Danny Dyer’s career took off in the naughties after success with football casual film “The Football Factory.”
This led to his own hit TV show - ‘The Real Football Factories’ - that was more cringe than it was informative whenever it aired on Bravo.
But what may stick in the mind of our Edinburgh readers is episode five from series one that tackled the issue of football hooliganism in Scotland’s capital.
The episode mostly focused on the Old Firm with a rather frightened looking Dyer trying to amp up a derby that predominantly kicks off at noon on a Sunday.
However, the now BBC Wall presenter also travelled to Aberdeen, Dundee and of course the capital to learn about Hibs Capital City Service (CCS) and their long running battle with the Aberdeen Soccer Casuals (ASC).
Speaking on the show was Derek Dykes, an ex CCS casual who joined the firm around 1984 when his Leith gang joined up with other groups from across the city to form the CCS.
During his time with the casuals he was subject to over 30 charges for football related violence.
Speaking to Dyer, Dykes said: “Was made up of gangs from different areas that came together and I went along with a gang from Leith. When Celtic and Rangers would come, they’d park at the bottom of Easter Road under the railway bridge and we would drop bricks through the skylights and that's how I started.”
He stated that all away fans would have to travel down Bothwell Street just off the ‘Bridge of Doom’ in order to access the stadium.
He said: “This is the street all the away fans have to come down to get to the stadium. It’s seen many many battles and it is one of our favourite places for attacking away firms. Many memories from this street.”
But as well as attacking opposing casuals on the doorstep of Easter Road, the CCS would also look to take advantage of opposition fans exiting Waverley Station before making their way to the match.
Dykes says that often the Hibs casuals would be holed up in the Guildford Arms awaiting a signal from a spotter who would alert them to a rival gang exiting the train station.
He added: “We would be holed up in that pub (Guildford Arms) there and if anybody ever came this way then it was the perfect place for us to attack them from.
“People coming to Easter Road would say that one minute there were none of them and the next minute there were hundreds of them - like rats coming from a sewer.”
Dykes also said that the CCS could hide amongst the shrubbery at the London Road Gardens before pouncing on their unsuspecting victims.
Dykes said: “All that was important was the fight and you would get the red mist. You would always calm down after and think back ‘what I have done.’”
Bradley Welsh, who went on to be known for his community work in deprived areas of the capital before being tragically gunned down outside his home on April 19 2019 by a gangland hitman, spoke to presenter Dyer about being one of the founders of Hibs youth casuals - the Baby Crew.
The Baby Crew was a group set up of young people from across various gangs in Edinburgh aged between 13-15.
Speaking about being the leader and one of the founders, Welsh told Danny Dyer that: “I must've been a skinny little kid but at 14 I had won regional and national boxing titles.
“Violence wasn’t appealing to me but I was good at it.
“I was the running Baby Crew at 14. It was mostly made up of members that were around 13 to 15. We often did not want to run around with the older brothers and pals that made up the older mob.
“It started in 1983 and after a few years when we were all 16/17 we joined up with the older firm.
“It was 24/7 with the Baby Crew and at our peak we had around 200 young kids from around Edinburgh.
“I was arrested in Dundee and Aberdeen for violence at football during the mid 1980s.”
The documentary series also covered a couple of occasions when Aberdeen’s ASC travelled to the capital at the height of their powers.
The most controversial of the meetings was when a young lad, Raymond Morrell, was almost killed by the ASC after becoming separated from his group and as Dykes said: “some Hibs casuals ran.”
But in order to get revenge, the CCS attacked the Aberdonian firm with a petrol bomb in the capital’s city centre.
This incident marked the handing over of the crown for Scotland’s top firm with Hibs casuals running riot across Scotland throughout the late 80’s.
Welsh said that the Morell incident was a turning point and lead to the CCS and Baby Crew going from “strength to strength.”
He added: “We became the best organised firm in Scotland. Where other firms would travel with around 300, we would travel with a proper 120 group of good boys around the country.
“We began to travel to their place, often sitting in a pub in Motherwell or Aberdeen before they could even leave for the match. I remember we were once in Aberdeen at 06:30am in the morning.
“Have to admit that at that time we used CS gas, clubs, knives and petrol bombs against Aberdeen.
“It was a strong unit and a strong sense of camaraderie. It was called the Family for a reason.”
