Mad Frankie boxes clever at the alternative gang show

Mad Frankie Fraser enters to a cross between the theme from The Godfather and the overture from Steptoe and Son. As one they rise to applaud. Welcome to the Gang Show.

He has served 42 years at Her Majesty's grave displeasure, been certified four times, done more bread and water than any man alive, borne the birch and the cat, been described by two Home Secretaries - Morrison and Maudling - as the most violent man in Britain.

Now he is 76, barely the height of two pennorth of coppers. Though his face is scarred like a consultant scalpel, he more greatly resembles a retired (if rough ridden) jockey than an elderly East End enforcer.

Nor does the persistent prefix offend him, worn rather as a badge of honour like Bomber Harris or, possibly, Chopper of that ilk.

Frank, as doubtless his old mother would have averred, isn't all bad, anyway. Like all the best he supports the Arsenal, loves them to bits, talks affectionately of Danny Evans and Jack Kelsey, ensures that his girl friend's boys are in the Junior Gunners.

"Mind if I write a few notes, Frank?"

"For an Arsenal fan, anyfing."

He was guest speaker at Spennymoor Boxing Academy's annual presentation, made a weekend of it, posed for pictures outside Durham jail ("I've had some good fun in there"), had toured Spennymoor's pubs the previous evening on an ebb tide of vodka and lemon.

"Absolutely riveted them to their seats," says boxing club secretary Paul Hodgson, an interesting departure since Frankie legendarily preferred to extract their teeth, his gold plated pliers offering little by way of anaesthetic.

Now he was in a marquee in the verdant grounds of the Whitworth Hall Hotel, blonde girl friend Marilyn Wisbey - daughter of Tommy Wisbey, the great train robber - attentively at his side.

They met in 1991, when Marilyn was the cabaret at Frank's nephew's wine bar. "She was singing that song, Crazy," he recalls. "I fort, is she getting at me, or what?"

He was a five star guest of the hotel, never went without a drink, was paid handsomely for his personal appearance, presented the awards as diffidently as if it at a public school prize giving and about to request a half day's holiday from a hard hearted headmaster.

"There was a bit of a tear in my eye, to be honest," says Frankie, his theme that crime doesn't pay.

Had momentarily he reverted to old habits, it would (of course) have been a case of wounding within tent.

Spennymoor had had a remarkable season, even by their own coruscating standards: three national champions, three English internationals, and that unfortunate business in New Zealand which - until the ABA suffered a timely technical knock-out - threatened the Academy's existence. Now they were playing the Fraser card.

"Frankie didn't want to come to Spennymoor," says Hodgy. "He thought we'd give him a bad name."

His accent remains Petticoat Lane, or thereabouts, aitches dropped as irredeemably as Jack "the Hat" McVittie, "th's" forever transmuted into a million unintentioned f-words, Cockney rhyming slang explained on request.

"I 'eaved a brick through this jeweller's Tommy," he says. "That's Tommy Trinder, window, see".

He'd been in really big trouble since he was 17, tried to drown a prison officer in three inches of water and, deemed too young for the cat, received 18 strokes of the birch whilst handcuffed over a penal barrel.

"Right on me deaf and dumb. That's your bum, see."

It also meant another few weeks of bread and water, known to authority as the number one diet and only occasionally leavened by the number two.

The number two was a better class of bread and water, explains Frank, though even that would be returned without thanks or ceremony should his beloved Arsenal have been beaten.

It didn't happen very often, of course.

His talk, news of the screws, is a sort of tour of Britain's jails. "Wonderful riot in Wandsworth....didn't half do us in Durham....bit off a man's ear in Pentonville, flushed it down the toilet.".

He'd even been given penal servitude, though transported no further than the Scrubs in which to do it.

It is neither ashamed nor acclaiming. Gangland is "our world", he periodically insists, a society in which women and children always come first and the devil (or one of his impliable cohorts) takes the hindmost.

He'd been cleared of murder, the jury foreman an old school friend ("wasn't that lucky?"), only twice served time for something he didn't do, his services sought by both the Richardson and Kray gangs.

"I saw them both but finally chose the Richardsons. The Krays were very good about it," he adds, a sort of Bow Bells Bosman.

There's mention of Jack Spot and Jimmy the Dip, of Lorenzo Luciano - known as Lucky - and of George Cornwell, who wasn't. There's talk, fighting talk mostly, of assaults with deadly weapons and with a chamber pot (and its contents) when nothing more lethal was to hand.

"If you're ever shot with a .22 bullet, which God forbid, but if you are..," he says and then, remembering the script, considers himself the most unsuccessful villain in history.

"I was one of the failures," he tells the kids. "For God's sake don't copy me."

His speech, in truth, is altogether more entertaining than that of the average ex-professional footballer, eager to equate £1,000 for 30 minutes on anodyne automatic pilot with "putting something back into the game".

The third volume of his memoirs is out on August 10, he conducts tours of London's gangland from an open topped double decker, professes the utmost contentment.

If this be madness, as someone once almost said, then there may be method in it.

Meanwhile in the Spennymoor marquee, a long queue is forming for autographs. He signs them all amiably, head bowed to within three inches of the paper, the blonde Marilyn forever at his side.

Another young lady is showing off her latest signature. "Be good," it says. "Frankie Fraser."

Much has transpired since the column last appeared, not least that John Dawson's football season finally ended.

The Hartlepool postman's record 278th game was at Gretna, the Carlisle League Cup final in which Cleator Moor Celtic bowed to the mighty Emperor's Palace, from Carlisle.

His 284th and last was Cwmbran's Inter-Toto Cup tie against Nistru Unisport of Moldova, the Welshmen thus becoming one of precious few sides - Juventus another - to have played in all four senior European competitions.

Twenty days later ("I sorted out my programmes") the season began again, with four games in two days at Annan. By last night's Herbert Hutchinson Cup tie between Crook Town and Shildon, he'd already seen 12 matches in 2000-2001.

Any advance on 284? John's wearing his manager coat. "I don't want to put pressure on myself," he says. "I'm taking it one game at a time."

John Goodall, known among football fanatics as Darlo John so as not to confuse him with Hartlepool John, managed 279 games in 1998-99 but a mere 196 last time.

"I was a bit skint," he explains.

Still, we encountered the lad on a south bound flier, changing at Peterborough for the first country cricket match at Oakham School, Rutland, since 1938, his bait and his plastic mac in his Manchester City shoulder bag.

Alistair Brown hit 295 for Surrey. "Apparently the highest score ever in Rutland," said the Sunday Times, somewhat cautiously.

Though Darlo John has now seen first class cricket at all but six grounds on which it's played, the football rivalry undoubtedly remains.

"Ah yes," he says, "but I'm an all rounder."

T he column's pre-season total remains at one, Dunston Fed against Baldock Town on Friday evening - a Kevin Phillips connection there - and £72 raised round the ground towards the visitors' charabanc. Thereafter to Tow Law FC's fund raising real ale festival, though in the presently straitened circumstances barely a sniff of the barmaid's apron. Others stayed a little longer. The band, we hear, played on.

A word of thanks, finally, to those very many readers who have urged us through an unexpectedly long absence. Even Bulldog Billy Teesdale rang in concerned tones, though it proved a diaphonously indecent excuse to sell tickets for Evenwood Cricket Club's sportsmen's dinner.

Now that the column again has a leg to stand on, readers may care to name five players who've scored Premiership goals for four different clubs and - since it's been a long time - the only man to have hit a hat trick for three different Premiership teams.

We return, upright as ever, on Friday.