Wannabe in My Gang? (32 page)

He walked into the hot oil the other geezer had dropped, and cos he was only wearing little black slippers, he stopped for a second, and then started hopping about screaming. I saw my chance and took it. Ping! I did him. Last but not least the cocky bastard with the chopper got it.

Courtney claims it took the police a month to identify him, but despite the seriousness of the attack he was granted bail. Eighteen months later, Courtney says that he stood trial at a magistrates court where he faced charges of attempted murder (which were dropped), carrying an offensive weapon with intent, actual bodily harm, affray, resisting arrest and actual bodily harm to a police officer.

When I read this drivel I could imagine impressionable young wannabe gangsters squirming with glee at their brave swashbuckling hero’s exploits. Most would be too naive to know a magistrate would not have the sentencing powers to deal with such a violent attack. If the details concerning the incident had been true, the matter would have been sent to a crown court to be dealt with.

Courtney claims he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three-and-a-half years’ imprisonment – quite remarkable when you consider the fact a magistrate would have only had the power to sentence him to a maximum of six months’ imprisonment on each charge.

It would seem Dave’s pen was mightier than his imaginary sword. Courtney says he served 18 months of his prison sentence before being released. The dodgy one then found employment as a dustman before applying to become a fireman. Courtney then claimed he appeared in court because he had accumulated ‘enough unpaid parking tickets and speeding fines to sink a battleship’. He set up a kind of criminal employment agency which earned him the title, ‘The Yellow Pages of Crime’; he worked as a DJ, became a professional boxer, fighting five bouts before ‘retiring’ (although he doesn’t appear to have been registered with any of the boxing authorities), fought 17 bouts as an unlicensed fighter and was arrested after:

I went down to Crystal Palace stadium. There was a massive athletics track event going on. I saw that the 1,500 metres was coming up to the last lap, with Olympic champion, Daley Thompson, leading. I dropped my pants so I was in my shorts and T-shirt. Then I jumped the barrier, ran out on to the track just as Daley was taking the bend, overtook him (cos he was shagged) and won the race. I ran off back into the crowd.

Courtney says disgruntled athletics fans remonstrated with him and he ended up assaulting one of them. For this, he says, he was convicted of grievous bodily and given probation. Quite a busy schedule by anybody’s standards, but Courtney’s most bizarre, almost miraculous stunt came at the end of that year.

It was the end of the year, though, which gave me the best result of my life. Tracey [his partner] had got pregnant as soon as I got out. No shock there really, we’d had a lot of making up to do, and on the 18 of December 1982 she gave birth to my boy. She was 48 hours in labour!

I am surprised Courtney was not shocked that his partner had fallen pregnant and had then given birth to their son in December 1982. The medical world would have been astounded and called it a miracle. Courtney had said that the incident in the Chinese restaurant had happened on ‘Saturday, 31 December 1979’ (which was in fact a Monday). He says that he was arrested a month later and bailed (end of January 1980).

Then, 18 months later ( July 1981), he claims he was sentenced to three-and-a-half years’ imprisonment. After 18 months, Courtney says that he was released. This 18-month stint inside would have taken him up to January 1983.

Courtney’s claim that he fathered a child born in December 1982 and prior to that had managed to work as a dustman, DJ, professional boxer, unlicensed fighter, head a criminal employment ‘agency’, apply for the fire service, accumulate numerous parking and speeding tickets and be put on probation for GBH, is, despite the dodgy one’s lack of surprise, simply unbelievable – he would have still been serving his prison sentence.

Then again, everything dodgy Dave Courtney writes about in his book is extremely unbelievable.

One evening in the late 1980s the dodgy one says he was in a pub called The Foresters in south London, celebrating a victory in a prize fight he had fought earlier that day. ‘I was really buzzing in the pub and buying everyone drinks and champagne and generally having a laugh celebrating. Loads of pals were coming up to congratulate me, slapping me on the back and rubbing my head, that kind of thing.’

According to Dave, there was a professional hit-man in the pub watching the gaiety and he didn’t like Dave being the centre of attention. No doubt he would have preferred everyone to recognise him and say, ‘Hello, aren’t you that well-known murderous hit-man? Can I get you a drink?’ Dave says that he went to use the telephone and the hit-man started putting money in the juke box which was adjacent to it.

Dave said, ‘Do you mind not putting that on for a second while I make a quick call?’ The hit-man just looked at Courtney and continued pressing the buttons before walking off. According to Dave, Status Quo started blaring out of the speakers and so he unplugged the juke box. When Dave did this, the hit-man ran over and started shouting, ‘I’m going to fucking do you! I don’t care who you think you are, I’m going to kill you. I’ll fucking kill you!’ Any man prepared to kill for Status Quo should not be feared, he should be reported as he is obviously not well. But this was happening in Dave’s world where strangeness appears to be the norm.

Courtney said he had heard similar threats many times before, but this time he knew the man meant it. The hit-man was led away from Dave (by a very brave man from the sound of it), but later that night Dave received several phone calls warning him that the hit-man was trying to find out where he lived. Dave knew what he had to do – and it wasn’t buy the hit-man Status Quo’s
Greatest Hits
.

Dave decided he had to shoot him.

On the chosen night, I visited a certain nightclub. I knew I’d be filmed on the security cameras going in. After a while I left by the fire exit, drove round to this guy’s, shot him before he shot me, and went back to the club. At the end of the night I left by the front entrance.

Eight the next morning, the police came round and arrested me (probably the shortest murder inquiry in British history). It was common knowledge what the guy had been saying. The police have one of the biggest grapevines in the world, next to the underworld’s. There was no evidence against me. It was all down to whether I grassed myself up or not. Well, that was a big ‘not’ in my book. And because I said ‘no comment’ to everything, they charged me. I did some time on remand. I didn’t tell them what proof I had.

When I went to court I just produced the video from the club which showed the date and time and me entering and leaving, and the witnesses that saw me in there.

No doubt the judge didn’t object to witnesses appearing midway through the trial like in Perry Mason movies. No doubt nobody asked why the dodgy one’s defence team were setting up television monitors for the judge and jurors pre-trial when no video evidence had been disclosed. No doubt the judge allowed the case to continue despite the fact the prosecution would have had difficulty giving their opening address and presenting their case to the jury because, according to Dave, they had no evidence.

Against all the odds, our hero was tried and found not guilty, but it didn’t end there. Courtney says:

When I came out there were loads of reporters there waiting for me. I was quite high profile and fair game for the press. The reporters all crowded ’round and asked me if I did it. I couldn’t resist.

‘Yeah, ’course I done it,’ I said. That little admittance was a bit of a bombshell, to say the least. Talk about hold the front page. They had a fucking field day with that one. I was even more high profile now.

What sort of deranged social misfit would confess to a murder which never took place is a question for the psychiatrists, I’m afraid. I certainly cannot answer it. I do know that the murder did not take place and I do know David Courtney has never murdered anybody, never been charged with murder, never stood trial for murder and never been found not guilty of murder. Whatever evidence is produced to disprove Courtney’s disturbing claims will be rubbished by him as he has probably convinced himself that he is a serious criminal by now. But I know the surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

Courtney says in his book that around the time of his acquittal for murder he got ‘into the acting game’ as an extra in TV and films. ‘I was in
Chicago Joe and the Showgirl
,
Bullseye!
,
Hamlet
,
Henry V
,
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
,
The Krays
and
Batman
,’ he explains.

The TV work Courtney talked about was when he had appeared in the series
The Paradise Club
which ran from 19 September 1989 to 21 November 1989 and then a second series from 25 September 1990 until 27 November 1990.
Henry V
was screened in 1989,
Hamlet
in 1990,
Chicago Joe and the Showgirl
in 1990,
The Krays
in 1990,
Bullseye!
in 1991 and
Robin Hood
in 1991. Naturally, the programmes and films had to be made before they could be screened on these dates and so Courtney must have been at large in the early part of 1988 and up until the end of 1990.

Despite Courtney’s unbelievable claim that the police solved the murder within hours, Courtney would still have had to spend the best part of a year on remand awaiting trial. If he got ‘into the acting game’ after his acquittal, as he claims, that meant he would have stood trial in 1987 or 1988 and the murder would have happened in 1986 or 1987.

The dodgy one will undoubtedly have an explanation for his young naive wannabe followers which will help his murder story fit in somewhere between these dates, but even that will not survive scrutiny when his other activities are considered.

Courtney states that his son was born in December 1982 and then goes on to describe his ‘activities’ in detail up until the time he says he married in 1984.

Following his marriage, he claims he worked as a doorman at The Queens, The Yacht Club, Tattershall Castle, Dexter’s, The Vibe Rooms, The Hippodrome, Equinox, Maxims, Heaven, Limelight, The Astoria, Stringfellows, The Gass Club, The Park in Kensington and EC1 in Farringdon. Courtney and his wife had two other children together, one born around 1986 and the other around 1987. Courtney says that he continued to work as a doorman and then from March 1988 until Tuesday, 22 August 1989, was running a club in south London called The Arches. Add his film career on to the back of his nightclub security empire and his story of murder becomes totally ludicrous, as he was by his own admission otherwise engaged from 1982 until at least 1990.

Courtney’s book was serialised by a national newspaper and received rave reviews from the critics. One such critic named Craig Brown, working for the
Mail on Sunday
, nominated it as their book of the week and described it as:

An extraordinary read, scary, eye-poppingly horrible, and yet funny at the same time. Dave is as hard on himself as on anyone else (well . . . most of the time, anyway) and you do get to see a savagely honest self-portrait. But it’s a terrific read and you’ll not regret buying this one. And if you like it, Dave’s ‘sequel’ comes out this autumn!

Review after review heaped praise on Courtney and the book became a bestseller. It is a pity none of the numerous investigative reporters in the media bothered to check out his ‘savagely honest’ tales of mayhem and murder. I thought that the Metropolitan Police, who had set up a murder review group to look at unsolved murders, would question him about his murder confession in the book but even they didn’t trouble him. Then again, they had access to his criminal record and would have known it was all bullshit. Courtney claims in his book that he committed another murder, this time in Holland. To ensure nobody doubted him, Dave named his victim, a man called Blondie, who had a friend called Mr Tan. Fortunately our underworld hero wasn’t apprehended by the authorities and the murder was never reported. What a guy!

Courtney became so popular, a fan club was set up for him. For £20 his fans are given a signed photo and a monthly newsletter, plus four times a year their names are put into a hat and the lucky winner is promised ‘a night out with Dave’. Courtney also tours the country doing ‘an audience with Dave Courtney’ shows in clubs and theatres. He was invited to speak to graduates at Oxford University and appears on countless radio and television programmes bragging about his underworld muscle and murderous deeds.

On various sites on the Internet, his fans are invited to hire Dave to attend their parties and open supermarkets, or to purchase Dave Courtney merchandise. On offer are:

A superb figurine of Dave Courtney standing 10 inches high. This is a must-have for any DC aficionado and we’ve seen them going for £120 in auctions. It is available in two different materials: Welsh Coal, mined at Tower Colliery (the last deep mine in Wales). Welsh Slate (over 500 million years old), beautifully highlighted in copper. £39.99 + £5.50 carriage (insured) £44.99 + £5.99 carriage (insured).

A life-size cast of Dave’s fist, with Dave’s trademark knuckleduster and bejewelled ring is the product of a live casting. It’s a must-have for every fan. Mounted on a plinth and with an engraved plate, it will be the centre of attention on your mantelpiece. £39.99 + £5.50 carriage (insured).