Hitman, Gangsters, Cannibals and Me

by Donal Macintyre

  The plan was simple: go get mugged! I was to do my best not to get killed, and had to make sure that the camera was on and that every gruesome detail was recorded. Naturally, there was another Irishman behind this dastardly plan – producer Stephen Mcquillan. If it wasn’t a Maguire getting me to throw myself out of aeroplanes, it was a Mcquillan telling me to go and get mugged. We were filming a BBC special investigation into the epidemic of street crime that had hit London and the rest of the UK in the early 2000s.

  Mcquillan had the air of a man on a serious mission but there was always a hint that the whole thing was a long drawnout practical joke, the punch line of which would be delivered at knifepoint. I wondered if I wasn’t just the victim of his quirky sense of humour.

  The plan was to walk three well-known mugging trails in Brixton, in Lambeth, South London, and over a period of three days, see if some unlucky crim would dare to mug me. It seemed like the right place to carry out our very unusual experiment. At the time, this part of London had the highest rate of street crime in the country, with nearly 6,000 reported muggings in the previous year. The streets of London appeared to be out of control, and Tony Blair had declared combatting street crime a top priority.

  The point of all this was not to get me attacked but to track the stolen goods to the middlemen, fixers and fences who sell on stolen property in the UK and abroad. There was even the hope that we might get the property back (our budget was tight!). But first we had to get it stolen.

  At this point, I was the county’s best-known undercover reporter (something of an oxymoron, I agree), so it was decided that I would have to be in disguise to get mugged. After three hours in the hands of a make-up artist, I was ready for the streets. I had a greying, itchy goatee; a fetchingly swept-over fringe; salt-and-pepper hair that made me look about ten years older; a pair of stylish Italian glasses; and a tan overcoat that covered my covert equipment effectively enough. The three hours of handiwork gave me a terrifying glimpse into my fat, middle-aged future. I resolved to give up Mars bars and never to grow a beard. Added to all this was a stab-proof vest that left me looking a little like the Hunchback of Notre Dame from behind.

  When he had me on his show after my report was broadcast, Jonathan Ross said I looked like an over-weight 50-year-old Italian accountant, albeit with an Irish accent. Naturally, this was always going to provide ample fodder for him to abuse me. I had little choice but to take it on the chin.

  I was suited and booted, wired to the gunnels and ready for a kicking. In my ear, I had one of those earpieces that the secret services use. I had trackers in my pocket, on my mobile phone and in my laptop bag, so that the team could follow me and my possessions as I walked the streets. We even fitted my phone and my laptop bag with special acoustic technology, so we could hear the culprits speaking after they had stolen the goods.

  We were using high-tech military technology. A two-way communication system would keep me in contact with the filming vehicle, where my safety and the footage I captured would be monitored by the team. My microphone relayed my voice directly to Stephen in the van 2 km away, and he would be directing my movements around the Brixton area. We had a London taxi on standby to pick me up when my feet gave in or if I was injured.

  In keeping with the military technology, I was given a battlefield call sign – ‘Delta Mike’ – my initials. This was going to be fun – a military operation run by civilians. What could go wrong?

  It was early in April and while there were no showers, a cold wind blew through the streets. Brixton has always had an edgy attractiveness about it, from the crumbling grandeur of the Victorian architecture to the vibrant markets and trendy nightspots. But there are parts of the area that provoke a genuine nervousness among outsiders. Groups of junkies and dealers hang around in the shadows and there is a tense undercurrent surrounding them.

  I was dropped off at eight o’clock in the evening and walked down the A23, along the route of the old Roman road, up Brixton Hill towards Streatham. I thought I looked so vulnerable that I may as well have had sign on my back saying, ‘Please mug me’. But it is harder to invite a street robbery than you might think.

  Just before 10 o’clock, I was waddling down the street when it became clear that a group of six young men aged between 17 and 24 was following me. I went into a small newsagent to gather my thoughts. They young men crossed the road to congregate near the shop and I could hear them laughing outside. Maybe I was reading more into it than was there – but maybe not. I bought a can of coke and made sure all the equipment was on and working, hoping that the young men would do their worst as I left. In truth I was a little apprehensive about that explosive moment when the threat would become a reality; there was no predicting exactly how events would unfold. As I was about to leave, the shopkeeper, an elderly Indian gentleman, said: ‘Be careful.’ I nodded to him, half-distracted, playing the lost stranger in town, but he became very insistent, nearly admonishing me.

  ‘Look, be careful: they want to rob you,’ he repeated, pointing to the lads outside.

  ‘Oh, I’ll be all right, thanks,’ I told him.

  I hoped he was right.

  The equipment was heavy and sweaty, and sometimes the batteries leaked acid in places that cannot be politely scratched in public. I walked out of the shop and turned left, away from the main streets and into the darkness. I could hear the mob getting closer and closer. ‘This is it,’ I thought. They came right up to my back; I could hear them breathing behind me and could sense the threat in the air.

  And then they turned away down a side street. The Police presence in the area was huge but that wasn’t what had deterred them. The shopkeeper had left his shop and was very conspicuously following behind the gang. They had obviously become nervous and decided I wasn’t worth the bother in front of a witness. I cursed my Good Samaritan friend. Trust me to find a concerned citizen to watch out for me when all I needed was a good shoeing on camera so I can go home to my warm bed.

  I walked the streets for a further two uneventful hours and then called it a night, so that Mcquillan could go home to his partner who was over eight-and-a-half months pregnant and worried that my mugging would interfere with the birth.

  The next evening it was pretty quiet on the streets. I was dripping with sweat with all the protective clothing and the heavy disguise. The false beard was beginning to shift position as my perspiration dissolved the glue.

  As I walked down Loughborough Road, a female voice attracted my attention. ‘You got a fag?’ the girl asked. It was nearly a whisper. She couldn’t have been more than 19 or 20 and was clearly homeless. I gave her a cigarette and lit it for her.

  She was wearing a huge parka coat that swaddled her from head to toe and that I suspected and acted as her sleeping bag. Pointing to my phone, she’s said, ‘You better put that away, there’s dangerous people about.’

  I put in some more hard yards that night – over three hours on known mugging routes, and still there was no hint of threat. The mugging capital of Europe was proving to be very benign. It looked like we might have to rewrite the script.

  After four hours on the street, I was hungry and I eventually succumbed to the lure of the Kentucky Fried Chicken on Brixton Road. This was a hang out for crack heads and shots (drug dealers). As I entered the fast-food joint, I felt someone brush past me and I knew immediately what was happening. He was heroin-skinny in his white Umbro top and had a few teeth missing. His jacket was draped over his arm and he was so close that he was breathing my oxygen. Getting pickpocketed was not part of the plan. The extra buffer of his jacket allowed him the space to get into my pocket and help himself to its contents. ‘There goes the remote for the secret camera,’ I thought. ‘And there goes the fiver from the other pocket.’

  What was I to do?

  If I called the Police on this minor matter, I would have been toxic in the area and any potential muggers would have given me a wide berth. I had to just suck it up. Besides, I was still hungry.
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  Half an hour later I was back on the beat and was again on the precipice of being robbed. There was a guy following me and I could tell he was sussing me out. ‘About 50 yards behind you, a young man wearing a red top is looking at you. You are a target. Turn on the camera,’ Mcquillan told me. He counted me down through my earpiece: ‘Twenty metres, ten metres; be careful, Donal, prepare.’ I could hear the guy’s footsteps pick up pace as he closed in on me. For a while he slowed down and kept a steady distance. Then he passed me by on the other side of the street, all the while watching me, before disappearing into the shadows. He had given me up as prey. Did he feel sorry for me? Did I smell like a set-up?

  After one more furtive walk around the area, we decided to call it a day. It was just after midnight and I returned to our hotel a couple of miles away to de-rig and debrief. Something had to change. My disguise had to go – we would have a new plan tomorrow. Mcquillan went home again to his pregnant partner, who by now was more upset than anyone that I hadn’t been mugged.

  On the final night, we decided that I would play the lost Irishman in London. This is a role I naturally play well, as my sense of direction is useless and I can often be found driving around entirely the wrong part of the city just trying to get home. It was a dry, mild night and I was ready as ever to be a victim – if only I could find a perpetrator.

  It seemed to me that if I was going to get robbed, it would simply happen and there was little I could do to expedite the situation. If I didn’t get mugged, we knew that there would be no programme and that the project would be shelved, meaning we would have wasted our time. We always take risks like this; sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don’t.

  This last night started out as badly as the others. As I walked down a back alley towards a group of layabouts, the situation looked encouragingly dodgy. I could see one of the group feel for something in his pocket – maybe a cosh or a knife, I couldn’t tell. Suddenly, a drug dealer in a wheelchair broke away from the group and sped towards me, shouting and screaming. The rest of his crew followed suit, eager to be in on the action. ‘Here we go,’ I thought.

  ‘He done undercover,’ he shouted to the rest of his gang.

  ‘Oi, Oi! That geezer’s done undercover. In the white jacket – he’s done undercover!’

  It looked like I was in trouble for all the wrong reasons.

  ‘He done the football programme,’ the dealer told his friends.

  My goal was to be targeted as a normal punter, so this was off script and not welcome at all. ‘Grass, grass!’ they shouted. They had obviously been offended by some of my previous work. I whispered into my microphone: ‘I’ve been clocked.’

  I was laughing at the surreal nature of this turn of events but the risk was ever present as the rowdy group approached me, shouting and jeering. At this stage, though, I didn’t really care who mugged me or whether they recognised me or not.

  Just when I thought my number was up and my mugging was imminent, a homeless runaway prostitute rushed to my rescue. She grabbed me by the arm and said: ‘Just say you’re my friend. I’m a known face round here. We’ll walk around the other way.’

  Why would nobody leave me to get robbed in peace?

  I chatted to my rescuer for a while and she told me a familiar tale of drugs, prostitution and homelessness. But for all she had been through, she still had enough kindness in her heart to help out a complete stranger. I wanted to hear more but there was work to do, so I gave her a tenner and some fags and we parted ways.

  The security team could hear everything that was going on, and they were becoming impatient. Time was running out and Brixton was proving to be a haven of do-gooders and saints, contrary to its (obviously undeserved) reputation. To me it felt like there was an element of the downtrodden looking out for the downtrodden. Maybe the vulnerable were subconsciously looking after their own – as an Irishman lost in town, I fitted that mould in their minds.

  Very bored and tired by now, I continued on my desperate quest. As I rounded a corner, I was spotted by a group of young men. They raced towards me but they had no intention of mugging me – they just wanted to sell me drugs. At the time, Brixton was running an experiment that had more or less decriminalised the sale of cannabis on the streets. This controversial scheme meant that policemen could be found standing beside drug dealers openly selling marijuana.

  It was like an Indian spice bazaar as the gaggle of small-time dealers crowded around me, each trying to outdo the other with a better deal. This had nothing to do with our story, but, as there was little else going on, I decided to amuse myself.

  ‘Want some marijuana, bro?’ they asked, thrusting readyrolled spliffs into my hand.

  ‘No, no,’ I said.

  ‘Ten pounds, ten pounds,’ they chorused.

  ‘I’m not interested in dope,’ I told them. ‘Can you get me some charlie?’

  At least five of the mob were crowding in on me now, desperate for business.

  ‘Skunk, do you want some? Whatever you want.’

  I had my camera rolling just for the hell of it. I could hear Mcquillan in my ear, saying:

  ‘What’s up? Are you in trouble?’

  ‘All cool,’ I said to the dealers, knowing that the same message would be relayed to the team.

  One of the dealers got so close that he hit the computer board of the camera on my shirt. He was startled. His face fell and he started to back away as the others continued pitching for business. Then he shouted out:

  ‘Camera, camera! You got a camera!’

  Initially, I tried to deny it.

  ‘He’s a cop,’ he shouted.

  The others stood back, suddenly looking at me suspiciously.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I protested.

  ‘What’s that? What’s that? Camera! And he’s Police.’

  For some reason, probably boredom, I simply said: ‘Listen guys, you know what this is: it’s a camera, and it’s rolling. I’m not Police.’

  ‘Buy the skunk. Give me £10 if you not Police,’

  Half of the group was backing away and the other half was nudging forwards, eager to make a sale.

  I was laughing at this stage.

  I had no fear of these men, and perhaps that should have concerned me. I was alone on streets I didn’t know, in the company of nervous drug dealers and I couldn’t care less. I think they could sense my indifference, and that scared them. A man without fear is to be feared.

  I wandered off, away from the cannabis dealers and put in a request to be picked up. I had been compromised and needed to get out of the immediate area and change my jacket, so as not to be easily recognised. I met with Mcquillan and the team and we decided that I would give it one last attempt before we gave up altogether. I got rid of what remained of my disguise and just wore my stubble and my own clothes. I would walk as myself and hope that that the poor light would keep me from being recognised. We hoped that my comfort in my own skin would make those who wanted to rob me more comfortable in their task.

  I took my final stroll down Brixton Road just after midnight, walking away from the train station towards central London. There was plenty of traffic on the streets and the footpaths were still lively and bustling at this late hour.

  Down a side street to my left, I heard a promising commotion. A group of 15-year-olds was approaching: they had spotted me. I stopped and tried to engage them.

  ‘Sorry, excuse me; I’m looking for Stockwell Tube,’ I said.

  ‘Eh,’ one of them pretended to think about directions and held my attention, while another made a dive for me, snatched my mobile phone and darted off triumphantly, with his accomplice close behind him.

  ‘Help! Help!’ I shouted. ‘Someone has stolen my phone.’

  Job done! I was delighted. There was a sense of achievement, but also of anticlimax, after three nights of effort. It seemed to be over before anything even happened.

  We later traced the phone to Accra in Ghana and it was returned to me six w
eeks later. I was amazed that a stolen mobile phone could make such a long journey and even more amazed that we got it back.

  At that stage I thought my work was done. But the night took a bit of a twist. As I was retreating, I was approached by a handsome young man, who appeared to be very concerned about my predicament.

  ‘I can get your phone back for you,’ he told me. ‘My cousin took it, and if you give me a tenner, I’ll get your phone back. It’s my little cousin. Clearly, I should do it for free but I’m kind of broke.’

  He told me to follow him into a nearby estate where he would make contact and then do a cash trade for the phone. ‘What the hell,’ I thought. It would make for an interesting chapter in the phone saga – another Good Samaritan comes to the rescue. In my innocence, I genuinely thought that he would get the phone back for me. I considered it to be part of the adventure, and, after the unremarkable mugging, I decided to continue where wiser people might not. There was also a vulnerability about this guy that suggested to me that he meant no harm. I was slightly bigger than him, taller and broader and maybe I felt that if the worst came to the worst, I could take him in a fight.

  He told me his name was Gary and we chatted amiably as we walked towards the estate.

  ‘If I had known he was going to do it, I’d have told him not to bother, but obviously he did it on impulse. But I know where he lives,’ he told me.

  The estate carried a hint of eerie malace at this hour, and I should probably have been more aware of that than I was. The flats were like military bunkers and the walkways could have been designed by street robbers to facilitate attacks rather than prevent them. I can see why old estates like this are torn down to be replaced with more open, community-friendly architecture.