Frank was sitting in the motor,
he was my driver, old Frank.
He went, "What's going on?"
I said, "Tomorrow,"
I said, "at 7 o'clock in the morning, go and get Kennedy."
That was my sawn-off shotgun,
it was named after President Kennedy.
I said, "And I want one chamber,
one buckshot filled with rock salt
and the other one with the normal buckshot in, alright?"
Yeah? I'm not messing about with these people,
they're dangerous, I'm gonna shoot them.
People called me a gangster, I didn't like it.
One guy called me a gangster so I stuck a gun in his mouth
and educated him that I weren't a gangster.
And I said, "Look, I'm a businessman
and my business is crime."
TASHI: Tell me about your childhood.
Well, my family was all straight goers,
I was the one who corrupted 'em all
'cause they'd never seen so much money as I was earning.
So, they was all straight guys,
my dad was a builder, my mum was a stay-at-home mum,
like, she had eight kids.
I was the baby so I got spoilt.
And I went to good schools, I went to grammar.
And two bent Old Bill from Stoke Newington,
I was walking through a park,
couple of my old school friends,
one of them let off a starting pistol.
So the two coppers come in
and they started getting heavy with 'em,
and I went, "Oi, you can't do that."
I said, "You've gotta have a responsible adult,
you know, there."
He went, "What are you, a lawyer?"
I said, "No, but I know my rights."
And he went, "Okay."
Walked out, they come back,
threw a razor on the floor, a cut-throat,
and he went, "We're nicking you, that come out your pocket."
I went, "What you talking about?"
So they nicked me,
took me to Stoke Newington.
He said, "They said, if you plead guilty,
it'll be a ten bob fine.
If you don't plead guilty and you go up the steps," he said,
"you're gonna get borstal for that."
So I done guilty.
When I've gone back to work,
of course they've read it in the newspaper, I lost my job.
And with a criminal record, it was very hard
to get another job.
So what opened up to me, I thought,
if you're gonna make me a bad guy,
I'll show you how bad I can be.
TASHI: Can you talk to me a little about, what was the first thing you did?
We was bashing people up for money.
And they said, you know, this guy owes us £500.
Well in them days,
the average man was earning £12 a week,
so £500 is a lot of dough.
And we'll give you 10%.
So I thought, well, that sounds good to me,
that's a good bit of business, you know?
So then I'd go out and bash 'em up,
'cause they took a liberty anyway, you know?
They've tried to rob the geezer, turned him over.
So I didn't mind tuning 'em up.
And I got bit my money and then I thought about it,
and I thought I'm taking all the risk
and you're earning all the dough.
And I don't need you.
I now know how it works.
They educated me, worst thing they done.
Someone said to me, you know,
"Do you wanna come on an armed robbery?"
I went, "Yeah alright."
I'm only, like, 16, 17.
And I had the gun and
we held up a post office van,
and it had nothing in it.
They told me it was-
So I made a right mug of myself.
I don't mind admitting it, you know, I really messed it up!
And we went up the Old Bailey
and I got a senior detention centre for six months.
Very brutal places in them days, you know,
it would be done now for child abuse, you know?
And I see them beating kids up and
it brought out an anger in me.
And when I come out, my dad was waiting, bless him.
He went, "No more guns and all that."
I went, "No, no, no."
I said, "Leave it to me."
And when I got out, I put my own firm together then.
They were all hungry, they all had criminal records.
TASHI: Tell me about your firm then.
What were you called?
They just used to call us The Chaps, you know?
The Chaps are about.
And I always dressed nice
and I come out and I thought to myself, right,
there's business to be done here.
So I noticed that there was a lot of, like,
Chinese, Indian shops opened up.
So I had the bricks put through their window for two times.
Then I went into them and I said,
"Look, we can stop this happening for you, you know?
It's not nice." I said, "People sitting down here
are trying to have a Chinese or an Indian
and a brick comes through and hits 'em on the side
of the head. It ain't gonna come back.
But we can stop it happening for you, yeah?
And, if you get a problem, you can phone us
and I'll come out and sort the problem."
And I'd already had the reputation then
for carrying a shooter so
we started up the business, the insurance business.
Some people call it extortion,
but it was an insurance business.
Then
we had a bit of gang warfare.
TASHI: Who was that with?
All the little firms.
'Cause there weren't enough money for all of us, you know?
So I wanted it all for us.
The cake weren't big enough.
Why have a little slice
when you can have a big slice, you know?
It was just business sense.
I didn't hate 'em, I didn't dislike 'em,
you know, good luck to 'em
but don't step on my toes, you know?
'Cause I want it all.
TASHI: What would happen if they, kind of, came onto your turf?
Well they did and I fired guns at 'em
and then they realised not to mess with me,
so it was cool.
But it got to a bad, a really bad stage and I got,
I got done for a bank robbery,
I got a not guilty on that.
But then I think the police targeted me.
They knew I was bang at it.
They used to come in the pub and if be sitting there-
'Cause in them days I didn't drink,
I drunk bitter lemon, you know?
And they used to walk in and go, "Hello Mr Cummings."
So I used to go, "Hello."
'Cause, you know, being polite.
And they used to say, "We'll get ya.
We're watching you, we're gonna get you
and we're gonna put you away for 30 years."
'Cause this was about the time
that the Krays and the Richardsons
was going away for 30 years and - like, train robbers -
so they're talking big numbers now.
Where before you used to get five or six, you know?
But now you're talking double figures,
which is a serious bit of work, you know?
It got to a stage where it'd become ridiculous.
Like, if someone got cut
or shot
it was 'Bobby Cummings, that firm done it'.
If they caught a cold, it'd be me who'd give it to 'em.
If there was a car accident, I arranged it.
You know, it got really ridiculous.
TASHI: What kind of made you graduate from
the racketeering and that stuff to more of the violent crime?
Well, the thing is, I mean
we was coming up against violent people.
There was other gangs, you know, who wanted what we got.
And no way they're gonna have it.
I mean, at one stage, I'm sitting in the pub,
all my pals are having a drink, 'cause they all drunk,
and Tony the Greek come into me.
He said, "You know the fish and chip shop
where your mum and dad goes?"
I went, "Yeah."
He said, "Well, they're in bits."
He said, "Like, a couple of Turkish guys
got their daughter on heroin
and are trying to get her out on the game."
And I went, "They what?"
He said, "Yeah."
And I know this family, they're hard-working people,
you know? They're in that fish and chip shop
from dinner time working through to night-time, you know?
Covered in grease, and they're nice people.
He said, "And they know about you, they've heard about you
and they wanna talk to you and make it go away."
I said, "Okay."
So I go up and see 'em
and he had this biscuit tin, bless him,
and he opened up the biscuit tin,
he had rolls of notes in it, he said, "Bobby," he said,
you know, crying, his wife's crying, I felt bad, you know?
And he said, you know, "These people, terrible people."
You know, he told me what they'd...
He said, "And we don't want the problem.
We're work people."
He said, you know...
I said, "Don't worry, I'll make it go away."
So he give me the biscuit tin,
and it was their savings.
I ain't gonna take money off of them,
I'm gonna nick it off the people who've really got it.
So I said, "No."
I said, "What you do, if we come in here,
we get fish and chips free
and if my mum and dad come up here
you give 'em their fish and chips free, okay?"
I said, "And that's the price."
He went, "No take the money."
I went, "No I don't want your money."
So I've come out and Frank was sitting in the motor,
he was my driver, old Frank.
He went, "What's going on?
I said, "Tomorrow," I said,
"at 7 o[clock in the morning,"
I said, "bring the car round."
So he said, "What are we gonna do?"
I said, "We'll go and get Kennedy."
That was my sawn-off shotgun,
it was named after President Kennedy.
'Cause my birthday's 23rd of November
and he got shot on the 22nd, so I named the gun Kennedy.
I said, "And I want one chamber, one buckshot,
filled with rock salt and the other one
with the normal buckshot in, alright?"
Yeah? I'm not messing about
with these people, they're dangerous.
I'm gonna shoot 'em.
So we go round to this lockup and they had this-
In them days they had these little lockups, you know,
under the arches and all that sort of thing.
Or in little back alleys.
And they had a car business there they was doing.
So I got out the motor, got the sawn-off,
one's under a car, I walked in
and I shot him through the leg,
with the rock salt, he was screaming.
But rock salt was good
'cause it melted away and left no forensic.
You know, when the blood hit it, it melted away,
that's why I used it.
Walked straight into the office,
I threw my coat back, pulled out the sawn-off
and I went, "I'll blow your f**king head off."
I went, "How about that?"
I said, "If you ain't off the manor in 24 hours
I'm gonna blow your brains out."
TASHI: What does it feel like to shoot someone?
Well, I weren't shooting...
In my head, right, 'cause they used to say-
how they'd do it
so you don't feel bad about it,
they'd say, "We got a rat."
So they dehumanise 'em,
they're not a person anymore, they're a rat.
So what I'm shooting is vermin.
So I had no problem with that.
And they was doing bad things to people,
you know, terrible things and so...
They knew the name of the game when they was doing it,
so they knew the rules.
If you were a rat and you roll over,
you get shot or killed.
So it didn't matter to me in them days.
If you started thinking, when you were gonna shoot someone,
you start thinking about wives, kids,
grandmothers and all that, you couldn't do it.
So you've gotta dehumanise 'em.
So that they're just an object to be targeted,
and you target 'em and you do it.
And you watch 'em
'cause you don't wanna be talking to one of their pals
if you're gonna shoot 'em, in case it went back to 'em
and they'd be on guard and it'd be harder to do.
So you'd have to stalk 'em for a little while,
know their whereabouts, what they're doing,
where they go, who they talk with, you know?
And then you'd find a place, you isolate 'em
and you shoot 'em then.
It's like anything, whether you're shooting 'em,
cutting 'em,
once you've done one, half a dozen ain't too many.
Because if you live with that, you become hardened.
And that's why it's very hard for you
to show love and emotion, that sort of thing,
because you gotta bring the shutters down.
'Cause if you don't, you'd go insane.
Or you'd put one in your own mouth, you know?
It's like an evolving thing.
You go from one step to the next step
and it gets more violent, more aggression.
And in the end, it don't matter
'cause you're only doing rodents anyway.
You know, you're doing rats.
There's four-
Three people you can't do in this world, yeah?
You can never do if you're a villain.
And that's a straight goer, yeah?
It's the media,
and Old Bill.
You've gotta be a lunatic if you shoot Old Bill,
'cause they're never gonna give up on you.
You shoot a media, it's all over the papers
and you're not gonna earn no money.
It's not profitable.
You know? And this is where people got me wrong.
You know, that guy called me a gangster.
I found it really offensive, you know?
To me, everything was business.
It didn't matter whether I liked you or didn't like you,
if someone said to me, there's X amount of pounds,
we want him shot in the leg,
I'm going to look at you and think,
right if I shoot him, I get caught,
I'm gonna do this much jail.
If I'm clever and I don't get caught,
that's my money if I shoot him.
So it's not as glamorous as people think.
You're watching people around you,
you're totally paranoid 'cause you don't know
if someone's gonna pick up the phone
and grass you up to the Old Bill.
So you're watching your own type of people.
You're watching the lunatic who thinks,
well, if I shoot him I'll get a good reputation, so
you never...
In the crowd you're...
the celebrity in the crowd,
but you're the loneliest person in the world
'cause you don't know who the enemy is around you.
You're always watching
and it's not a nice place to be.
TASHI: You were sentenced to manslaughter.
Yeah.
TASHI: Can you want to talk to us a little bit about what happened there?
That was a bad one, you know?
That's the only thing I've got on my conscience,
that I have to live with.
That is the hardest thing I have to live with.
Someone choked on a gag, on a bit of work, you know?
And they choked on their vomit and-
TASHI: Do you want to explain what happened?
It's a bad place for me, you know?
Like we'd done a hundred times, you tie 'em up, you gag 'em.
Yeah?
You go, the police come, untie 'em.
Boom.
You make sure you've got your smother on
so no one knows who you are.
You know, I used to wear a crash helmet, blacked-out visor,
so no one knows who you are.
If I could undo that one, just that one,
that would be the only thing in my life I would undo.
It should never have happened, you know?
If I'd have shot 'em or something like that, yeah.
But, you know, on a gag and they choke on their vomit,
I mean, it weren't a nice thing.
And I have to live with that, you know?
And even to this day, I have to live with that.
I done an innocent.
And you don't do that in my world, you don't do innocents.
That one I feel terrible about.
But when I go to church, 'cause I'm Catholic,
I believe in that sort of thing,
I always light a candle for that person.
Like I do my mum and dad and my daughter who died, you know?
I light candles for 'em.
It's a respect thing and I say a prayer for 'em, you know?
TASHI: Why do you think the death of that victim at your hands
has caused you so much mental pain?
Because it should never have happened.
I always prided myself on good work, clean work, you know?
I was out there to earn money.
I weren't out there to hurt people.
If I had to hurt 'em, that was because they put themself
in a position where they had to go, you know?
It's the same, you know,
when I was doing villains, I didn't care.
You know, if they come up against me,
I know if they're gonna stab or shoot me,
I'm gonna give it to 'em first.
So that didn't count 'cause we lived
in a different world to everyone else.
We lived in our own world amongst our own people
and we all knew the rules.
TASHI: So you were sent to prison for manslaughter.
Yeah.
TASHI: When you were there what was prison like?
It was a university of crime.
You learned other people.
Like, if I wanted-
I now had the connections.
If I wanted a dodgy passport,
I knew someone who's doing dodgy passports.
If I wanted, you know, a dodgy checkbook account,
I've got people to arrange that.
If I wanted to deal in drugs,
I'm meeting some of the best drug dealers
and smugglers in the country.
If I wanted to make bombs,
I'm talking to the IRA and people like that.
You know there was- in Parkhurst,
which was Britain's Alcatraz at the time,
you had the most dangerous men in the country there.
I was in there, you know?
It was most politest place I've ever been in my life
'cause everyone's a potential killer.
If they ain't killed, they're already up for doing it.
And so everyone said good morning,
no one pushed in the queues.
If you forgot to say good morning to someone,
they could get paranoid,
think you're plotting up on them and kill you.
And also, when you're in prison, you ain't going nowhere.
And we all know how to kill people, you know?
There's many ways you can kill people.
One of my pals, he got,
they had food bowls, he took an onion
and another geezer had already nicked it
and the guy went, "That's my onion."
And he went, "Go on, on your bike."
'Cause he could have a row, he was a boxer.
And the guy stabbed him through the heart
with a butcher's boning knife and killed him.
So he died over an onion.
You didn't serve your sentence in cat-A prisons,
you survived cat-A prisons, you know?
TASHI: It sounded just as violent as the streets.
No, no, no, no, no.
Prison was worse than the streets.
In the streets, you could have a punch up, a carve up.
In there, you're gonna get killed.
TASHI: What was life like when you left prison?
It was easing up a bit.
Well, they shut Parkhurst down in the end.
And so the cat-A prisoners there
and the violent and extremely violent organised crime units
was all moved to Belmarsh, Long Lartin, places like that.
TASHI: Was it hard saying goodbye to your criminal past and going straight?
Well, my wife had my daughter.
She was pregnant with my daughter and I made a rule
that my daughter would never sit
on the other side of a prison table.
I'd never let her experience prison.
I lived a quiet life, you know?
I didn't go back to London,
I went to live in Kent, you know?
And I saw the beauty of things.
When you're locked up, like, you go out,
you walk through a park,
you're on your way to work, you're walking through a park,
you don't see what's happening in that park.
But to me, I'd stop,
I'd look at squirrels, I'd look at trees.
I used to sometimes do really weird things like
take my shoes and socks off
and actually walk on damp grass, you know,
just to feel...
'Cause I didn't have them experiences.
I was in a concrete tomb,
I was buried alive in a concrete tomb for years.
I look at it now and I think to myself,
I've got such a beautiful life now, you know?
I've got peace, you know?
No, I've got a sweet life
and all the people, you know, in the village where I go,
they all know me, I get on well with 'em, I'm very polite.
And you know, if some of the old girls...
I'm in the shop and they can't afford, you know,
the bread or they can't afford this,
I go, "Oh put it on my account."
And I pay it.
And it's that little bits of kindness.
Not throwing, here you are, here's 20 grand.
It's like, go on, I'll do that bit of shopping for you.
But that word goes round that village
and they go, "No, he's a nice guy."
So I'm known as a nice guy, and I like that.
Even the little kids go, "Alright Bobby, hello Bobby."
I go, "Alright, how's it going?
You being a good boy?" Yeah.
Well, bueno.
And off they go.
But then I've really got into the education.
I go into schools, deglamorise crime.
I go into prisons and talk to prisoners and deglamorise...
I say, "This is what's gonna happen to you."
And I can get away with that
because they know I'm talking from experience,
because I've done it.
And you don't get any worse than killing people, you know?
So people take you very serious.
They don't wanna upset you anyway.
'Cause they don't know if you'd still do it on them.
TASHI: Would you have ever thought, back in the day,
when you were committing those crimes
that you would be kneeling in front of the queen collecting an OBE?
No that never entered my head.
I did what I did because I believed in what I was doing,
I didn't want another kid having the life I had.
I'd like 'em to have the life I've got now.
It's very nice, thank you.
So I had this letter and it said, you know,
Buckingham Palace, you've been honoured
on the Queen's honour list, New Year's Honours list,
and we wanna give you the OBE.
And you have to accept it 'cause...
You know, will you accept it?
And I phoned 'em up.
I thought it was one of my pals,
made a moody letter up and having a laugh.
So we phoned 'em up and they went, "No, this is serious.
Will you accept it?"
Well, I'm a total royalist.
So of course I'm going to accept it.
I said, "Of course."
I go there and you go through the side entrance,
and as we're walking up to the front of Buckingham-
Well, we're pulled up in the cars,
get out of the car park in the palace.
So I'm looking at Buckingham Palace
and my head flicked back to when I was a kid
and my dad used to go and take me
to watch the Changing of the Guard and that.
And he said to me one day he said, "See them people there?"
I went, "Yeah."
He went, "They're the toffs, right?"
He said, "When you're going through that door,
that's when you know you've made it."
And that day I walked through that door, I thought,
I wish he was alive now to see me walk through the door.
'Cause all they see me was as a villain.
They didn't see me as a straight guy 'cause they had died.
And I'm standing-
But, I tell you what, I don't fear no one.
I don't fear nothing, I don't fear no one,
but I stood in front of her
and it was a really weird feeling.
It's like your mum's standing there
and you've been a naughty boy, you know?
TASHI: What did she say to you?
She said to me, "You've got a very-"
'Cause everyone asks me that, what did she say?
And she said, "I must say, I've never met someone like you.
You've got a very colourful background."
Well, I thought that was the poshest words
of someone saying to me
'cor you've got a lot of form, you know what I mean?
You're bang at it.
TASHI: Getting your OBE must have been a really proud moment.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Forget religion, forget colour, forget sex.
Boils down to, in life, two things:
are you a good person or a bad person?
That's all it boils down to.
TASHI: Do you ever miss the old life?
So I had to go through hell, right,
to appreciate heaven.
And that's what it is:
you have to see ugliness to appreciate beauty.
You have to witness hatred and venom
to appreciate love and kindness.