The most accurate British gangster film is Gangster No. 1, which really encapsulates this culture. There’s a scene in the film in which the main characters are all sitting around a table at a charity boxing match smoking cigars when one of them goes to the toilet. All the others call him a fucking cunt behind his back. Then they laugh and joke with him when he returns. That’s what it’s like.

I arranged to meet up with Ben outside Yates wine bar. As soon as I jumped into his Mitsubishi Shogun, my spider senses shot through the roof. Ben was only a skinny, scruffy kid from Norris Green. He was dressed in a bottle-green Lacoste tracksuit, was wearing trainers and had seven days’ worth of growth on his face – he was unshaven and unwashed. I seemed to terrify him, but my instincts were telling me that he was bad for me. I would either end up dead or in iail. There was a dark and inexplicable force at work.

Someone like me has to be very careful around these sorts of guys. They will plot, scheme, trap and kill you. If that wasn’t the case, the lions would be ruling the world instead of men. Men cage and trap lions, then feed them meat and kill them.

I’ve had seven attempts on my life, including four contracts on my head ranging from £5,000 to £30,000. I’ve had my house petrol bombed, I’ve been shot at and I’ve been stabbed. The reason why I’m still here is that I’ve always listened to my instincts. Sometimes, I’ll get up in the morning to do some graft, but if there’s a bad sign, I won’t do it. For example, if I stumble over a chair or put a hole in my shirt with the iron, I won’t follow through with my plans for that day.

So, all I said to Ben was, ‘You know what? Forget it, lad.’ Then I jumped out of his car. Later on, I found out that if I had pursued those funds, I’d have found myself in a lot of trouble. It turns out that they had a nice acid bath prepared for me.

The next debt I collected wasn’t a drug debt. Brian Schumacher, who was one of my doormen, was owed a load of dough by a top boxing promoter after a fight in London. I went to another boxing match and got the promoter in the toilet. I said, ‘You think we’re all stupid from up north, don’t you? We’ll have you here and now, mate. You can bring who you want. You’ll never walk again.’ Consequently, he gave me the cheque. However, it didn’t do Brian much good – he later went to jail for killing his stepfather.

During that time, I also took the opportunity to settle a few scores from the past. One day, my mate Kevin told me that he’d been beaten up by a club owner in town. ‘What’s this guy’s name?’ I asked.

‘Tommy,’ he replied.

The name sent a shiver down my spine. As you may remember, this was the same Tommy who had bullied and humiliated me outside a club when I was a kid. This was my chance for revenge. Tommy now owned a club with an ex-footballer. I told Kevin to pretend that he’d lost a 14-grand Rolex in the fight. I then went to see Tommy and could immediately tell that he was a yellow bastard. I told him that I wanted five-grand tax as compensation for the fictitious Rolex.

Tommy spluttered, ‘’Ere y’are, lad.’

I said, ‘No. There’s no “’ere y’are, lad” about it, Tommy. You slapped me when I was a fucking kid. I’m not a fucking kid any more. I’m a man.’

‘Oh, is that what this is about?’ he replied.

‘Yeah, it’s a little bit about that, and it’s also about the fucking watch. You’re going to pay.’

I hit him in the stomach, right into his big, fat belly. He doubled up and fell to his knees. His mate, the ex-footballer, went to make a move. ‘Stand still,’ I ordered. ‘Don’t even fucking move.’ He froze, because I’d given him my monster stare. I grabbed Tommy by his hair with my left hand and said, ‘I’ll be back tomorrow at 2.30 p.m. for my money. Don’t think about getting anybody down here to wait for me.’

The next day, I went bare knuckle, because I knew he was a shit house, and my spider senses weren’t flagging anything up. I sucked the money out of them and emptied it on a snooker table to check the amount. ‘Thanks, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘Nice doing business with you.’

The moral of the tale is this: don’t stand on the young boys of today, because they will be the men of tomorrow – and they will come and find you.

Around that time, I had trouble from an unexpected source – in the form of one of my old karate teachers called Dylan. For years, I’d been harbouring a grudge against him. He was a big, fat cunt who didn’t like niggers and hated me because what I lacked technically as a fighter I made up for with courage and heart.

One day, Dylan said to me, ‘I’ll say what no one else will say to you. You’re only a champion because Alfie Lewis has trained you.’ Alfie Lewis was the star of our club, the star of the country and five-times world champion.

I said, ‘Mmm, I’ve been training with Alfie for two years. Dylan, you’ve been training with Alfie for eight years. How many world championships have you won? Or did you only get a silver medal? Get outside, you fat bastard. You’re always picking on me, and I’ve let it go, cos your sons come into this club and Alfie’s told me to leave you alone because he needs you for funding.’

However, he shit out of it, so I forced him to drop to his knees and apologise. Humiliation: it’s a Japanese thing.

Later, his son came into the changing-rooms and said to me, ‘He humiliates me on a regular basis. I’ve got no problem with what you did to him. I’m glad you did that to him, Stephen.’ Then we hugged. Dylan’s son ended up a terror in both the martial-arts and outside worlds.

During this period, not only was I avenging my past, but I was still collecting millions of pounds in unpaid drug debts. Whether they were Turkish or South American, the system was the same. I’d leave a message with their top boss, who would call back, screaming obscenities down the phone – how they were going to shag me, shoot me, burn me, what they were going to do to my wife, etc. I would let them finish their little diatribe and then give them some of my rhetoric in return, which usually made them think that they had bitten off more than they could chew.

Now, criminals worth their salt would usually go away and do their research on me before making further threats. The common response to their enquiries would be something along the lines of, ‘Fucking hell. Frenchie? They call him the fucking Devil because he’s that fucking ruthless.’

Nine times out of ten, I would get a phone call back: ‘Er, er, sorry about that. I didn’t realise.’

I’d say, ‘Oh, you’ve done your research now? You’ve found out who I am? You realise now that you might get yourself sucked into some serious violence.’

It’s all about tone and intimidation. The great Chinese military author Sun Tzu says, ‘Best battles and all battles are fought and won in the mind.’ Like when Tim Witherspoon knocked Frank Bruno out because Frank couldn’t look back at him during the weigh-in.

In nine cases out of ten, the reputation is a lot bigger than the man. It’s all about preserving the myth. I know just how to play up to it. I also know when to play it down. I’ve learned to utilise and read body language to my advantage. Most people give themselves away with a twitch or a look.

But there is one kind of debtor that it doesn’t pay to pressure – and that’s family. At various times, I’ve been owed a total of £36,000 by members of my family. However, I learned to always let the money go after one relative called Larry caused me great problems. After some argy-bargy, I went round to his house to collect the debt. Little did I know, he had shopped me to the bizzies and told them that I was going to be armed. Three police cars swooped on me and told me to get out of my car. Stephen, my son, was in the back. Two police officers came over and took hold of my arms. I’m still a big strong guy, but I was even bigger then, and I spun them round with ease. I then opened my car door and said to Stephen, ‘Everything’s OK. Don’t worry.’

Suddenly, two officers grabbed my ankles and yanked them from underneath me. As my head hit the car, another copper scooped me from behind the neck, and I was rendered unconscious for only the second time in my life. I remember feeling a prickly sensation in my right temple, then I was out.

I woke up in the back of a base vehicle with an officer pointing a firearm in my face. He said, ‘If this was South Africa, I could just waste you now. You’d be a dead man.’

I replied, ‘Well, fucking go on then!’ I then tried to bite the gun. ‘Shoot me! Kill me! If that’s what you want to do, do it!’ I went into madman mode, but I was only acting, because I knew he wasn’t going to shoot me. He would have had to endure a 12-month investigation if he had. He was just trying to see if he could make me piss or shit my pants – or start begging and crying for mercy. It was just like at the end of the movie Angels with Dirty Faces when Jimmy Cagney says, ‘No, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.’ Was he really a yellow rat or was he just doing it so that the kids didn’t follow in his footsteps?

At the police station, they searched my son’s bag and found nothing. At that point, the gun-wielding pig tried to be my friend. I brought up a golly from the pit of my stomach and spat it right in his fucking face. As far as I was concerned, the moment a police officer abuses the power vested in him he enters into the arena of the jungle and the cauldron of the Netherworld. And who’s the king in the Netherworld? The fucking Devil, that’s who. Just to drive this point home, I told him that I would hunt him down to his house and get him there.

I encountered a further example of police brutality outside the Cream nightclub. I quoted PACE at the police, and they jumped on me, beat me up and charged me with a public order offence. It cost me thousands to fight it, but, eventually, the judge proclaimed, ‘Mr French has taken it upon himself to research PACE, and he’s always dealt with the police in a rational manner.’ Thus, I got my conviction overturned.

In my chosen career, high resolve was an essential characteristic for success. For example, one of my relatives called Tom started selling drugs to a dealer in Bradford by the name of Macdonald. Tom was owed about 50 grand off this guy, so he shot his house up a little bit and found himself in jail. It was my job to retrieve the goods. I didn’t know anyone in Bradford, but, within two hours, I’d got hold of a guy called West Indian Phil. He thought he was a yardie, but in no time I’d kung fu’d his arse, putting a few moves on him, and he shit out the goods. He told me the money and drugs were hidden in a broom cupboard. This is the determination, tenacity and reserve of STF – Stephen Terrible French. Eighteen months later, someone gave Macdonald a grand to drop the charges.

It was around that time that I started to question my life as a drug dealer. I’d try and justify what I did all the time. I knew that I was selling death and misery: causing kids to be brought up by junkie mothers. Nevertheless, I would say to myself, ‘Well, I don’t import the stuff. I only sell it or tax those that are selling it.’

I used to justify my criminal actions by concluding that the whole world was corrupt, especially those at the top. For instance, I would rationalise that Queen Victoria had stolen the Kohinoor diamond from India, but, just because she was part of the establishment, it was considered to be OK. Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve got the greatest respect for the monarchy. But, at the end of the day, the current Queen shits and pisses like the rest of us. To me, she is just a human being whose ancestors got ahead by being corrupt.

I was angry, frustrated and searching for something new. I didn’t know where to turn. Alas, to fill the void, I made the common mistake that many people make when they are going through divorces and midlife crises. I threw myself into my work – the work of the Devil.