Sleepers: Undercover In The Sex Trade
Channel 4 Television
6 December, 2001
Part of the Channel 4 flagship undercover series. One-hour documentary based on a long-term undercover project in which two reporters – one posing as a pimp, the other working as a brothel’s maid – infiltrated the world of Albanian and Eastern European sex trafficking and prostitution.
Assistant Producer: Adrian Gatton
Reporters: Tessa Mayes, Will Daws
Producer/Director: Nick Hayes
Executive Producer: Steve Boulton
Reggie Kray: The Final Word
BBC1
29 March 2011
Reggie Kray was released from prison without parole in Sept 2000, in the terminal stages of cancer. Just a few days before he died, he gave an exclusive interview to Bill Curbishley from his bed at Norwich General Hospital, reflecting on his life, his crimes, and his trial and punishment.
This film tells the story of the Krays, with anecdotes and opinions of associates, friends, victims, detectives, lawyers, writers and criminologists. In the interview Reggie Kray alluded to murdering “Mad” Teddy Smith.
I did the journalism and research on this documentary and tracked down a number of individuals who knew the Twins and had never appeared on camera before: “Scotch” Jack Dickson, Connie Whitehead, Johnny Squibb, Johnny and Tony Barry. Legendary underworld solicitor Ralph Haeems also agreed to be interviewed.
Other interviewees include Freddie Foreman, Lennie Hamilton, “Big” Albert Donoghue, the Lambrianou brothers, author John Pearson, Laurie O’Leary, barrister Nemone Lethbridge, John Platts-Mill QC, detective Leonard “Nipper” Read, journalist Cal McCrystal.
The programme is a bit of a Who’s Who of the Krays ballad. Other major figures were interviewed off-camera but would not agree to appear in the final programme.
The BBC1 version of the film can be watched online here. An extended two-hour version is available on DVD. See Amazon for details.
Narrator: John Hurt
Directed by Aubrey Powell.
Journalism/Research: Adrian Gatton
The VAT man cometh
By Mark Olden and Adrian Gatton
Punch Magazine
October 2000
Customs & Excise is on thin ice. The department’s absurd treatment of a desperate restaurateur and its conduct during a major drugs haul make a merger with Inland Revenue increasingly likely.
Working for editor Matthew Collin through 2000 and afterwards on stories about the PR industry and publicity scams; runaway children and private detectives; bouncers and private security; interview with Hell’s Angel founder Sonny Barger which descended into a row; interviews with pickpockets and an investigation into a parrot robbery; sexism in sports; criminals running landfill scams; radical student groups; the Official Secrets Act; CCTV and privacy; futurology; the HAARP defence project; drug experiments on soldiers during the 1950s and other stories.
Dispatches
Channel 4 Television
17th April, 2000
The first re-investigation of the case of solicitor Sally Clark, who was convicted for murdering her two baby sons. Her conviction has quashed by the Court of Appeal in January 2003.
Researcher: Adrian Gatton
Producer: John Ashton
Executive Producer: Stephen Phelps
Dispatches: Tax Wars
Channel 4 Television
24th February, 2000
Two-part investigation into HM Customs & Excise; this episode examines VAT.
“Tony Blair doubtless gets little time for telly watching, but I strongly advise his office to get a transcript of this excellent programme …”
– Victor Lewis Smith, Evening Standard
Researcher: Adrian Gatton
Assistant Producer: James Oliver
Producer: Sam Bagnall
Director: Peter Minns
Dispatches: Drug Wars
Channel 4 Television
17th February, 2000
Two-part investigation into HM Customs & Excise; this part examines major drug investigations.
Researcher: Adrian Gatton
Assistant Producer: James Oliver
Producer: Sam Bagnall
Director: Peter Minns
Friend of the Great Beast
Like Aleister Crowley, Austin Osman Spare was obsessed with sex and magic. But unlike Crowley, he was also an accomplished artist.
By Adrian Gatton
The Independent
20 August 1999
The reputation of Austin Osman Spare, one of the oddest characters in 20th century British art, is being rehabilitated by a new exhibition in London’s Clerkenwell.
Spare was an accomplished draughtsman, a child prodigy and the youngest artist of his time to exhibit at the Royal Academy. He was also deeply interested in magic and became a friend – and then almost as inevitably an enemy – of Aleister Crowley, the notorious occult practitioner. Some of his most exquisite work was produced in trance states in pitch darkness.
In his life he was a Bohemian and after early success turned his back on fashionable London to pursue his art and magic in a Brixton basement. He even turned down the chance to become Hitler’s court painter …
Read the rest of the story on The Independent’s website.
Lost in spades
By Adrian Gatton
The Guardian
8 September 1998
As the digging season approaches, Adrian Gatton finds the Government is finally grasping the health benefits of allotments
Mention allotments and you think of fusty 1940s Dig For Victory posters. By comparison, the 1980s brought designer allotments and vegetable parterres. But with MPs this summer urging ministers to protect allotments partly for their ‘undisputed health benefits’ and ‘therapeutic potential’, maybe we will see ex -joggers hoeing manically and Buddhists meditating near cabbage patches.
The Commons Select Committee report, The Future For Allotments, claims the health benefits are outstanding …
Squatters Have Right to Renovate Too
By Adrian Gatton
The Times
1 August 1998
Far from being the destructive pests of folklore, squatters could help to save old buildings, says Adrian Gatton. When Chris Singer, a mixed media artist and committed squatter, moved in to a closed Orthodox synagogue in Montague Road, Dalston, East London …
Adrian Gatton 