Several years back we had a client called First Telecom.
Customers could make cheap international phone calls.
We wrote a script featuring ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser.
Frankie Fraser got his nickname because he’d been certified insane, twice, while in prison.
In the 1960s, Frankie had been an enforcer for the Richardson family.
They were a south London crime family, the equivalent of east London’s Kray brothers, who were in fact their biggest rivals.
As long as each gang stayed on their own turf there wasn’t a problem.
But one night they bumped into each other in Mr Smith’s club in Catford,
Everything kicked off, and the evening ended with one of the Kray gang shot dead.
Frankie Fraser was arrested and tried.
Much to everyone’s surprise, he was found not guilty.
Later, Frankie was being interviewed by a journalist about that night.
The journalist asked Frankie “Was it the gun that killed him?”
He answered “Well the gun, the knife, the hammer, the whole lot really.”
So ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser aptly named.
And we thought we could use his notoriety to get extra exposure for our First Telecom.
The radio script we wrote went something like this:
“Hello, Mad Frankie Fraser here.
They used to call me ‘Mad’ Frankie, but the truth is I wasn’t really mad.
I was upset.
I was annoyed at the rates BT used to charge me for overseas phone calls.
I felt like I was being robbed.
Well I’ve just found out First Telecom only charge a fraction of what BT do.
That’ll save me some loot.
So thanks to First Telecom, I’m not ‘Mad’ anymore.
You can just call me ‘Normal’ Frankie Fraser now.”
That was very roughly the script.
But the first problem was the radio censorship authorities turned it down.
We couldn’t understand why: First Telecom were cheaper than BT.
We figured the reason must be that BT spent millions of pounds advertising, whereas First Telecom spent hardly anything.
And the advertising authorities knew which side their bread was buttered.
Which meant we had to make it more uncomfortable for them to turn down our script than worry about BT.
We found that not allowing us to explain a product advantage counted as ‘restraint of trade’, and eventually they backed down.
So we got ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser in the recording studio.
What we hadn’t allowed for was that he wasn’t a voice over artist.
He was a criminal.
And it took absolutely ages to get anything usable in the can.
But what fascinated me most about the whole process was after it was all over.
We were having a chat in the studio and Frank was telling us a story.
It was about the killing at Mr Smiths Club.
Frank told us he was in the dock at the Old Bailey.
He was on trial for murder.
I couldn’t help myself, I had to ask.
I said “Did you kill him, Frank?”
Frank stopped in mid sentence and looked at me a bit irritated.
He said “Yes, yes, but you’re spoiling the story.”
Then he went on to tell us that the real reason he got off was that he suddenly caught the eye of the foreman of the jury.
They recognised each other.
They’d been at the same school and even played football together.
And Frank laughed a lot at what he thought was a great story.
What fascinated me was that he thought that story was more interesting than the story about murdering a man.
He was irritated because I was asking him about the boring part.
His day job, what he did for a living.
And I was spoiling the really interesting part about the amusing coincidences in life and how interesting it is.
I think it’s strange what different people think is interesting.
I think Frank was wrong about which story was more interesting.
But I wasn’t going to tell him.
You are a brave man Dave interupting ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser. It is a fascinating point that what interests us may not interest the client, which is why understanding the client as well as their problem is so key
The Cabbie - 13 August 2012 11:59 am
Rob,
Lucky he was in a good mood.
I nearly had a different career, supporting the Hammersmith flyover.
Dave Trott - 13 August 2012 2:20 pm
Dave,
Did anyone say you were a card?
john p woods - 14 August 2012 7:57 pm
No, but Frank kept calling me ‘son’ which I sorta liked.
It’s a long time since anyone called me son.
Dave Trott - 15 August 2012 8:41 am
Dave,
Do you think he was letting you know your place?
john p woods - 15 August 2012 10:12 am
When it comes to murderers and enforcers for crime families, I know my place.
Usually as far away as possible.
Dave Trott - 15 August 2012 10:31 am
Maybe that’s how you avoided supporting the Hammersmith Flyover, he thought you were related
The Cabbie - 15 August 2012 11:16 am
I think he’d have been sadly disappointed if he thought I was his son.
I haven’t even been to prison, let alone killed anyone.
Dave Trott - 15 August 2012 11:48 am
Dave – Supporting the Hammers is much worse than supporting the Hammersmith flyover.
Grilla Login - 27 August 2012 11:50 am
Grilla, at least you know where you are with the flyover.
Dave Trott - 27 August 2012 2:40 pm
At least Frankie Fraser didn’t challenge the script.
When much younger, I wrote and then cast Tom Baker in radio commercial (also for a telecoms company, as it happens). Client and I attend the studio (in Soho, his agent decreed he would only attend somewhere ‘south side of Oxford St’).
First read through is half under his breath, but with mic fully on. He gets to the end and says. “Who wrote this shit?!?” To be fair, the script was at the very least okay, if not award winning – but this was the good (ex-) doctor’s way of letting us know what he thought of it.
So who was the mad one here? I was certainly a little mad (stupid) to have hired such a famously free-spirited voice-over. The client was perhaps a little mad (angry) that the talent had so little respect for the proceedings, the script, and, by association, his offering.
As for Tom Baker? Eccentric – yes; Intimidating – yes; Mad – only to think my script was rubbish!
Simon Sanders - 29 August 2012 3:52 pm
Along with friends, my wife and I went on ‘The Mad Frankie Fraser tour’ of his old haunts in south London and those of the Kray twins in the East End.
We were driven around in a minibus by the daughter of one of the Great Train Robbers while Frankie gave a running commentary.
One of the tours memorable and almost unreal moments was when we stopped outside the house where a Kray victim, Jack the Hat McVitie, was murdered. Frankie described, with relish and in detail, how badly the murder was carried out by Reggie Kray. Frankie claimed he would have done it better and with more efficiency. We believed him.
Another, but lighter memory, of Frankie was when he boasted that he’d managed to tip his slopping out piss pot over every Governor, of every jail, he’d been banged-up in.
Frankie Fraser, at first and throughout the tour, seemed like a very small, harmless 70+ year old man, that was until he acted out to my wife, while in the Blind Beggar pub, a moment of brutality he had committed during in his hey day. It was very frightening.
I had read since that he feared no man or thing.
Bit like you Dave, now I come to think of it.
John O’D
john o'driscoll - 31 August 2012 3:27 pm
John,
Wish I’d been there, sounds like a great night.
Mind you, from what our producer told me Frank’s wife (also his manager) was even more scary than he was.
Dave Trott - 31 August 2012 3:47 pm