Psst, Scorsese! If you’re after a new gang film, here’s the script
Afew years ago, police in Birmingham were alerted after a man was spotted acting suspiciously with a carrier bag. This led to one of the biggest investigations the National Crime Agency had ever undertaken, and last night’s Busting The Drugs Millions (C4) told the gripping story of the nine-month police operation.
The man — identified as Jamshid Haidary — was put under surveillance and officers discovered that he was making regular night-time trips to an industrial estate to collect more mysterious bags. Next, they intercepted a van linked to him and they found £140,000 in cash inside.
The vehicle belonged to Larry foster, a known local drug-dealer, who was arrested. Paperwork uncovered in his home showed how millions of pounds had changed hands in drug deals all over the country. There were also numerous mentions of someone referred to as ‘The Controller’ in Dubai.
It soon became clear that this was an organised criminal gang involved in drugs and money-laundering that made the Great Train Robbers seem like a street gang of granny-muggers in comparison.
As the documentary unrolled, the revelations grew ever more startling. If Hollywood’s Martin Scorsese had been offered it as a script, he’d surely have turned it down for being too far-fetched.
At least 100 police officers were put on the investigation. The breakthrough came when they located the gang’s counting house, through which all the money flowed. It was a rundown shack where an Afghan man with nine children lived.
In total, he had banked £44million in cash at a branch of Barclays. More staggering was that no staff at the bank questioned his activities. Surely a cashier might have wondered that he was handling a helluva lot of money for somebody supposedly running a mobile phone stall!
In any case, all these millions were being channelled through a Birmingham money transfer company called Mian International. The owner of the firm faked records and invoices to cover the £180million he was laundering.
However, he made a key mistake: the forged invoices were not totally realistic — with one being for an implausible £5million consignment of three-inch nails.
At the end of the police operation, 32 men had been arrested, convicted and sentenced to a total of 140 years, although the ‘The Controller’ was never identified.
The meticulous, painstakingly detailed detective work made for fascinating television. Indeed, when too many programmes that should be 30 minutes long are invariably dragged out to an hour, this documentary ought to have been extended since there was so much story to tell. If there isn’t a queue for the movie rights, I’d be very surprised.
On a much lighter note, it was a welcome return for Brian Pern: 45 Years Of Prog And Roll (BBC4). for those who missed the first series, it’s a gloriously funny spoof about an ageing rocker. Comedian Simon Day played Brian, a character based on singer Peter Gabriel. Vain with an affected transatlantic accent, Brian is a former public schoolboy whose rock band Thotch was huge in the Seventies.
He claimed to have ‘invented world music’ and, last night, was promoting his new solo album, a collection of excruciatingly pretentious tracks about everything from fast food to Alfred Hitchcock. Shot in the style of a fly-on-the-wall documentary, we saw Brian recovering from a heart attack and sporting a new facelift and gleaming white veneers.
He’d also acquired an awful American wife half his age, called Astrid (fabulously played by Suranne Jones — last seen in the BBC1 infidelity drama Dr foster).
She butted in when Brian gave interviews, pointing out that he only wanted to talk about his work with Unicef and spouted endless psychobabble nonsense.
She installed herself as his manger, saying the previous one ‘drained the positive energy from Brian’s aura.’
Sharp, cleverly observed and very funny — let’s hope Peter Gabriel has a good sense of humour, too.