It wasn\u2019t a sophisticated plan: steal the picture, sell the picture, spend the money.\u00a0 What \u2013 as they say \u2013 could possibly go wrong?\u00a0 One of the reasons it wasn\u2019t sophisticated is that we weren\u2019t sophisticated; I was sixteen and my best friend, and accomplice, was seventeen.<\/p>\n
The irony was that we really didn\u2019t need the money.\u00a0 Yup, sorry, I don\u2019t know what to tell you: we were posh boys from wealthy families, privileged in every way.\u00a0 And nothing we were into would have been improved by having more money.\u00a0 We wouldn\u2019t have known what to do with it.\u00a0 At that age, we only really wanted girls.<\/p>\n
It was 1978 and I was what was called a \u2018weekly boarder\u2019 at Westminster School, an exclusive, private school in the heart of London.\u00a0 My parents were abroad, so I spent weekdays at school and weekends with my gran.\u00a0 A tiny, white-haired widow, she lived in a mews house in posh Maida Vale; a life of delicate cups and saucers, and Radio 4, and unwavering routine, and never swearing (the worst anyone ever heard from her was \u201cI hope you have bad dreams!\u201d).\u00a0 She had a genteel Edinburgh accent that neither my parents nor I had inherited.\u00a0 Needless to say, she only knew the fake version of me, the paragon.<\/p>\n
Anyway, Westminster School backed on to Westminster Abbey.\u00a0 In fact, our morning assemblies were in the abbey itself and my \u2018house\u2019 \u2013 the school was organised into Hogwarts-style houses \u2013 sat in a transept next to Poets Corner.\u00a0 Every morning, I was surrounded by memorials and busts of writers like Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Dickens (dead old white guys), and loomed over by pale marble statues of other, be-robed, literary luminaries, usually with an open book in one hand, the other hand limp, in a kind of flounce of indifference, as if writing was almost too easy.\u00a0 Back then, of course, I didn\u2019t give a shit about any of that.\u00a0 I say \u201cevery morning\u201d: in truth, most days I skipped Abbey to join my mates in a local greasy spoon.<\/p>\n
Westminster in those days was a very white school.\u00a0 Which, I should point out, is pertinent to this story (by the way, remember the word pertinent, it\u2019ll come up again later).\u00a0 There was one boy whose mum was Jamaican, a couple of Indian boys, and one Sri Lankan, but most of the rest of us were white Londoners.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if I was racist back then.\u00a0 Come to think of it, I still don\u2019t know if I\u2019m racist.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think so.\u00a0 I mean, I hope not, obviously.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to be.\u00a0 The thing is, I\u2019m actually slightly suspicious of anyone who proudly proclaims themselves not to be racist.\u00a0 Anyway, I regularly try to test myself, and correct myself, when necessary, on any unwitting prejudice.\u00a0 But back then, I had no way of knowing whether I was racist or not, and no way of testing myself either.\u00a0 My life was \u2018monoracial\u2019.\u00a0 I\u2019m blonde and fair-skinned and my best friend Cam was ginger-haired and freckled.<\/p>\n
Then, along came reggae and, specifically, Bob Marley.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t that girls liked reggae \u2013 if anything, the opposite \u2013 but it was important to have a \u2018thing\u2019; to be the fencing guy (yup, no surprise that Westminster had a fencing team), or the hat guy, or the ham radio guy.\u00a0 Having a \u2018thing\u2019, Cam and I thought, any \u2018thing\u2019, would attract girls.<\/p>\n
It turned out that one of our house prefects had been to the concert at the Lyceum Theatre in London that was recorded and became the iconic Bob Marley Live! album.\u00a0 One day he played it for us, while providing a vivid commentary of the whole experience.\u00a0 By the time we got to No Woman, No Cry, we were gone!\u00a0 That bass, that weird organ, that voice reaching out to us, and those cool-sounding lyrics!\u00a0 We\u2019d found our \u2018thing\u2019.<\/p>\n
Only prefects were allowed record players at school, which neither Cam nor I were, so we had to play our reggae albums at my gran\u2019s house on the record player that she called a gramophone, and that had settings for 33\u2019s, 45\u2019s and 78\u2019s.\u00a0 Gran insisted on calling it \u2018jungle music\u2019.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t matter how many times I told her \u201cGran!\u00a0 You can\u2019t say that!\u201d<\/p>\n
So that gran wouldn\u2019t be able to make out the lyrics, we played the music at a low volume.\u00a0 But we needn\u2019t have worried.\u00a0 One morning at breakfast, as she was cutting the crusts off my toast, I realised she was quietly singing International Herb by Joseph Hill, except she was singing: \u201cI love it, I love and I love it, man, the international-err.\u201d \u00a0My fear was that one day she\u2019d ask me what an \u2018international-err\u2019 was.<\/p>\n
We started off with albums, but soon we were going to concerts: Aswad, Steel Pulse, Burning Spear\u2026\u00a0\u00a0 Every weekend.\u00a0 Usually small concerts in out-of-the-way venues, pubs mostly, sometimes university bars.\u00a0 It could be a little scary when you first walked in, but then your eyes grew accustomed to the fug of weed smoke, and the cagey stares, and you loosened up.\u00a0 We were tourists in the reggae world: timid, respectful and curious, and I guess that showed.\u00a0 If anything, we were a novelty: young, white (uber-white) and possibly, even, a couple.\u00a0 Certainly no threat.\u00a0 And, anyway, almost everyone was stoned and mellow.\u00a0 Including us.\u00a0 To explain my recurrent red eyes to gran, I invented an allergy to Cam\u2019s mohair jumper.\u00a0 And to pollen.\u00a0 And, on one occasion, to horses (I was still stoned that time).\u00a0 As a result, she bought antihistamines for me, and eyedrops.\u00a0 She was a dear.\u00a0 After one night, when I came back in the wee hours and demolished an entire packet of Ritz crackers that would usually have lasted her months, she started making sure that there were always Ritz crackers in the cupboard.\u00a0 As a show of gratitude, I\u2019d make sure she regularly caught me snacking on them.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even like Ritz crackers.<\/p>\n
Then, one night, Cam and I went to see a reggae artist called Dillinger at Dingwalls Dancehall in a cobbled corner of Camden Lock.\u00a0 We\u2019d made our way to the bar, and I\u2019d just squeezed to the front \u2013 it was always a toss-up who\u2019d order (Cam was older but I was taller) \u2013 when a Rastaman thrust a huge, conical joint at me, freeing up both hands so he could reach through and gather an improbable number of Red Stripe lager bottles.\u00a0 Cam and I tracked him as he wobbled off and delivered the beers to his table, before returning to retrieve the joint.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks, man.\u201d\u00a0 He looked us up and down, then, as he took the joint: \u201cYa want a toke, man?\u201d<\/p>\n
Cam was cool: \u201cSure.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t: \u201cYes, please!\u201d\u00a0 As if I\u2019d been offered jelly at a birthday party.<\/p>\n
The Rastaman laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome.\u201d<\/p>\n
He led us to his table and introduced us as his \u201cyoung friends\u201d.\u00a0 A couple of the group disinterestedly acknowledged us, but mostly they\u2019d already turned their attention to the stage where Dillinger had just started his set with Cocaine in my Brain.\u00a0 I started mouthing the words and, again, our Rasta host smirked.\u00a0 Then someone else arrived with more beers, including a couple for Cam and me and, somehow, we were in.<\/p>\n
It turned out that the Rastaman was called Tony.\u00a0 I guess he was thirty-odd, with sharp cheekbones, tidy dreadlocks, and a warm Jamaican accent.\u00a0 We soon came to refer to him as \u2018Dreadlocks Tony\u2019.\u00a0 At the end of the night, we went back with him to his squat in swanky St Johns Wood; a huge, detached, Moorish-styled house called Alhambra Cottage (a cottage it wasn\u2019t!), with horseshoe-arched windows and arabesque motifs, probably commissioned by one of those Victorian adventurers who\u2019d plundered the \u2018orient\u2019 for artefacts and an exotic new aesthetic.\u00a0 There must have been six or seven bedrooms, as well as various reception rooms converted into bedrooms, and a population that fluctuated between five and twenty.<\/p>\n
For a period of a few months, we hung out there a lot.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know exactly what it was that Tony liked about us.\u00a0 Cam could roll a very decent spliff, and we laughed at Tony\u2019s jokes, but also, I guess, we had some \u2018book learning\u2019, and that seemed to intrigue him.\u00a0 Plus, we knew our stuff about reggae.\u00a0 To impress him, we showed him Cam\u2019s copy of Prince Buster\u2019s 1968 single Take it Easy (Cam\u2019s pride and joy), and my precious copy of Bob Marley\u2019s Catch a Fire album in the original cover that was shaped like a Zippo lighter, and that also hinged open like one.<\/p>\n
Tony\u2019s job in the house was to cook: mountains of white rice topped with a dollop of corrosively spicy, meat gravy.\u00a0 He liked to call it goat curry, even though it was most often chicken.\u00a0 \u201cSoul food, because,\u201d in Tony\u2019s words, \u201cyou can\u2019t fuck on an empty belly.\u201d\u00a0 Cam and I nodded sagely, hoping to convey that we\u2019d done loads of fucking, on both full and empty bellies, and agreed that full was definitely the way to go.\u00a0 Anywhere between eleven at night and three in the morning, the squatters in residence, and their partners and friends, magically started to drift into the kitchen to be fed: guys (mostly) and girls; black (mostly) and white; all more or less stoned and in various states of dress and undress.\u00a0 Night and day didn\u2019t have quite the same boundaries in this house as elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, back at Westminster we were showing off to our greasy spoon tribe about \u2018Dreadlocks Tony\u2019 and squat life.\u00a0 Judging by the interest they showed, it seemed that maybe reggae wasn\u2019t our \u2018thing\u2019, maybe \u2018Dreadlocks Tony\u2019 was: the palatial, Moorish-style house, the goat curries, the half-naked girls, the musicians jamming in the sitting room, the shopping bags full of weed.\u00a0 I\u2019d taken to wearing a wristband in the Rasta colours: red, yellow, and green, signifying blood, gold, and nature.\u00a0 As gran, put it: \u201cVery snazzy, I\u2019m sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time, we were also showing off to Tony about the rarified families that our school friends came from: one was the son of a cabinet minister; another was the son of a household-name Hollywood producer; another was from a dynasty that owned a bank that bore the family name.\u00a0 But the one that really stood out to Tony was Cam\u2019s friend Donny Kleinveldt, whose father owned platinum mines in South Africa and who lived in a mansion on The Bishops Avenue, also known as Billionaire\u2019s Row.\u00a0 In truth, Donny wasn\u2019t a member of the greasy spoon crew, but we did sometimes hang out with him, and swim in his pool, and play on his grass tennis courts.\u00a0 His father also had an art collection that hung throughout the mansion and that even included a couple of paintings I recognised (a Picasso and a Monet), as well as \u2013 and central to this story \u2013 a lesser-known, but just as valuable, Rubens drawing; a reddish-tinged sketch of a naked woman coyly twisting away from the artist.\u00a0 It looked to me like it was done in crayon, but was, apparently, something called gouache.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t remember who first suggested the idea of stealing the Rubens, but I could hazard a guess.\u00a0 This was the seventies, the height of apartheid, and all white South African men were Tony\u2019s enemy.\u00a0 Yup, just as reductive and blinkered as any prejudice.\u00a0 Just two years earlier, Tony Greig, a South African who\u2019d somehow become captain of the England cricket team, had boasted that he was going to make the West Indies team grovel.\u00a0 \u201cGrovel\u201d!\u00a0 Over that summer, the West Indies pummelled England, but the word used by their South African captain, that had been widely perceived as a racist slur, had already passed into legend.\u00a0 In support, my schoolfriends and I were doing our bit for the anti-apartheid movement by occasionally, when we remembered, boycotting South African oranges and grapes.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Tony hatched his own course of retribution.\u00a0 We had the book-learning, but Tony had the street smarts, and we were in thrall to him.\u00a0 Cam maybe even more than me.\u00a0 So we were easily led.\u00a0 Tony and Cam were going to do the real dirty work, while my role was to make a copy of the drawing from a folio in the British Library (so that they didn\u2019t nab the wrong thing), then, once it was in our hands, to store it in a luggage lock-up at Euston station.\u00a0 Our roles pretty much reflected our personalities: Tony assertive and first-in; Cam the enthusiastic follower; me the peripheral observer.\u00a0 A Dobermann, a Labrador and me, a collie, dancing around the edge of the action.<\/p>\n
Anyway, the great heist went down like this\u2026<\/p>\n
On the allotted evening, when we knew Donny\u2019s parents were going to be out, Cam spent an awkward couple of hours at the swanky Bishops Avenue mansion pretending he got on better with Donny than he did, smoking weed (ironically, that Tony had supplied \u2013 we had a chuckle about that), listening to records and watching Donny\u2019s dad\u2019s porn VHS\u2019s.\u00a0 Then, at eight o\u2019clock, the doorbell rang, and Donny and Cam answered it together.\u00a0 Enter Tony!<\/p>\n
I\u2019m glad I wasn\u2019t there to see Tony swing a pantomime punch at Cam\u2019s stomach, or to witness Cam doubling up and falling backwards, which would have been over-acting straight out of a school play.\u00a0 Tony then pushed past Donny and strode around the house as if he was looking for any random treasure to take.\u00a0 Again, I have no doubt that the pretence would have been cringe-inducingly hammy.\u00a0 Eventually, Tony lifted the Rubens off the wall, popped it into his backpack and left, leaving Donny and Cam to call the police.<\/p>\n
I mean, it was no Ocean\u2019s Eleven, but we didn\u2019t think it needed to be.\u00a0 Job done!<\/p>\n
Or not\u2026<\/p>\n
Maybe the police\u2019s initial suspicions were raised in that very first interview with Cam whose performance, again, would have been less than Oscar-worthy.\u00a0 Although maybe they knew in the first instant that it was both and inside job and the work of amateurs.\u00a0 Either way, the next day two officers came to Westminster, commandeered a room and, along with the headmaster, summoned the greasy spoon crew one-by-one.\u00a0 By the time it got to me, they already knew all about \u2018Dreadlocks Tony\u2019: the only black person who any of us knew, and who was known by a sobriquet that was the only description that Donny and Cam had provided.\u00a0 Every one of them had pointed the finger at Cam and me.\u00a0 They\u2019d had no choice.\u00a0 We\u2019d been so public about our exciting new friendship.\u00a0 Our \u2018thing\u2019.\u00a0 So full of ourselves.\u00a0 We had, as the saying goes, been hoisted by our own petard.\u00a0 The officers seemed to find our ineptitude wearying.<\/p>\n
Donny was immediately, and rightly, exonerated, then his father\u2019s people were brought in and a deal done with Cam and Tony to return the Rubens.\u00a0 In exchange there would be no criminal charges, but Cam would be asked not to return to Westminster after the summer holidays that were just a few days away.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Tony was given an official police caution.<\/p>\n
After the robbery, my efforts to keep a low profile consisted of ditching my Rasta wristband and removing from my bedroom wall the poster of Bob Marley smoking a giant spliff.\u00a0 Gran was pleased.\u00a0 \u201cSmoking!\u00a0 It\u2019s not a good role model for young men.\u00a0 And how those people wash that hair..!\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, having surrendered the Rubens (it never made it to the Euston lock-up, only as far as the back of his cupboard) Tony went missing.\u00a0 In the following weeks, Cam and I visited the Alhambra Cottage a couple times, and rang the doorbell, but there was never any answer.\u00a0 From anyone.\u00a0 The house seemed empty.\u00a0 The last time we went, we saw two big men trying to lever open the front door with a crowbar.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t look like coppers.\u00a0 We walked on, casual as you like, crossed the road and hurried away.\u00a0 We heard later from one of his fellow squatters whom we ran into at a gig, that Tony had pre-sold the Rubens to some Dutch criminals, who now wanted their money back, or the Rubens, or Tony\u2019s head on a pike.\u00a0 He told us that Tony had gone to lie low in Jamaica.\u00a0 We never saw Tony again.\u00a0 Our first black friend.\u00a0 Or maybe \u2018friend\u2019 is overstating it.<\/p>\n
Cam was duly expelled, but, like the proper pal he was, he never said a word about my (albeit minimal) involvement.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Donny\u2019s dad moved him to a different school and, after an uncomfortable, private dressing down from the headmaster, I was warned off contacting him ever again.\u00a0 Or Cam.\u00a0 Though that one didn\u2019t stick; he\u2019s still, to this day, my best friend.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d never been explicit to gran that Tony was black.\u00a0 It just wouldn\u2019t have been worth it.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if she was actually racist.\u00a0 I suspect technically she was, probably, but only in the same way that most grannies probably are \u2013 it\u2019s a \u2018different era\u2019 thing.\u00a0 Our family had got used to her go-to euphemism for black people: describing someone behind the counter at the Post Office, or a new doctor, as having a \u201clovely smile\u201d (similarly, she described fat people as having \u201cbeautiful skin\u201d).\u00a0 When we\u2019d all tut and roll our eyes, she\u2019d get exasperated: \u201cI don\u2019t know what we\u2019re supposed to call them nowadays!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell not \u2018them\u2019 for a start, gran!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it\u2026 \u2018coloured\u2019?\u201d\u00a0 She asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo!\u00a0 And you only ever need to refer to someone\u2019s race if it\u2019s pertinent.\u201d (That word, again.)<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s the moral of the story, if there is one.\u00a0 If only we\u2019d just called him Tony.<\/p>\n
Or, to paraphrase our hero Bob Marley: \u201cthe colour of a man\u2019s skin should be of no more significance than the colour of his eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Image Credit : Photo by Lawless Capture<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a>]<\/p>\n I\u2019m a multi-award-winning screenwriter\/producer with over twenty years\u2019 experience in films and TV. My musical feature film SOLO!<\/i> (writer and producer) was produced in 2018, won awards around the world, and is now available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, etc.
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\nIn earlier life, I founded cult cricket brand Millichamp & Hall then, more recently (and with my wife Cassandra), I founded the renowned La Monta\u00f1a home fragrance company.
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\nI now live between Brighton and a remote, mountain village in Spain.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n