Twisted Roots

The remnants of the Kray gang - street fighters, including a former bare-knuckle champion from the cobbled streets of the East End, bank robbers, enforcers - used to come to see me at the office. There'd be a row of Rolls Royces and Jaguars down the side of the pub next door – and never a parking ticket for some reason. How did the wardens know?

Sometimes we'd all pile into the pub. They always drank sweet white wine. I don't know if that was their regular tipple or if they thought it was what I'd like. Interesting to watch how a gang of hard men stand around, the body language, the pecking order and so on. Once we had a journalist from South Africa with us. He'd been in war zones and should've known better, but he'd had too much to drink and began to get a bit cheeky with the faces, and I was thinking Please shut up...

Sometimes they'd come and see me in my office. One, the last man in Britain to be flogged with the cat o'nine tails, wore more after shave than anyone I've ever met. It preceded him up the stairwell, so you could smell him coming the moment he entered the building. I suppose it worked a bit the clock in Captain Hook's crocodile. Another would suddenly appear by my desk, having got past reception. He'd been behind Britain's two biggest ever robberies, so the security at Random House was not a problem. Villains like to be paid promptly and I remember this man rang up and said in his quiet deep, husky voice, 'I hope my cheque's coming soon, Mark. Every time I'm going past a bank I'm getting a hard on...'

Another villain – villain is what they call themselves, whilst 'gangster' is pejorative – was so powerful, so feared that he never appeared in any of the other books. He rang me once to tell me how earlier that morning a bailiff had come round to harass his neighbour, and he'd knocked the bailiff spark out with one punch. 'It's better than Viagra, Mark. Ho ho ho! The missus is going to get lucky tonight!'

A disturbing image of how sexuality is twisted up in our innermost nature with the will to violence. I've tried to show in my book how the sexual impulse is also entwined with creativity and – at an even deeper level – with the capacity for thought itself.

All villains want to publish books and they are all more or less boastful. My favourite title for a villain's book came from a manuscript submitted to an editor, a friend of mine at Hodder. I think the villain was called Patsy Manning, but at least I remember the title very clearly. It was

CRUMPET ALL THE WAY

Comments

[Matt Carter]

yes it was Patsy Manning who wrote Crumpet all the way.

I met him a few years a go, went to his flat in Birmingham, very intersting character, he certainly has a story to tell.

Some of the things he told me were unbeleiveable but i know them to be true and its a shame the book wasnt published.

[Linda]

The book was published in 1985 by Wheel and Deal Pulications Ltd. I think that there was a limited number printed, possibly one thousand. I still have a signed copy that I bought from Patsy Manning.

[Wayne Dann]

I read the book after a night out with patsy and a few friends of mine,it was a night to remember!! He gave me a copy of the book of witch I read and it was great fun. I know long have the book I miss placed it on my travels, But if anybody gets the chance they must read it!!!!

[lee]

i meet him also in birmingham a few times and had a drink and chat,,he also signed and gave the book to me...a very nice man.