‘He couldn’t take the pain’: gangster’s death prompts calls for assisted dying law

Brendan McGirr, Dave Courtney’s ex-wife Jennifer Pinto (centre) and her friend Angela Bostock at his ‘Camelot Castle’ in east London. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

When gangster turned author Dave Courtney was found dead last month in the east London terrace that he had transformed into a crenellated castle, it was not a shock to his inner circle.

Courtney, said to be the inspiration for Vinnie Jones’s character Big Chris in the crime comedy Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, had been planning his exit for months.