On one of our trips to Morocco, the Rock Star and I stayed in a hut in the middle of a really poor area, being bitten by bugs the size of your fucking nuts, even though we had enough money to buy everything around us. I could see dead people slumped in the gutters. One night, I was lying in the hut unable to sleep. My spider senses started tingling like an alarm bell. I looked across at the Rock Star and saw that he was awake, too. As a precaution, we hightailed it out of there at around about 1.30 a.m., and by 2.30 a.m. were safely ensconced in the Tulip Hotel at the top of the hill. This place only accepted American dollars and locals were refused entry. We were safe and sound.

We later discovered that Abdul had planned to double-cross us and have us murdered in the mud hut that night, taking the money and hashish for himself. However, his little plan had backfired. The next day, he was found floating in the local canal.

With Abdul gone, I needed another contact, so I started dealing with a tribal man whose name will go to the grave with me. Thanks to him, we eventually got 80 kilograms back to Liverpool. But the stuff was cursed. Some fucker robbed it from our safe house. As soon as I discovered the theft, I got on the tom-toms, letting everyone know that it was my gear and whoever took it better give it fucking back or there’d be trouble.

It wasn’t long before we found out the name of the thief – a guy called Cruze. Of course, he denied everything, so I took him to the 13th floor of Macmillan House and hung him out of the window by his ankles. He was dangling upside down with the blood rushing to his head, and he was screaming like a girl. He pissed and shit himself – the smell was fucking horrible. Still, I got my drugs back, and we let Cruze go free. After that, I binned the Morocco scenario. The moral of the tale is that the road from Casablanca to Marrakech is a bumpy ride and not worth the hassle or the money.

I continued with my ventures a little closer to home. I started going to London to watch the big fights. The hotel I would stay in seemed to be a prime location for a monthly drug-dealers’ convention. Loads of us would stay there – firms from Scotland, Manchester and all over.

One night, we were all drinking in the hotel bar. A dealer from Amsterdam started to boast about how huge he really was. Foolishly – very foolishly – he let slip to one of the lads in the bar that he had £100,000 in cash stashed in his room. Now this feller was a well-known hard-hitter, so he wasn’t banking on any of the London villains or the Mancs having him off. Not only did the firms fear his reputation, but they also relied on him for gear. They weren’t about to shoot themselves in the foot by thieving from him.

But when I found out about it, there was only one outcome. I made my way over to the Dutchman, bought him a few drinks and got him pissed up. Then, when he turned in, I bid him goodnight and went straight into action. I collected my bally and gun from my room. I then tapped on his door and pretended to be room service. When he opened it, I put the gun to his head and backed him onto his bed. I then blindfolded and hog-tied him with tape.

Within minutes, I was back in my room with a suitcase full of £100,000 in Dutch guilders. Breakfast the next day was frantic, with the Dutchman, his henchman and his allies trying to find the culprit. I sat at his table with my muesli and commiserated: ‘Bad one, la. Who would do such a thing?’

Of course, he didn’t know it was me. However, a few of our mob asked me, ‘Was that you, Frenchie?’

I just looked at them and said, ‘Me? Do that? What do you take me for?’ We all shared a little smile.

I remember another incident in our nation’s capital. There was this godfather type in London, whose wife was having an affair with a celebrity hairdresser. She told the hairdresser that her untouchable husband kept £320,000 under their kid’s bed – that pillow talk is a killer. So, her fancy man tipped me off.

Wallace and I put the godfather’s mansion under surveillance using Gulf War-surplus ex-SAS infrared night-vision goggles and remote-listening devices. Because I’ve got manners, I waited for the wife and kids to go out before Wallace and I broke in. I then crept up on the godfather while he was shaving. The Devil appeared in his mirror like an apparition and gave him the shock of his life. The money wasn’t under the bed like we had been advised, and he wouldn’t tell us where it was – at first. Unfortunately, the Tefal iron then came out. Eventually, we found the money in the cellar – and that’s where we left him.

On jobs such as this one, a clean-up man always came in after we had departed to remove all physical evidence from the scene of the crime. This precaution was left over from our armed-robbery days when a clean-up man was responsible for petrolling the car and overalls. In this case, the clean-up man actually had to wash the victim down while he was still tied up, spending four hours cleaning the house from top to bottom. That’s how careful we were.

When we got back to Liverpool, Johnny Phillips came to me with some more Inland Revenue work. It turned out that a distributor nicknamed Smokin’ Joe Frasier had ten kilograms of Charlie on him and two hundred and fifty large. If I cut the dope, it equated to a half-million-pound deal, which was good work. The tax went like clockwork, until we got back to Johnny’s shop on Granby Street to divvy up the winnings.

The shop was in a basement and was full of space invaders, slot machines and that kind of thing. Johnny turned up with two white boys and had a sick grin on his face. My spider senses started tingling. I knew it was all on. Predictably, the three of them pulled blades and told me that they were keeping everything and I was getting nothing. I raised my two hands outstretched in front of me and said, ‘Look, lads, it’s like this. If you want to keep the gear, you can keep the gear and you can keep the money. It’s no big deal. No one needs to cut me. Just stay back with the blades.’

Encouraged by my quick surrender, Johnny then said, ‘I always knew you were a shithouse. I always knew you were yellow.’

I said, ‘You got the drop on me, man.’ Then I put a sad look on my face and said, ‘But what you’ve got to remember, Johnny, is that I’m a little bit cleverer than you.’ And with that, I whipped out my trusty 1940 Luger from the small of my back and pointed it straight at him. ‘Oh dear!’ I said. ‘Only a soft cunt like you would bring a knife to a gun fight. You think you’re man enough to take my stuff and not pay me?’

When he saw the Luger, the look on his face was priceless because he’d actually sold me the gun in the first place! I turned to him and said, ‘I’ll let you walk out of here, because I feel sorry for you. I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you. Pack everything up – all of the cash and all of the gear. I’ll take everything, and we’ll call it a day.’ I had turned a negative into a positive once again.

The irony of the situation was that he had tried to rob me at knifepoint, but I had ended up robbing him with his own gun! How sweet was that? It was a nice little earner, too, and the most beautiful thing of all was that Johnny had made the mistake of thinking I was yellow. As for the two white compadres, it didn’t really have anything to do with them, so I let them go. It was just a power game between me and their boss.

The whole matter was sorted with the steel of my word and the strength of my character. It was beautiful man, absolutely fucking beautiful.