It was, so the introduction to The Gold suggests, “the largest robbery in world history and changed British crime and policing for ever”. We are also told that the six-part BBC series was “inspired by real events” but “some characters and elements have been created and changed for dramatic purposes”.
So how much of the re-enactment of the Brink’s-Mat £26m robbery of gold bullion in 1983 is true – one former detective described it as a “travesty” – and why do some major crimes make it on to the screen and others not?
At the centre of The Gold are the detective Brian Boyce, played by Hugh Bonneville, and Kenneth Noye, played by Jack Lowden. Both are real characters. One former colleague of Boyce says: “The casting is spot on. He was a very professional detective. One of the best bosses ever.”
Noye, who is portrayed as a Jack the Lad character, was a cool, calculating customer who, having been acquitted of the murder of the undercover police officer John Fordham was later convicted of handling the stolen goods. He duly told the jury: “I hope you all die of cancer.”
What we do not learn is that, having served his bullion sentence, Noye came out of prison and stabbed 21-year-old Stephen Cameron to death in a road rage case in 1996, fled to Spain with a new identity, but was extradited and jailed for life, eventually serving another 18 years.
He is now free and the subject of a new book, A Million Ways to Stay on the Run.
John “Goldfinger” Palmer, who was acquitted of similar Brink’s-Mat offences – he duly blew a grateful kiss to the jury – was also in reality a fairly ruthless operator, who moved to Tenerife and took advantage of gullible souls, who were conned into investing in timeshare apartments.
“My abiding memory of him is that he was a very tight little fellow and hated parting with any money in spite of the fact that he had millions,” was how the late Jason Coghlan, a former armed robber described him.
Palmer was jailed for timeshare fraud in 2001, then murdered at his home in 2015, a killing for which no one has yet been charged. Of the actual bullion robbers, Micky McAvoy died just a few weeks before The Gold was screened and Brian Robinson in 2022.
Another former detective summed up The Gold as “great TV drama but absolute travesty of initial investigation strategy and police culture”.
As for the invented lawyer character, Edwyn Cooper, played by Dominic Cooper, there was indeed a solicitor, Michael Relton, who was jailed for 12 years for his involvement and who had represented police officers previously.
Relton was described in court by the sentencing judge as a “parasite”. One of his associates, who has been watching the series, described the lawyer character’s apparent obsession with money and class as “absolute tosh”.
What is certainly true is that some of those intimately involved in the robbery have never been caught, that some of the proceeds were invested in Docklands developments – and that Noye was very much involved in the Freemasons, as were many police officers.
Some famous robberies have, of course, already made it on to the screen. The late Bruce Reynolds, who masterminded the Great Train Robbery, reckoned the best representation of it was the German version, Die Gentlemen bitten zur Kasse, which was dubbed into English for the international market.
He described Buster, the film about his fellow robber Ronald “Buster” Edwards as “Carry On, Great Train Robbery”.
The Bank Job, which came out in 2008 starring Jason Statham and Saffron Burrows, was based on the real 1971 robbery of a Lloyds branch in Baker Street in London.
According to its publicity material, “millions and millions of pounds” were stolen but “none of it was recovered. Nobody was ever arrested. The robbery made headlines for a few days and then disappeared – the result of a government D-notice, gagging the press.”
All cheerful nonsense: four of the gang were jailed for a total of 48 years, £231,000 was recovered and there was no D-notice.
What was at the time believed to be the world’s biggest cash robbery – since overtaken by the Central Bank of Iraq heist of a reported $930m (£775m) in 2003 – was that of the Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent, in 2006.
The book on the case, Heist by Howard Sounes, has not yet been dramatised for the screen although there is much interest in it.
Another story waiting is that of Shirley Pitts, the Queen of the Shoplifters, and the subject of Lorraine Gamman’s book Gone Shopping. Two decades ago it seemed about to happen – a wonderful part for an actor – but the project seems sadly becalmed. Also still to be told is the tale of the cat burglar and “gentleman thief” Peter Scott. The film-maker Roland Kennedy, who was with Scott when he died in a care home in east London in 2013, is on the case now.
As for those criminals who find themselves portrayed on screen in a strange variety of ways, they might echo the words given to the gangster Legs Diamond in Harvey Fierstein’s 1988 musical of that name: “I’m in show business, only a critic can kill me.”
