“Dodgy” Dave Courtney, a thick-set, shaven-headed gangster, came to public attention in 1981 after a New Year’s Eve “misunderstanding” involving five Chinese waiters, their meat cleaver and the price of a takeaway. “I walked into the restaurant and shut the door. A load of blokes turned towards me. They could tell I wasn’t there for prawn crackers and noodles,” he said. He then served time in Belmarsh prison after attacking the waiters with the cleaver.
Eight years later he was acquitted of a gangland murder only to admit brazenly on the steps of the court that he was, in fact, responsible. “Course I was guilty,” he said. “They deserved it. I didn’t do nobody that didn’t. I know everybody says that, but in my case it’s true.”
An accomplished curator of his own mythology, Courtney claimed to have been involved in debt collecting, nightclub door work, assault and smuggling. He was known as “the Yellow Pages of the underworld” and in 1995 arranged for 100 of the East End’s finest muscles and tattoos to line the route for the funeral of Ronnie Kray, the gangster.
Over the years he lost several teeth, was twice stabbed in the back, broke every knuckle on his hands in fights, had a five-inch blade thrust into his right elbow, was shot at close range in the right knee, had his left arm cut with a flick knife and sacrificed part of a finger during the meat cleaver incident. On one occasion his nose was bitten off during a fight in a beer garden; it was later sewn back on.
“He used to get things for people,” his then wife, Jenny, told the Evening Standard in a 1997 feature on gangsters’ molls. “He can get prostitutes, debt collecting, someone bashed up, security for clubs.”
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Courtney was said to have inspired Vinnie Jones’s debtcollector character Big Chris in Guy Ritchie’s black comedy Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). “Like when he gets that bloke lying on the sunbed, and carrying round two sawn-off shotguns,” he said. “I’ve been in the unfortunate position of having quite a lot of guns pointing at me and the one that frightened me the most was a dirty old sawn-off shotgun, so I knew how scary two would look.”
Some disputed Courtney’s colourful accounts. “Mad” Frankie Fraser, known as “the dentist” for his habit of torturing victims with gold-plated pliers, accused him of embellishing his criminal record, suggesting in 1999 that he was “not fit” to be featured in the Cons to Icons exhibition of art by underworld figures. “He hasn’t earned the right to be in such company,” Fraser said, accusing his fellow gangster of being “a grass”, or police informer.
Courtney was “very hurt” and denied co-operating with the police. He had, however, given them a key to his house after becoming fed up with the damage caused on their regular visits. “Look, I’m not going to have a dead body or a gun in my house for you to find,” he said, explaining that he never took “work” home.
In the mid-1990s Courtney turned his back on crime and took up acting and writing, completing six books starting with Stop the Ride, I Want to Get Off (1999). “I’m looking for something that will give me the lifestyle I’m used to without the grief,” he said of his change of direction. In his fifth book, F*** the Ride (2005), he claimed to have been acquitted in 19 trials. On screen he played a London villain who kills his way to the top of the drug world in Full English Breakfast (2014) and the crime boss Ray Razor in Gatwick Gangsters (2017).
Some of his associates seemed not quite so eager to move on. In 2002 he was driving a friend’s Range Rover when the car was “bumped” off the A2 in southeast London and he was thrown out of the window, suffering serious injuries. “I’m convinced somebody, somewhere wants me dead,” he said from his hospital bed.
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David John Courtney was born in Bermondsey, south London, in 1959, the son of Patrick Courtney, a Scout leader who worked for the gas board, and his wife Teresa (née Dargan), a strict Irish Catholic who was a store detective for Woolworths, “which is pretty funny considering the amount of stuff I used to lift from Woolies”, he wrote. His headmaster at Adamsrill Primary School, Sydenham, observed prophetically: “That boy is going to cause his mother, future wife and the police a lot of trouble.”
He grew up above a butcher’s shop in Camberwell Green until the family moved to a “prefab house on stilts” in Stepney and later Forest Hill. In his early teens he broke into a toy warehouse, began stealing cars and took part in a wages snatch from a building site. “I got loads of fines and could have been sent to borstal but always managed to slip out of it somehow,” he wrote.
Before long he had been expelled from school, seen by psychiatrists and, as a last resort, sent on an outdoor pursuits course in Devon. “We had to go out on the moors and go rambling and fishing and abseiling and pot-holing and all that country-life crap,” he added.
At age 15 his first job was as a window dresser for a department store. One night he hid inside a wardrobe and, after the store had been locked up, went around stealing as much as he could carry. “About the only thing I didn’t have on my back was a three-piece suite,” he said. Unknown to him, there was a silent alarm linked to the local police station and he was apprehended. Before long he had fallen in with some of the East End “firms” including, he claimed, that of the Kray twins.
Courtney married Susan Ray in 1979 and Annette Barn in 1985; both marriages were dissolved. He later married Jennifer Pinto, a DJ and rap artist known as JennyBean, at a ceremony in Las Vegas. In 2012 he was cleared of attacking her after claiming that she was involved in an affair with Angela Bostock, the ex-partner of Steve McFadden, who played the hard man Phil Mitchell in EastEnders.
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He and Pinto were separated and he is survived by his partner, Angela, and by his children: Drew; Courtney, who is a singer and tattoo artist; Chelsea; Lillie, a soldier; Beau, an entrepreneur; and Levi. His stepson, Genson, a drug dealer, was shot dead by Pinto’s brother in 2011.
In December 1990 Courtney was fined £225 at Bow Street magistrates’ court for drug possession and obstructing a police officer. The following year he was described as a “doorman” when he appeared at Staines magistrates’ court accused of robbery and attempting to pervert the course of justice.
He appeared in The Krays (1990), Peter Medak’s biopic about the East End gangsters, and released a single, Who Is He?, celebrating his 1989 murder acquittal. He was also co-author with Jim Dawkins, a former prisoner officer, of The British Crime and Prison Quiz Book (2008), with a foreword by Charles Bronson, the convicted armed robber.
Despite the books and television work, Courtney was unable to keep out of trouble. In January 2009, he was given an 18-month conditional discharge at Bristol crown court after admitting unlawfully possessing ammunition. He had been stopped because his red BMW had the illegal registration plate BADBOY1. In court he claimed that the bullet was a prop for a stage show in which he encouraged young people to remain on the straight and narrow, though the judge, Mr Justice Ticehurst, observed that his inability to distinguish between a fake and a real round “perhaps undermines your street credibility”.
Soon he was declared bankrupt, owing HM Revenue & Customs £250,000, and not long afterwards was acquitted at the Old Bailey of three charges of possessing prohibited weapons. The case came about after auditors in his bankruptcy case noticed a gold-sprayed “James Bond-style” revolver while searching his home for assets. He told the jury that they were items from his wife’s collection of theatrical props.
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The cigar-smoking Courtney, who referred to himself as Dave Courtney OBE, or One Big Ego, lived in a converted former school in Plumstead, southeast London. Known as Camelot Castle, it was a homage to King Arthur with St George’s flags, a replica of Arthur’s sword in the stone and a large mural depicting Courtney as Arthur. On the gate hung an oversize knuckleduster while inside were suits of armour, a private nightclub and a “sex dungeon”. He kept a pet peacock called Percy, offering a £100 reward when it escaped last year.
“Course I like to be loved,” he once said. “I’m more of a Robin Hood than a robbin’ bastard.”
Dave Courtney, gangster, author and actor, was born on February 17, 1959. He was found dead on October 22, 2023, aged 64