U3A Vall Del Pop
On Thursday, April 4, after the General Assembly and the Easter Bonnet parade, Duncan Campbell entertained the U3A members with his talk on Crime Reporting – and ‘follow that’ he certainly did with and highly amusing talk.
Duncan began his lively and entertaining talk by describing an interview with Michael Seed, otherwise known, by his criminal cronies and the police as 'Basil'... Best Alarm Systems in London. Basil was the electronic brain behind the Hatton Garden jewel heist at Easter 2015, by a team of 70-year-old burglars, plus Basil, who got away with about £14 million of bullion and jewels, with a stash of bling worth nearly £6 million still not recovered. There have been many films made of this robbery, the most recent being King of Thieves starring Sir Michael Caine, amongst many other knighted luminaries.
It seems that crime in all its various forms is an endless fascination for the public. In his reporting days, Duncan explained most crime reporters spent hours in court rooms, with newspapers of the time publishing the trials in full detail - nowadays, they report only the start and end of a trial as online media has taken much of the newspaper circulation away.
Duncan believes people take certain criminals to heart - if there is no violence. The Train Robbers lost street cred by injuring the driver... but the Hatton Garden crew had no weapons with them. Gentlemen burglars! Some criminals gained notoriety whilst living in the Costa del Crime, as Spain was known, before extradition. Historically on occasions ‘criminals' have been used by the forces of good, as in WWII - safe crackers were released from prison to help the allies break into secure areas where vital Nazi information and documents were held. More recently, the appalling exploits of Fred and Rosemary West have been documented. Duncan reported on the developments of the search and arrest of these two at the time and said that the reason they - and other serial killers - were not found sooner was because they simply didn't fit the 'perceived' view of such people.
Duncan has written books, all available from Amazon and on Kindle
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