:12:31.000 And it was like, it was if, it was presented to me like it weren't wrong.

00:12:36.000 They wouldn't talk about their crimes, but I knew they were.

00:12:39.000 You'd see them in the newspapers and things like that.

00:12:41.000 But it was bizarre.

00:12:43.000 It sort of emerged into my life and grew without going, oh, they're criminals.

00:12:49.000 Like, I lived opposite a vicar, and I knew he was a vicar, and I knew we had to keep our mouths shut, you know?

00:12:55.000 But I wasn't taught it.

00:12:56.000 It's funny, the subconscious mind... My sister knew about it, but she pretended it didn't happen.

00:13:04.000 My younger brother knew about it and he was a bright kid, he was alright with it.

00:13:08.000 But I sort of... It was like sugar to me.

00:13:12.000 I quite liked it.

00:13:13.000 I started nicking in Woolworths when I was a kid of 11.

00:13:16.000 And then when I sort of gravitated to the scene myself, against my old man's wishes, really against my old man's wishes, I got nicked when I was 13.

00:13:27.000 And he helped to sort my school.

00:13:30.000 We used to have a speaker there, down in Wimbledon it was, and it was Lord Longford.

00:13:37.000 I don't know if you know about Lord Longford.

00:13:40.000 It was bonfire night and all I wanted to do was mess about.

00:13:43.000 Because Lord Longford is known for reform and visiting prisoners in extremely notorious, famous criminal cases in the UK.

00:13:51.000 I think probably most notably people have heard of him because of his relationship with Myra Hindley, who along with Ian Brady murdered a bunch of children tragically.

00:14:00.000 during the 1960s and Lord Longford was known for bringing compassion, I suppose, under a kind of Christian edict to people and believing in reform and transformation, even in the most egregious forms of criminality.

00:14:14.000 That was a tough one.

00:14:15.000 So Lord, yeah bloody hell, Lord Longford then, so that's a person that you encountered.

00:14:22.000 Well, I didn't encounter him, but he was at my school's open day, which was held at Wimbledon Channel.

00:14:29.000 So there was about 300 or 400 kids there.

00:14:32.000 So I heard him, and I knew who he was because of my dad, and I learned a few things about him.

00:14:37.000 Excuse me.

00:14:39.000 There was always a judgement, like, they ain't no good.

00:14:42.000 You know, the vicar, be careful of the pine liquor. 0.99

00:14:44.000 My dog used to get out and have sex with these doggies and drive him mad. 1.00

00:14:48.000 It was hilarious. 0.97

00:14:49.000 Because we run the football team in the street.

00:14:53.000 And it was funny, just to cut across to a different story.

00:14:56.000 I met a fella the other week, the other month, down at the Blind Beggar.

00:14:59.000 I'd done a podcast there.

00:15:01.000 And this geezer come up to me. 0.86

00:15:02.000 I'd never met him before.

00:15:04.000 And he went, do you know a fella called... I won't say who it was.

00:15:07.000 He went, do you know a fella called Neil So-and-so?

00:15:09.000 I said, yeah.

00:15:10.000 I hadn't seen this boy since I left New Malden at 16.

00:15:15.000 I used to run the football team in the road there.

00:15:18.000 And I said, how do you know him?

00:15:20.000 And he said, look, I've got something for you.

00:15:23.000 And he gave me two videos of me and my younger brother when I was 11 and my brother was six on our chopper bikes going down the road.

00:15:32.000 I thought, my God, down the road with the turning we lived in.

00:15:36.000 And I said to this guy who I was talking to, I said, did they miss us when we left?

00:15:40.000 He went, not really.

00:15:43.000 50-50.

00:15:44.000 And when we went to New Malden, blah blah.

00:15:46.000 But Lord Longfoot, that night after his visits to the Town Hall, we went over to Wimbledon station And it was bonfire night.

00:15:58.000 And we got this old bin, what was downstairs, set light to it on the station.

00:16:02.000 So I was at a good school, but all the naughty boys gravitated to me and I did to them.

00:16:07.000 We got arrested.

00:16:09.000 It did set the station alight, but it weren't clever what we'd done.

00:16:14.000 Fire engines.

00:16:15.000 So my headmaster, who really liked me, Mr Fisher, Later on he got nicked for embezzlement by a fella I think that's why he liked me.

00:16:25.000 But I couldn't maintain the ability to concentrate in school.

00:16:30.000 So I excelled at sport.

00:16:33.000 My mum used to change my school report from a D minus to a B plus because I'd get in trouble with the old man.

00:16:40.000 My siblings were very bright.

00:16:42.000 And so, it started early days for me.

00:16:46.000 Woolworths setting fire to Wimbledon station, getting in trouble with... The headmaster did not want me to be in trouble.

00:16:53.000 He really liked me.

00:16:55.000 But, like, if I used to go, go and get the cane and book him, he never used to cane me.

00:17:00.000 He used to go, go out, rub on your backside, and I'll sign that off cane.

00:17:04.000 He really liked me.

00:17:06.000 You know, blah.

00:17:07.000 And so, the school became a bit of a blur to me.

00:17:11.000 I couldn't, I couldn't get it.

00:17:14.000 Criminal activities.

00:17:15.000 My dad didn't teach me to be a criminal, but I became one.

00:17:20.000 It sounds like already sort of quite inevitable.

00:17:22.000 And even in the first part of this conversation, we've talked about famous places and monuments to this extraordinary and glamorous, peculiar period in British history.

00:17:32.000 Notably, the Blind Beggar has already been name checked, notorious mostly as the place where Jack the Hat McV... No, George Cornell.

00:17:41.000 We'll be talking about not only the extraordinary glamour that that culture appears to emanate, but also, in my opinion, the fact that somehow ordinary people sense that criminality is institutional, endemic and everywhere, permitted for a particular class of people, Permitted for global institutions.

00:18:04.000 Permitted for the dominant elite class.

00:18:07.000 Condemned among ordinary people.

00:18:09.000 So perhaps in all crime there is an inherent Robin Hood element because we recognise how the game is rigged and how the game has set up.

00:18:17.000 Nevertheless, for none of us, there is no solution to be found in the material world.

00:18:21.000 So ultimately, we'll be talking about the conversion and transition that Michael has experienced while talking also about his prison conversion experience.

00:18:30.000 One of the biggest drug smuggling busts in the history of these islands and how that went down.

00:18:35.000 But we won't be talking about any of that on YouTube.

00:18:38.000 If you're watching us there, click the link in the description.

00:18:40.000 Join us over on Rumble.

00:18:41.000 Consider becoming an Awakened one that we get exclusive video content every single week.

00:18:46.000 This week, we talk about Antarctica.

00:18:47.000 and the extraordinary mysteries around it.

00:18:50.000 We've also had amazing conversations with Bobby Kennedy this week,

00:18:53.000 Dave Martin, extraordinary educations on the kind of institutional crime

00:18:57.000 that I'm alluding to here while we talk about the types of crimes

00:19:01.000 that tend to, I suppose, put hairs on end in Hollywood and excite people across these islands.

00:19:09.000 Perhaps because we know that the real criminality is taking place elsewhere.

00:19:13.000 Click the link in the description.

00:19:15.000 See you over on Rumble.

00:19:17.000 Michael, so how do you transition from the kind of what I identify with of feeling like you don't fit in at school and minor misdemeanors, although I've never set fire myself, to a public railway station?

00:19:30.000 To the kind of crime that has come to define your life and indeed your biography, Sins of Fathers.

00:19:37.000 How is it you go from peripheral criminality to career criminality?

00:19:43.000 I suppose in particular I'm very interested in the smuggling enterprise that led to the biggest cannabis bust in the history of these islands and a pretty considerable sentence for both yourself and your father and that extraordinary detail that both you and your father served the time together I think in the same prison. I'd

00:20:02.000 love to hear about how your enterprise reached those proportions and the

00:20:07.000 consequences of it.

00:20:08.000 Okay, okay Russell, lovely.

00:20:12.000 I set it up quite nice, didn't I?

00:20:15.000 Laying the table, all nice.

00:20:16.000 It's really cool.

00:20:17.000 Laying the table, lovely.

00:20:19.000 For the starter, the main course.

00:20:22.000 Done a little starter there.

00:20:23.000 And the dessert.

00:20:24.000 Yeah, very much.

00:20:25.000 The aperitif as well, which is alright as well.

00:20:29.000 So I worked my way through, I suppose I'd done my apprenticeship.

00:20:35.000 And I was in a car chase once, where I wound up in a wheelchair.

00:20:41.000 I was with a kid who was wanted by the police.

00:20:44.000 It was high end police chase.

00:20:48.000 I went to prison a couple of times.

00:20:51.000 I used to handle stolen goods, but lovely antique furnishes.

00:20:55.000 So I was learning the trade.

00:20:56.000 I was getting my elbows sort of scratched and my knees scratched and learning.

00:21:01.000 And it was something that I didn't have to learn a lot about.

00:21:05.000 I was unnatural to it.

00:21:07.000 And so when my dad, one of his, you know, he was involved with the five families out in America.

00:21:15.000 Counterpipe was a very well-known sort of man.

00:21:18.000 He's passed away now, so it's not to talk about things I shouldn't be talking about.

00:21:23.000 There's a man called Joe Pyle.

00:21:25.000 And they became... They were drug smuggling into the UK, late 70s, early 80s.

00:21:32.000 Yeah.

00:21:33.000 Well, it really wasn't really well-known then.

00:21:35.000 And it was coming across Europe, and we got involved as kids, like...

00:21:41.000 We set up some potato pitches.

00:21:44.000 We used to sell potatoes on the side of the street and the cannabis used to be delivered there and picked up.

00:21:49.000 It was a little bit rough and ready but I don't think The police and all that were ready for it.

00:21:57.000 Because it wasn't a crime that they focused on.

00:21:59.000 It was armed robberies and all that.

00:22:01.000 So it was a new thing.

00:22:02.000 Come out of the hippie days, you know what I mean?

00:22:05.000 But it was a very lucrative business.

00:22:07.000 So my dad was proceeding in that.

00:22:09.000 I was learning my trade.

00:22:11.000 I got arrested with that guy I just mentioned to you.

00:22:15.000 I wasn't really at it then.

00:22:17.000 He was.

00:22:19.000 I was in a wheelchair.

00:22:20.000 I got bail.

00:22:21.000 He went on to do quite a long time in prison.

00:22:24.000 But it was the trendy thing then.

00:22:28.000 If you was wanted by the police, you went out and lived in Marbella.

00:22:31.000 Yeah, yeah, that's a big scene all of that.

00:22:33.000 Massive.

00:22:34.000 English people, expats. 0.97

00:22:35.000 Absolutely.

00:22:36.000 1983.

00:22:36.000 All tanned and that.

00:22:38.000 Sexy beast.

00:22:39.000 Ray Winston.

00:22:41.000 Tight trunks.

00:22:42.000 Lovely.

00:22:45.000 You got any wine?

00:22:46.000 Excuse me.

00:22:47.000 Have a little bit of your tea.

00:22:48.000 I've just got a bit of a lung thing at the moment.

00:22:48.000 Thank you.

00:22:51.000 Well, you've got cancer, haven't you?

00:22:52.000 At the moment I have, yeah.

00:22:54.000 That'll pass.

00:22:55.000 Absolutely.

00:22:56.000 God says, by his stripes I am healed.

00:22:59.000 By his stripes you are healed, Michael.

00:23:00.000 Amen, thank you.

00:23:02.000 So, when, yeah, so Marlborough, so I'm in 1984.

00:23:06.000 I've just had a big car chase, I've been in a wheelchair, get a little bit better, slip down to Marlborough, arrive there, I'm about, in 1985, 84, I was, er, so 58, 68, I was about 33.

00:23:24.000 Now what am I talking about?

00:23:26.000 I was younger than that.

00:23:28.000 I was 1958 to 68 to 78.

00:23:30.000 I was about 26, yeah.

00:23:33.000 26 years old.

00:23:34.000 This car chase obviously didn't end well if it put you in a wheelchair, I'm supposing, legitimately. 1.00

00:23:38.000 I went through, my mate went through the window screen being chased by cops.

00:23:38.000 No, it didn't.

00:23:41.000 They said I threw drugs out of the car, but it was all nonsense, yeah.

00:23:45.000 Of course.

00:23:46.000 My mate was wanting for something else.

00:23:49.000 It was guns and all sorts of crazy things involved.

00:23:52.000 At that time, the police's focus, as you say, was more like armed robbery and like, I suppose, the kind of coercion-oriented crime of racketeering and such, rather than what you've described as the relatively new markets around drugs that you say come out of the counter-cultural movement.

00:24:08.000 New markets created people wanting cannabis and ultimately and eventually other substances, I suppose.

00:24:13.000 At that point, That's a sort of a nascent new market and a new sort of realm.

00:24:18.000 So is it, I suppose, after you've, it sounds like, served a little sentence for whatever was related to that police chase, you've moved to Marbella.

00:24:28.000 Can you tell us why and what that period is defined by?

00:24:31.000 Well, I didn't move to Marbella.

00:24:33.000 I moved to Marbella because I was wanted by the police.

00:24:36.000 I see.

00:24:36.000 Right?

00:24:37.000 I never turned up at a court case.

00:24:39.000 But I had been arrested prior to that.

00:24:42.000 I'd been arrested for cocaine.

00:24:44.000 They busted my house.

00:24:46.000 But only little bits.

00:24:47.000 They were looking for something big and they found something small.

00:24:49.000 I was very smart with what we used to do.

00:24:51.000 We were clever. 0.98

00:24:52.000 We acted a bit dumb. 0.92

00:24:54.000 But the education that I had, once the old man knew that I was sort of up for it, The education that he gave me to be, shtomali, shut your mouth, don't talk on the phone, you know, be... All sorts of things that he taught me.

00:25:13.000 On this time, when I got a bowel, because I was in a wheelchair, and they knew it weren't really a lot to do with me, I got a bit of bowel, and I absconded to Marbella in 1984-85.

00:25:24.000 And when I arrived there, obviously, people knew my dad.

00:25:28.000 And he had a bit of a reputation.

00:25:29.000 He was doing his thing in London.

00:25:32.000 Yeah, with the Joe Paul turnout.

00:25:34.000 Look, I wouldn't be telling you these things, but it's all documented.

00:25:37.000 You've only got to Google it.

00:25:38.000 It was in the newspapers.

00:25:40.000 It's not a kiss and tell with me.

00:25:42.000 So, I was out in Marbella.

00:25:46.000 I started to mess about a little.

00:25:47.000 I mean, Marbella and Morocco ain't too far away, do you know what I mean?

00:25:51.000 It's a gateway to the cannabis trade.

00:25:53.000 I see.

00:25:54.000 So that was sort of where I got involved.

00:25:56.000 Not only on a little scale, but something tragic happened.

00:26:00.000 My younger brother, He was such a beautiful boy, Russell.

00:26:05.000 He didn't have what I had.

00:26:06.000 He didn't have the madness.

00:26:07.000 Thank God it missed him.

00:26:09.000 He had the beauty of my mother.

00:26:11.000 And he came out because my grandfather was dying, my mother's father.

00:26:15.000 He'd come out to be with me because my grandfather was extremely close to me.

00:26:21.000 We wound up on the cocaine.

00:26:23.000 We was out with Charlie Wilson, the great train robber.

00:26:26.000 All people like that.

00:26:29.000 Was it an enjoyable time, all of that?

00:26:30.000 place called Pinky's up in Portobadoo with all the chaps, one up on the trumpet on the cocaine. 0.99

00:26:38.000 Was it an enjoyable time all of that because I know that you're in recovery from substances

00:26:42.000 so I wonder what it was like actually, were there high times that were joyful, that it was

00:26:49.000 hedonistic and pleasurable, that it was working for you?

00:26:52.000 You keep making reference to the darkness a kind of which I suppose in one way you could look at

00:26:56.000 addiction, in another way you could look at something sort of deeper than that I suppose but like in

00:27:03.000 This story is there like are we talking about in Marbella and leading up to this enterprise becoming criminally and financially significant talking about a part of your life that for the obvious transformation you've made and therefore obviously I guess look back at it with I don't know some regret or Was there, was it sort of, because for us outside of it, British people like me, that's a kind of a legendary scene with legendary characters.

00:27:03.000 the...

00:27:29.000 Was it enjoyable?

00:27:30.000 In the same way people ask me, like with all of the drug taking and the womanising and all that kind of stuff, people, I have to sort of go, I suppose there were minutes where it was sort of like I felt very sort of beautiful or powerful or impressive or something.

00:27:44.000 I have a different kind of take on it now, but what was it like, sort of, for you in that?

00:27:47.000 Like, I think of crime as its own show business.

00:27:50.000 Like, they say politics is show business for ugly people, and I feel like, I don't know, crime is show business for odd people.

00:27:57.000 I don't know what I don't know what a perfect analogy is but as you remember at that time there was a lot of crossover wasn't it?

00:27:57.000 I don't know.

00:28:03.000 Like you mentioned like how the Krays were mixing with aristocrats and like famous people and Ronnie Knight there was a sort of a co-mingling of celebrity and crime and like when you talk about pinkies and like people going out and getting on it and smashing it up and everything with the edge of it being not people that have gone to stage school wearing like little tights and tippy-tapping about in ballet shoes but people that are carrying shooters And tooled up the whole thing to me in spite of, I know it's part of the conversion experience of like, oh, then we done this, then we done that and we was all on it.

00:28:37.000 No, that was wrong.

00:28:37.000 That was wrong.

00:28:38.000 Oh, I look back on that with great regret.

00:28:40.000 You know, it's sort of an interesting part of any story, I think.

00:28:43.000 So like, was it sort of joyful or did it somehow, what did it feel like to be on the inside of that little bit, mate?

00:28:49.000 I love cannabis.

00:28:50.000 I love cannabis.

00:28:52.000 Cocaine weren't my friend.

00:28:54.000 Cocaine had me early days.

00:28:56.000 I had a period I'll be a bit posh.

00:28:59.000 It's crack, but it was called freebass.

00:29:01.000 So I got into that a little bit.

00:29:04.000 Drinking I was sweet with.

00:29:05.000 Ecstasy I loved. 0.99

00:29:06.000 But that cocaine used to drive me to dirty sex. 0.97

00:29:13.000 I'm sorry. 0.96

00:29:14.000 I don't mean to be rude. 0.98

00:29:15.000 Not dirty women. 1.00

00:29:16.000 They were always beautiful women. 1.00

00:29:19.000 But it was the mindset.

00:29:21.000 It was the theatrical scene play.

00:29:24.000 And I used to get so high on that that I hated myself.

00:29:28.000 I hated myself.

00:29:29.000 But the addiction I started to realise, and I don't mean that rudely about beautiful, wonderful women.

00:29:36.000 I know that.

00:29:36.000 I don't mean it rudely.

00:29:38.000 But that sort of thing for me, I think I was shown early days that drugs, a level of, thank you Russell, the level of cocaine was a massive distortion.

00:29:50.000 It was distorted to the head, to the spirit.

00:29:54.000 And that night we used cocaine when we was out with Charlie Wilson and my brother.

00:29:59.000 And we went back to the apartment up near Lower Golf Course up behind the ball ring in Marbella.

00:30:05.000 And me and my brother had words and it was hard to argue with my brother.

00:30:10.000 He was a bit like yourself Russell, he had a right nice way about him without talking.

00:30:15.000 There was a niceness, there was a kindness there and I could see it in your eyes.

00:30:19.000 And I'm not massaging your ego, I'm telling you the truth.

00:30:24.000 That's one thing I've learned to do, is tell the truth. 0.98

00:30:26.000 I was just such a liar.

00:30:27.000 But I had to be. 0.72

00:30:28.000 My dad said, don't even tell no one your name!

00:30:35.000 So that night we had words, we was talking about my father because my father had met another lady.

00:30:40.000 And my mother was distorted, dad was dying, and this other lady was pregnant. 0.89

00:30:44.000 And it was difficult times, you know?

00:30:47.000 And we was arguing, we had an argument. 0.93

00:30:49.000 He left the flat, I went and got him by the ballroom, give him the motor of one of them old silly Pandas, like they was hired vehicles. 0.61

00:30:57.000 He went off to, it was a lot of different circumstances here, but he went off to Malaga airport, couldn't get on the aeroplane, come back, went underneath a lorry and it killed him stone dead. 0.61

00:31:09.000 And that was the news I was woken up to.

00:31:12.000 His girlfriend, who's a lovely lady, she's a famous artist actually today. 1.00

00:31:17.000 Can I plug her?

00:31:18.000 The Unskilled Worker.

00:31:19.000 It's great.

00:31:20.000 Her work's great.

00:31:21.000 What's her name again?

00:31:22.000 Unskilled Worker, she's called. 0.94

00:31:24.000 She's a very great artist.

00:31:26.000 I'm not just saying it's great art.

00:31:28.000 And very colourful, abstract, but it's lovely.

00:31:32.000 And so she was pregnant with my brother's son.

00:31:35.000 So she was three months pregnant.

00:31:38.000 I thought, again, the shame of the abuse as a child, the criminal activities.

00:31:46.000 And then my brother died, and I took... I blame myself.

00:31:49.000 And he died, and I had to go and see him.

00:31:51.000 It was awful.

00:31:52.000 It wasn't nice.

00:31:53.000 I had to go and see him.

00:31:54.000 Took him home.

00:31:55.000 I come back, got arrested.

00:31:57.000 Went on bail.

00:32:00.000 Got a... I went to prison this time, but instead of getting the eight or nine years what the other kid got, cos I was innocent, I really was, I got 18 months for being in the car.

00:32:10.000 That was it.

00:32:11.000 Come home, said I'd never do it again.

00:32:13.000 That was in the late 80s.

00:32:17.000 My brother had died.

00:32:18.000 I had three children by then with my Commonwealth wife.

00:32:26.000 We weren't getting on.

00:32:27.000 Drugs appeared again when I came out of full prison.

00:32:30.000 And I went back down to Spain, sort of the late 80s, and got at it again.

00:32:36.000 When you're working out of Spain, and you've mentioned this, the connection between Morocco and Marbella, how does this lead to this sort of incredible industrialized smuggling that ultimately leads to your arrest and significant And a significant prison sentence.

00:32:55.000 And what role do you imagine that the death of your brother plays in that?

00:32:59.000 Do you feel that the sort of sadness of that loss somehow, I suppose any one of them, any time anything like that happens it's a potential opportunity for review and for reckoning or sometimes we go sort of, it seems at least in your case, sort of deeper into the way of life that would ultimately have to end one way or another.

00:33:17.000 So could you tell us a bit about the impact of your brother's death but how you end up in, you know, the stories that lead to your arrest, mate?

00:33:25.000 Well, what I believe, yeah, I believe that we have parts of our, say, let's call it our soul, yeah, that As a heartbeat, it has a language.

00:33:41.000 It just doesn't sit there.

00:33:43.000 And it's a spiritual part of our being.

00:33:45.000 And I dirtied mine with the sex abuse on me.

00:33:49.000 How I acted out from that.

00:33:52.000 I wasn't in the moment ever.

00:33:55.000 I was always down the road or behind.

00:33:59.000 I had such an active mind.

00:34:03.000 I can imagine my siblings did, but theirs was bright.

00:34:06.000 Mine was mad.

00:34:07.000 It was like a full-on... It never stopped.

00:34:10.000 It was like a locomotive train.

00:34:13.000 So the consequences of my brother dying really, really messed me up.

00:34:18.000 And it enlargened...

00:34:21.000 The gaping wound that previous life circumstances have been inflicted on me plus the sins of the fathers I believe I was born with.

00:34:31.000 So it was the impregnation of my grandfather's sin.

00:34:34.000 It's biblical.

00:34:35.000 Yeah.

00:34:36.000 It's very biblical.

00:34:38.000 So I've had a big fight on my hands to beat that with the power of God.

00:34:42.000 So all of that, the excitement of being involved.

00:34:48.000 I took to it like duck to water being a criminal.

00:34:51.000 It was right up my street.

00:34:52.000 I loved it.

00:34:54.000 But I was never content with anything I had, only my children.

00:35:00.000 It's only my children.

00:35:01.000 So when I went back down to Spain, I was a broken vessel.

00:35:06.000 That was when I had the first dishonest relationship which hurt my mother of my children with a girlfriend that we knew, the mental illness, the broken The broken spirit, the broken soul, which was dirty. 0.92

00:35:22.000 I went down to Spain again in the late 80s.

00:35:25.000 One reason was to recover, because I'd caused absolute murders with my behaviour towards women. 0.63

00:35:31.000 And as much as Michael was likeable, the darkness was making him sort of an unsavoury character.

00:35:38.000 But where I was lively, I was very theatrical.

00:35:41.000 And people used to like... And I was a good money owner, right?

00:35:45.000 Money used to find me.

00:35:47.000 Al, what is this ingenuity that's required?

00:35:49.000 What's the difference between a successful drug smuggler and unsuccessful ones?

00:35:52.000 What's the difference between people that can participate in organisations that generate great revenue and those that fall at the first pitfalls?

00:35:59.000 What kind of relationships do you have to form?

00:36:01.000 What kind of decisions do you have to make?

00:36:02.000 What is the kind of opposition that you're facing?

00:36:05.000 And how did your skill set enable you to manoeuvre your way through what sounds like a lot of strategic difficulties?

00:36:10.000 Very difficult.

00:36:11.000 I think my dad opened a lot of doors.

00:36:14.000 But maybe where my brother and sister was intelligent, my intelligence might have been there.

00:36:21.000 I talked to it like ducks with water.

00:36:23.000 I was as game as you like, but a mixture of an opposite.

00:36:27.000 I was fearless but fearful.

00:36:29.000 I wasn't frightened of the obvious.

00:36:31.000 I was frightened of little mice and things like that.

00:36:34.000 But I wasn't frightened of the big giants.

00:36:38.000 It was a very confused dilemma.

00:36:41.000 Seriously, how I'm here to even speak properly, I had levels of mental illness that I think would have blown schizophrenia out of the water.

00:36:52.000 That's when I realised it wasn't the common illness of a cold, schizophrenia, which we call it.

00:36:58.000 I started to realise.

00:37:00.000 I used to call my grandfather the devil on two sticks.

00:37:04.000 And I started to become aware that there was something that was, I know this might sound a bit weird, was living in me that had a voice.

00:37:13.000 And it weren't me talking, it was something dark and I used to energize from it or feel bad about it.

00:37:20.000 So I'm juggling, right?

00:37:22.000 And I'm not being flash, I'm not a bad looking kid, so that helped me a little bit.

00:37:27.000 I had a notorious father, so that helped me a little bit.

00:37:30.000 But I turned up, I don't know why I was good at it, but I was.

00:37:36.000 I used to attract people.

00:37:38.000 People used to get on with me and they thought things... I didn't realise I was a broken vessel.

00:37:42.000 I was a broken vessel.

00:37:44.000 And I just got activated down in Spain again, met the right people, and smuggled a copious amount of...

00:37:53.000 Cannabis into the English quarters, in all they say it was about, it was more than five tonne.

00:38:01.000 More than five tonne.

00:38:02.000 How do you organise that?

00:38:03.000 Do you have to go to Morocco and talk to the people that are producing it? 0.84

00:38:07.000 How do you strategise the means for transportation?

00:38:10.000 How do you ensure that it's undertaken safely?

00:38:12.000 And who's sorting out the routes?

00:38:14.000 What kind of relationships you've got to have?

00:38:16.000 Right, so the relationship, I suppose my dad went before me.

00:38:20.000 So my apprenticeship was made a little bit easy.

00:38:23.000 So the environment... My dad was old school.

00:38:27.000 So there's people like, and he won't mind me mentioning it, he won't like me telling you this, he was 100 three days ago and he got a telegraph from the King.

00:38:38.000 No way!

00:38:39.000 Yeah, and I thought, God, you know, he got a telegraph.

00:38:43.000 And he was a big influence in my criminal life.

00:38:46.000 And he was Billy Hill's front man for the illegal gambling that went on.

00:38:51.000 It was called the Chemi Games.

00:38:53.000 In the 60s, there was Lord Lucan, Sir John Aspinall, Sir John Goldsmith, I believe, Annabelle's that people.

00:39:03.000 Yeah, James Goldsmith.

00:39:04.000 James Goldsmith.

00:39:06.000 And it was a crooked card game that they say they earned copious amounts of money from.

00:39:11.000 And Bobby was that, I was like that, non-violent, although he was a bit game.

00:39:16.000 So Bobby had a big influence for me down in Morocco because his wife lived there.

00:39:22.000 Yeah, and she was a pretty well-to-do lady.

00:39:26.000 Her father was a South African horse owner.

00:39:30.000 It's all documented.

00:39:30.000 Bobby was friends.

00:39:32.000 It's sweet.

00:39:33.000 Bobby's best friend was Richard Harris, the actor.

00:39:36.000 So Bobby's equilibrium in the crooked life and the famous life, the celebrity life, he handled it well.

00:39:44.000 And there's a story about Bobby.

00:39:46.000 So he was the introduction.

00:39:48.000 Again, doors was opened.

00:39:50.000 Because they was high echelon.

00:39:52.000 They was up there with the big boys.

00:39:54.000 And so people sought their own transport out.

00:39:57.000 We worked on the sea.

00:39:58.000 We had a fisherman down in Cornwall, Devon.

00:40:02.000 He's a great man.

00:40:04.000 I wouldn't say his name if you couldn't Google it, but his name was Dick Fishley.

00:40:11.000 And when he got arrested, we got arrested taking five ton off a boat down in a place called Bidderford.

00:40:18.000 I nicked the tape out of the call room.

00:40:21.000 I've got it indoors.

00:40:23.000 We gave you what it back.

00:40:25.000 It's a call to the customs.

00:40:26.000 I'm joking.

00:40:28.000 So as they're taking the drugs off the ship, there's a lot of them, on a sort of heist, a wench, this sort of crane thing.

00:40:40.000 There's armed police there.

00:40:40.000 Bang!

00:40:42.000 And all the lights went on.

00:40:44.000 There was loads of officers there, because there was 17 of us there.

00:40:46.000 I wasn't there at that particular time.

00:40:48.000 And they went, you know, whatever they say to arrest you.

00:40:52.000 You know, it's customs and exercise armed unit.

00:40:54.000 You're being arrested.

00:40:55.000 He went, you hear it on the video in the court.

00:40:58.000 He said, oh, it's OK.

00:41:00.000 It's only a bit of personal.

00:41:02.000 Five ton of it.

00:41:03.000 So that was essentially you with a kid head, you know what I mean?

00:41:07.000 And it was fishermen involved.

00:41:09.000 We entered the waters down in Devon.

00:41:12.000 We were grass.

00:41:13.000 Who's coming up with all them ideas of like, oh, what you do is use fishing trawlers.

00:41:18.000 We did.

00:41:19.000 That's a good idea.

00:41:20.000 It was a great idea.

00:41:21.000 How are you getting it?

00:41:23.000 What's the route?

00:41:24.000 Is it having to travel over land at any point, or is the whole thing done by sea?

00:41:28.000 They do travel over land, but on this situation, if we can focus on that, it was a sea situation.

00:41:35.000 So it never came from Morocco.

00:41:39.000 And again, this is all documented in newspapers and Google it, so I'm not talking out of school.

00:41:44.000 It comes from Pakistan.

00:41:46.000 and it was a lot of it right and it's called the mothership and then it feeds itself to other ships smaller ships we were one of those smaller ships where we took advantage of a situation because we had a way into England if you ain't got a way into England you can't go out of the dinghy and get it so we had a way into England But it was on it.

00:42:10.000 The police was on it.

00:42:11.000 It was a worldwide organisation with the Americans.

00:42:15.000 It was organised crime at a high level.

00:42:18.000 That weren't us, we were just involved with that.

00:42:21.000 So strategically, what's the word?

00:42:24.000 Strategically.

00:42:25.000 Strategically, thank you.

00:42:27.000 The way that was, what they'd done, they'd performed that out on the high seas, high level, It was our business.

00:42:36.000 They're proper people.

00:42:37.000 It's our government.

00:42:38.000 But we have areas of level of criminality that represent really what runs the world. 0.92

00:42:45.000 They're all crooked.

00:42:46.000 None of it's straight. 0.98

00:42:48.000 And they call us criminals.

00:42:49.000 And they're at it badly.

00:42:51.000 I'm sorry, but they are.

00:42:52.000 They can't lie straight in bed, Russell.

00:42:55.000 And we accept it.

00:42:57.000 We have to accept it.

00:42:58.000 You have to be part of the game.

00:43:01.000 Corruption at the highest level.

00:43:04.000 So there must be corruption at the highest level for this to perform.

00:43:08.000 Now you're going back 30 years.

00:43:09.000 Everyone's, most of the people involved were dead.

00:43:11.000 I was only a young boy.

00:43:13.000 So I can openly say it.

00:43:15.000 They can't nick no one and I've done nothing wrong.

00:43:18.000 They've only got to go on the Google and they see it for themselves.

00:43:21.000 But it was the changing of my life.

00:43:24.000 It was the changing of my life.

00:43:26.000 What happened when that shipment is seized?

00:43:32.000 What's that process like from moving through the judiciary to ending up in Exeter Prison, Michael?

00:43:40.000 I'm nixed.

00:43:42.000 With a guy they nick me if they nick everyone coming off the boat was you on the boat? No

00:43:47.000 No, Nick them and then well, yeah, I was I was in a farmhouse about seven mile away, but they knew where I was

00:43:54.000 So three of us went down Because we lost contact by the by the by

00:43:59.000 Yeah, it was a mobile, big old mobile walkie-talkie.

00:44:04.000 They nicked them all.

00:44:06.000 Yeah, when I told you earlier about the fishermen, they'd nicked them.

00:44:10.000 We go down near where they are, the armed cops, allergen lights, barsh, guns, night sights.

00:44:19.000 Michael, let me get out the car and put your hand above your head.

00:44:22.000 Now, the addicts in me, I did not give a monkeys.

00:44:28.000 So I'm frightened of mice, but I ain't frightened here.

00:44:31.000 And I'll get out and challenge it as if I'm some sort of... But I wasn't.

00:44:35.000 It weren't a roleplay.

00:44:36.000 I just didn't give a monkeys.

00:44:40.000 Weirdly, it's that mixture of the fearless, fearful character that had operated up to 34 years of his life, and it was tiring, Russell.

00:44:51.000 And I had to be fixed all the time, because this gaping hole needed either sex, In the wrong places. 1.00

00:44:59.000 Drugs.

00:45:00.000 And I had three children who I absolutely adored.

00:45:00.000 Money.

00:45:04.000 Wonderful women in my life.

00:45:06.000 But it was never enough.

00:45:08.000 I didn't do normal.

00:45:09.000 I didn't do natural.

00:45:11.000 I'd done madness throughout my life.

00:45:13.000 And I hated it.

00:45:15.000 And there was this glimmer of something, love and all that.

00:45:17.000 And when I got arrested, gun to the floor, I was very sort of angry.

00:45:22.000 I wasn't being taken easy.

00:45:24.000 And, um...

00:45:28.000 And then when he got me on the floor, he put a gun to my head or near my head.

00:45:31.000 He said, I've been looking for you.

00:45:33.000 I've been following you for 18 months, which I knew they had been.

00:45:36.000 It's quite, it's quite an in-depth story.

00:45:38.000 It's quite, there's a glamorous story down in my bed of all this as well.

00:45:42.000 Houses and cars and boats and women, whatever. 0.98

00:45:46.000 And excuse me, he said, a penny for your thoughts.

00:45:49.000 And I looked at him and a tear come out of my eye.

00:45:53.000 I don't think he could believe it.

00:45:54.000 And I said, I told him to F off.

00:45:57.000 And he said, a penny for your thoughts.

00:45:59.000 I said, my three children.

00:46:00.000 And I was heartbroken about my kids.

00:46:03.000 I wouldn't give them my name and address for two days. 0.83

00:46:06.000 It's all these mad fishermen. 0.90

00:46:07.000 They got all the puff. 0.89

00:46:09.000 They're all celebrating.

00:46:11.000 It's a big coup.

00:46:12.000 But they've strategically nicked everyone around the world over the last two days.

00:46:18.000 It was loads of it they nicked.

00:46:20.000 It was organised crime at the highest level.

00:46:23.000 Organised crime. 0.99

00:46:25.000 And I was part of it, this mad addict.

00:46:27.000 I sort of loved it, really, to be honest with you.

00:46:30.000 And I shouldn't have gone to Exeter.

00:46:32.000 I should have been a CA prisoner.

00:46:33.000 I went to Exeter.

00:46:35.000 And that's when the conversion took place.

00:46:38.000 Oh.

00:46:39.000 Samantha Fox was a friend of... Samantha Fox in the UK was like a glamour girl, she was a thing called page three girls. 0.99

00:46:46.000 In the 1980s, newspapers used to have, for no reason at all really, when you think about it she was mad now, a naked woman on the second page of the newspaper, front page, but there's a war in the Falklands, page three, look at this woman with no clothes on! 0.97

00:46:58.000 So how's Sam Fox involved?

00:47:01.000 My then wife, I'd since I'd left Tracy and the children who I absolutely adore.

00:47:06.000 I've got four children and eight lovely grandchildren and two lovely ex-wives.

00:47:12.000 So the girl I married down in Spain when I was living there, her father was a restaurateur owner.

00:47:18.000 They had some wonderful restaurants down in Spain.

00:47:22.000 So I became part of that scene as well.

00:47:25.000 And it was a celebrity restaurant.

00:47:27.000 They should all go in there, all the football players, all this and that.

00:47:31.000 You know, all sorts of people went in there, from actors...

00:47:34.000 To criminals.

00:47:36.000 And it was Marbella.

00:47:37.000 Me asked, it was like, it was lovely, you know, lights and bum, bum, bum.

00:47:42.000 Lovely people.

00:47:44.000 And the darkness was covered by the brightness of the light of Marbella.

00:47:50.000 Marbella had a sort of a name to, you know, women and fun and Arabs and money. 0.99

00:47:56.000 And it was lovely.

00:47:58.000 But there was a crime element there, which was pretty big.

00:48:05.000 Samantha Fox was Daniela's friend, and she became a Christian at Holy Trinity Brompton, the home of Alpha.

00:48:13.000 And God works in mysterious ways, and I was very open to the supernatural.

00:48:20.000 The supernatural didn't phase me, because I felt I was supernatural.

00:48:25.000 I didn't feel normal, I felt really bizarre, this opposite of me.

00:48:31.000 I didn't know who I was going to wake up in the morning with.

00:48:34.000 Whether it's fear or fearless.

00:48:36.000 Fact or fiction.

00:48:37.000 It was quite a nutty time.

00:48:40.000 And God changed that.

00:48:42.000 And they introduced me to Holy Trinity Brompton where there was a thing called Revival.

00:48:48.000 Don't want to get bogged down in that.

00:48:50.000 But God was on the move.

00:48:53.000 Now my God is not My God is a God of creation.

00:48:56.000 The God who spins the Earth around in space.

00:49:01.000 We're moving around at a thousand miles an hour.

00:49:03.000 How's that?

00:49:04.000 People don't fall off in Australia.

00:49:06.000 How's that?

00:49:07.000 I ain't got clues!

00:49:08.000 Marvellous stuff!

00:49:10.000 The birth of children.

00:49:13.000 And I think God's work is perfect.

00:49:16.000 We're not.

00:49:18.000 The Bible is a book of violence, wars. 0.77

00:49:22.000 But they look at Jesus as if he's got white sandals, a tambourine, ain't that?

00:49:28.000 Look at Jesus on the cross, powerful thing.

00:49:30.000 But my conversion in prison was when Sam introduced me to a guy called Nicky Gumbel, who's a wonderful church leader.

00:49:40.000 Alfred started.

00:49:43.000 There was many little bits and pieces that created this.

00:49:48.000 But everything was coincidental, as they say.

00:49:53.000 And I gave him a ring.

00:49:54.000 You can't get hold of him normally.

00:49:56.000 And he sent a team down to the prison.

00:49:59.000 And some wonderful things happened.

00:50:01.000 What happened in that room?

00:50:02.000 Can you tell me about that?

00:50:03.000 The conversion experience?

00:50:05.000 Because I understand, like, your father's there.

00:50:06.000 Can you tell me about who's in that room and what happens?

00:50:09.000 Just to tell us about that experience, please.

00:50:11.000 Right, okay.

00:50:13.000 Excuse me. 0.99

00:50:15.000 If I bunny too much, kick my leg.

00:50:21.000 So what happened was, the preparation of a marriage, The preparation of a party, there's always a preparation.

00:50:30.000 To drug smuggling, to a night out on the tiles, you prepare.

00:50:35.000 So there was a preparation with Daniela and Sam.

00:50:37.000 Daniela wanted me, she thought it was a miracle I was going to get out of prison somehow.

00:50:43.000 So she'd done everything she possibly could.

00:50:46.000 And I weren't really looking for Christ, to be honest.

00:50:49.000 Addict.

00:50:50.000 But I always prayed to get my cannabis home.

00:50:53.000 Everyone I used to talk to, I'd say, stand up to God.

00:50:56.000 Like, you lying?

00:50:56.000 Stand up to God.

00:50:57.000 It was my... Everyone knew I used to say it.

00:51:00.000 So God was not unfamiliar to me, because my grandmother, staunch Catholic, she had so many pictures of Jesus in her bedroom, I thought he was a relative.

00:51:08.000 They was everywhere.

00:51:10.000 And this, so there was a preparation for this.

00:51:13.000 And they come along, Revival is spirit-led.

00:51:17.000 All this word spirituality is like the oxygen that we breathe.

00:51:22.000 It's the child being born.

00:51:23.000 They're all miracles.

00:51:25.000 The Red Sea.

00:51:26.000 So I think we all, you know, we try to Put Jesus in a box because he doesn't fit the genre a lot.

00:51:35.000 Yeah, I can't be a Christian.

00:51:38.000 Let me change the only way out so spirituality Was a was a thing. 0.96

00:51:43.000 I think I was searching for this dirty soul.

00:51:46.000 These guys rock up to exit a prison It was 26 of us in their prison officers my dad and it might sound bizarre this but People falling off the bottom of the earth in Australia don't sound bizarre.

00:52:01.000 We accept it, all the stars in the sky, but the spirit of God was in that room.

00:52:07.000 People fell on their backs.

00:52:08.000 It was quite bizarre.

00:52:10.000 Men were screaming.

00:52:12.000 They weren't Christian men.

00:52:13.000 They were broken men doing long time in prison.

00:52:16.000 And I have to tell the truth about it.

00:52:18.000 And it wasn't, oh he was out of his nut, oh he was in prison.

00:52:22.000 It was none of that. It happened to happen.

00:52:24.000 What evoked it, these events of people crying out and falling on the floor?

00:52:29.000 What is the moment where that...

00:52:30.000 Prayer. They prayed.

00:52:32.000 Specifically?

00:52:32.000 They just prayed for the Holy Spirit.

00:52:34.000 Come, Holy Spirit.

00:52:36.000 Now, I got embarrassed about it.

00:52:38.000 I'm not embarrassed about talking about it no more.

00:52:40.000 Because I had the view of the flesh. 0.99

00:52:42.000 Oh, shut up. 1.00

00:52:43.000 Are you mad? 1.00

00:52:44.000 You're out.

00:52:45.000 What is it?

00:52:45.000 You're in.

00:52:46.000 Another addiction?

00:52:47.000 It wasn't.

00:52:49.000 It consumed me.

00:52:51.000 With peace.

00:52:53.000 Hope.

00:52:54.000 And I needed it. 0.55

00:52:55.000 I was mentally ill. 0.96

00:52:56.000 I feel like I've been stabbed a million times in the gut and I'd stabbed other people. 0.96

00:53:02.000 And people used to like me.

00:53:03.000 I was like Marmite.

00:53:05.000 Love him or hate him.

00:53:06.000 But I found something that could make me complete.

00:53:10.000 I didn't realise at the time, but it started a thing called Alpha Imprisons.

00:53:14.000 It went around the world.

00:53:15.000 I was a broken man.

00:53:17.000 I thought you had to be a right proper man to be a Christian. 0.98

00:53:20.000 You weren't allowed to do anything.

00:53:21.000 It's done like that.

00:53:23.000 The grace of God is patient and kind and he took me on this journey and I haven't been a good Christian as the world would see it.

00:53:32.000 But God says, no, my grace is sufficient and I messed up loads of times.

00:53:37.000 But he keeps pulling me back to life.

00:53:40.000 Since then, you've been going into prisons all around the world.

00:53:45.000 I suppose sharing your experience and encouraging other men in prison to consider this path.

00:53:55.000 How's that been?

00:53:56.000 Has it worked?

00:53:57.000 It's been great.

00:53:59.000 Because they love the story of the drug smuggling and the father and the people I knew.

00:54:04.000 But the truth of the matter is, this God has changed me.

00:54:10.000 It ain't the cancer.

00:54:11.000 It ain't the lovely children.

00:54:13.000 I love my grandchildren.

00:54:14.000 I've got the best grandchildren in the world.

00:54:16.000 Beautiful.

00:54:17.000 Thank God I didn't have no sons.

00:54:20.000 Just break the curse of the germ that the emit.

00:54:24.000 And the emits are lovely, but they were just full of something bad.

00:54:28.000 And so when I go in there now and I still say the same things, I'm quite good at it.

00:54:34.000 God's given me a mouth to speak.

00:54:36.000 But the truth of the matter is, I was a drug smuggler. 0.91

00:54:39.000 I was a womaniser. 0.97

00:54:41.000 I was a drug addict.

00:54:43.000 But what is really beautiful is I feel healed.

00:54:47.000 I haven't got a nutty head no more.

00:54:50.000 I haven't got someone who wants to be fixed.

00:54:53.000 I'm not impressed.

00:54:56.000 I lost everything.

00:54:59.000 Listen, I went from whatever I had to being homeless.

00:55:03.000 Not that I was on the streets, but I lost everything.

00:55:07.000 But I knew it was God.

00:55:09.000 I knew it was God.

00:55:10.000 Last miracle.

00:55:12.000 I was outside South Kensington Tube Station where I used to live.

00:55:15.000 I had a house there.

00:55:16.000 I'd lost everything.

00:55:18.000 I had no money to get home.

00:55:19.000 I could have phoned one of my kids or a friend, but I prayed outside South Kensington Tube Station.

00:55:25.000 I needed £4.80 to get home.

00:55:27.000 I walked down the Apples.

00:55:29.000 There was no one there.

00:55:31.000 Borrowing the ticket, Walden, and the Oyster card machines.

00:55:33.000 I kid you not.

00:55:34.000 No one there.

00:55:35.000 It's impossible at South King.

00:55:36.000 There was a noise on the Oyster card machine, Russell.

00:55:39.000 And I walked over to it.

00:55:40.000 God is my judge.

00:55:41.000 I needed £4.80 to get a fiver, fella.

00:55:45.000 I ain't got a clue where it come from.

00:55:49.000 There was no one standing there.

00:55:51.000 The noise came.

00:55:52.000 It might sound mad, but it happened.

00:55:54.000 And I felt God say, it's not what you want.

00:55:59.000 It's what you need.

00:56:00.000 And I needed healing.

00:56:02.000 I needed it to be peaceful.

00:56:04.000 I thought I needed money, wine, women and song. 1.00

00:56:07.000 And I was an addict and I was mad and all that.

00:56:09.000 And today I'm not.

00:56:11.000 Today I sit comfortably when they say I've got cancer.

00:56:16.000 I sit comfortably being celibate.

00:56:20.000 I sit comfortably with you.

00:56:22.000 You're a big market name, but you're a nice man.

00:56:27.000 You are.

00:56:29.000 Years ago, I'd have been looking at, oh, it's Russell Brand here.

00:56:31.000 Hold up a minute.

00:56:32.000 He's fantastic.

00:56:34.000 And it don't feel like that, Russell.

00:56:36.000 And they're blessings.

00:56:38.000 Because I'm at peace.

00:56:39.000 And I can acknowledge life on life terms.

00:56:42.000 There's a chance for us all, son.

00:56:44.000 God bless you for saying that, Michael.

00:56:46.000 Is there anything you want to read out of there or anything you want to point us to to wrap it up?

00:56:51.000 You've got your bins, mate.

00:56:52.000 I've got my bins, I have.

00:56:54.000 And while you're doing that, I'll say some of the themes that I really like looking into there.

00:56:59.000 Because I like looking at what we talk about on this show often is criminality in the kind of institutions that have global power.

00:57:08.000 Our conversation with Dave Martin this week talks about how the League of Nations was set up to regulate the opium trade.

00:57:15.000 He talks too about how the WHO ultimately demanded amnesty from arrest from its inception.

00:57:24.000 You've got to see that conversation.

00:57:26.000 With Dave Martin this Friday.

00:57:28.000 In our conversation with Bobby Kennedy this is a person that's now running for president who has some interesting ideas about why his uncle and father are no longer with us and how those murders were brought about.

00:57:40.000 So when we're talking about criminality we're talking about sort of sets of regulation and legislation And as Foucault would have it, who has the right to kill and who doesn't have the right to kill?

00:57:49.000 The state has the right to kill, other people don't.

00:57:51.000 And who is killable?

00:57:52.000 Some extraordinary questions.

00:57:53.000 I also like the theme that keeps emerging of there being a sort of a second ulterior presence, a different force that is available to us when we choose to access it or when we are brought towards it.

00:58:05.000 And with that, Michael, to bring us to conclusion, I'd love for you to read whatever verse you fancy reading.

00:58:12.000 I'll take the opportunity to let our audience know that you can become an Awakened one day.

00:58:17.000 You can have one month for free.

00:58:19.000 We can cancel at any time.

00:58:20.000 We do exclusive content every single week.

00:58:22.000 You can join us and pose questions to our guests.

00:58:26.000 Also join us for our book club and our meditation club.

00:58:30.000 You can support Michael's podcast, Gritty Nitty, which is taking a hiatus at the moment, but I believe there's some other stuff up, and his book, which he's mentioned several times, in which he details his story beautifully, Sins of the Fathers, is available now.

00:58:41.000 We'll put links to that in the chat.

00:58:44.000 What are you saying?

00:58:46.000 Right, sorry, it's in Jeremiah, I think it's 29 But I can't find it.

00:58:53.000 I'll have a quick look.

00:58:53.000 But what it says, and this is what God says, you're a sweet young man, aren't you?

00:58:59.000 No, you are a sweet young man.

00:58:59.000 Me, Russell?

00:59:01.000 You're a sweet young man.

00:59:01.000 No, I mean it.

00:59:03.000 I hope you don't mind, but I met your family just briefly.

00:59:08.000 Wow.

00:59:10.000 How lovely are they?

00:59:11.000 No, I mean it, mate.

00:59:12.000 You're a lovely wife and children.

00:59:12.000 I mean it.

00:59:14.000 I don't mean to be personal, but I think that's the test of a man.

00:59:18.000 How much his kids love him.

00:59:20.000 How much his wife loves him.

00:59:22.000 And how I've taken to you.

00:59:25.000 You're a cool guy, mate.

00:59:27.000 Thank you, Michael.

00:59:27.000 Support this kid.

00:59:28.000 I mean it.

00:59:29.000 Support it.

00:59:30.000 Thank you.

00:59:31.000 That's lovely of you to say.

00:59:33.000 Those without sin cast the first stone.

00:59:36.000 No one can do that, son.

00:59:38.000 No one can.

00:59:39.000 So in here, in Jeremiah 29, and I think it's 11 or 14 or 17, but Jeremiah, and I will get it for you, God says this to all of us.

00:59:51.000 He says, I have a plan.

00:59:52.000 I have a plan to prosper you and not to harm you.

00:59:58.000 A plan to give you hope for the future.

01:00:01.000 And it's the Word of God that He means.

01:00:04.000 Prosperity is not money.

01:00:06.000 It can be money.

01:00:07.000 But it's to prosper our soul, our mind, our sight, our hearing, our love.

01:00:13.000 So love is an action.

01:00:15.000 It's what we do in love.

01:00:17.000 It's not what we do in lust or greed or pride.

01:00:20.000 And it's Jeremiah 20.

01:00:22.000 Can I look for it and tell you what it is afterwards?

01:00:24.000 Yeah.

01:00:24.000 Because you can check it out yourself.

01:00:27.000 But I just want to say it's been a right pleasure, son.

01:00:29.000 Oh, you're beautiful.

01:00:30.000 Thank you, Michael.

01:00:30.000 Thanks for inviting me.

01:00:31.000 I've really enjoyed it.

01:00:32.000 Beautiful to spend some time together.

01:00:33.000 Support this kid.

01:00:34.000 God bless you, Michael.

01:00:36.000 Thank you very much for joining us for this episode of Stay Free with Russell Brand.

01:00:40.000 Remember, tomorrow we'll be talking to Bobby Kennedy and the day after that, Dave Martin.

01:00:45.000 Fantastic conversations that in various ways help you understand the significance of the awakening spirit within you and within all of us and the possibility for change and the ability that we all share to unify and oppose global corruption together.

01:00:58.000 We will be back tomorrow, not with more of the same, but with more of the different.

01:01:01.000 Until then, if you can, stay free.

01:01:06.000 Man, he's switchin'.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - May 16, 2024

Gangster To God - Notorious British Gangster Reveals How Christianity Saved Him - Stay Free #367

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