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Gangland Manchester – “You’re Nicked, Sunshine!”

Next tour: No more dates until that slag  he knows who he is  is released from the slammer.
Okay, Sat 10 November 2018.
Meet at… the nick on Newton Street by 12 noon.
Booking: Book here with eventbrite or we’ll send someone round.
Guide: One of our finest, who fought the law…until the law won.
Bring: Cuffs, collar to be felt, and a Quality Street Gang membership card.
End: Pleading “Not guilty, m’lud.”

Manchester has long been at the mercy of gangs, gangsters and guntsermuchers: Victorian roughs, bent cops, small-time hoods, deranged cops, “God’s Cop”, cops in velvet-collared Crombies, such as Life on Mars’s Gene Hunt and, of course, the Quality Street Gang.

This industrial version of the Kray Twins and the Richardsons was embodied by the larger-than-life Bill Benny, a 20-stone wrestler who died in his office while having sex with a prostitute, leaving her to call the cops so that they could batter down the door and lift him off her.

Sometimes it all turns really nasty and Mr Plod himself is framed and put in the dock, and then the fun really starts – LSD in the bobby’s beer, Special Branch agents fingering prostitutes and a spate of nobbling in the highest offices of state.

Yet sometimes it ends with pints of bitter all round amongst the leather bomber jackets, dodgy ’taches and cheap cuff links. Either way the law wins.

* This is not a walk solely about the Scuttlers. It’s more interesting than that. We use the full force of the law to unmask not just those who defy the law but those who hide behind it.