| Gary Kemp Interview on BBC Choice |
| Patsy Palmer’s interview on the East End – BBC Choice 2001 |
| GK – The funny story is, or the legend is that when they were pulling all the houses down in Valance Road to build flats I guess, the only house they didn’t pull down right in the middle was Ronnie and Reggie’s and it was known as Fort Valance. My brother and I were driving Martin’s Porsche through the East End with a big bunch of flowers in the car to go and visit their Aunt May to ask her a few questions. And we get pulled up by the police, flashing lights, stopped the car – Porsche driving in the East End 10 years ago, before the wide boys all moved in. PP – Did they think you were drug dealers? GK – Yeah, exactly and I remember these two coppers getting out of the car and they looked at my brother and I down the street and they called us over, and as we got nearer they started to recognise us. PP - And then they said, can we have your autograph? By the time you got there they were gonna give you a ticket? GK – Well, we had these flowers and they said what are you doing round here. We said, well actually we are going to visit Ronnie and Reggie’s Aunt May up in that block of flats there. I’m so sorry they said, give her our best. GK – I think what the film did and I think that the point that needs to be made is that people go on about the gangsters in the East End, but the people who really kept the East End, kept all of that alive, and the film tried to touch upon this lot, were the women. They are the quote that we always hear ‘the streets were safer in those days’. I can’t go along that line, you only have to read Dickens to see the murders and the pickpockets, and all the stuff, the mugging that went on here every day. PP – When I was growing up round here there seemed to be a phase where everyone was getting mugged. I mean, I got mugged and it was like everyone seemed to be getting mugged and I don’t think it has changed really in that respect. I wouldn’t have walked through parts of the East End if someone gave me a million pounds after 8 o’clock at night GK – No exactly, although you can now coz there are nice galleries and cinemas. PP – And that’s the weird thing, the East End is the place to be these days. |
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