14 November 2005

At the moment the Venue is looking a little naked compared to normal. Makes it easier to remember what a grand old lady she is under the make up.




South East London Gangsters (Click this for full article)

It's difficult to imagine that this softly spoken, polite man, with a dignified air and direct gaze, served 23 years of his life as a double-category-A prisoner in high-security jails. He spent time in Durham's E Wing, "the Bastille of the British prison system", where Ian Brady, the Moors murderer, was also locked up. Richardson was sentenced to ten years at the Torture Trial, in which, as well as the pliers incident, it was alleged that his brother Charlie had a black box that he would use to direct electricity through a victim's genitals. The sentence was added to the five years Richardson received for affray, after a man was shot dead and several others badly injured in a gangland battle at a Catford nightclub in 1966, when he was also wounded. Richardson served 11 years, many of them in solitary confinement. After his release, he went back into business - scrap metal and pornography - and was convicted for conspiring to import drugs. He got another 25 years. He served a 12-year stretch before being released on parole in 2001. Today, he is a free man. "I was a very naughty boy, a real bad lot," admits Richardson. "Macho man, that was me."