The Krays were a charismatic, extremely photographic pair of identical twins who began life as ordinary criminals, morphed into celebrity villains, and at the time of their respective deaths, had become quasi-legendary figures of a bygone age of working-class London folklore. Good folklore has never allowed uncomfortable truths to hinder a good story.

The Kray’s enduring glamorous allure has caused many fine actors to adopt the eerily non-light reflective black Kray hair, slip into expensive tight-fitting suits, adopt a rough, hand-me-down Michael Caine accent, puff out their chest, knock their knees together and waddle around the set to capture the much-heralded Kray magnetism.

The mere prospect of Tom Hardy – playing both Reggie and Ron – and cursing and swearing as he bit out the throats of cockney poofters and gentlemen faggots alike reduced typically cynical media critics to drooling bedwetters.  And why not?  The chance to play an immoral sociopath freed from all moral and societal restraints gives the Oscar-chasing actor free rein to allow their normally domesticated inner Id to roar.  What an opportunity! To play a guy who can beat up women who don’t worship him and pound men who don’t drop to their knees when he enters a room without getting shunned or arrested! And get paid for it!

Paul Muni and Al Pacino, two cultured, intellectual artists, turned into murderous, swaggering priapic ghouls in career-defining turns in their respective versions of “Scarface”. Denzel Washington, who made a career out of playing saintly African-Americans who lacked a functional reproductive system, strutted across the screen when asked to gangster up in Training Day and American Gangster. Has the tight-faced, mumbling De Nero ever looked so sleek, so composed as when playing the doomed Neil McCauley in Heat?  Has any actor infused a role with so much hypnotic serpentine sensuality than Brando when playing the ageing but still lethally manipulative Don Corleone?

Gangsters. You’ve got to love them - or they’ll kill you for not doing so.

Kill - now, that’s a powerful word. Where did that come from?

Surely we’re in the world of beautiful men whose bodies are adorned with perfectly tailored suits and whose mouths glisten with spectacularly white veneers. But, according to friends and family members who knew them, the Krays were alright. Ronnie Kray could turn a bit funny now and then, but he loved his mom. Remember Al Pacino in Scarface. He enjoyed a laugh, didn’t he? Except when his best friend looked the wrong way at his baby sister. This isn’t Hollywood or even Hollywood on the cheap but two egotistical London criminals who ended up wasting half of their lives away in prison.

This is real life. Real life is messy and doesn’t always get cleaned up in the third act or be sent for reshoots after a few lousy test reviews from a research group. Away from the make-up brush, fake guns, retraceable blades and dramatic blood squibs, a different kind of gangster exists. These real-life gangsters prey on human vices and profit from human weakness. And if the weak can’t pay their debts or make good on their promises, they get hurt. Badly.

The Krays made their money by providing their customers with vetted underage rent boys and prostitutes and drugs of their choice, such as cocaine, morphine and opium; they offered safe environments for punters to participate in high-stakes, high-reward gambling.  Violence was the vital element that permeated every aspect of Kray-related business. The Krays beat up staff who stepped out of line, assaulted partners who refused to accept bad deals, brutalised customers who were in debt and threatened the lives of the spouses and children of customers who failed to pay them back in good time.

The Krays and their criminal outfit were involved in armed robberies, arson, protection rackets, assaults and murder over nearly two decades. The Krays were endlessly vindictive and relentlessly violent: Ronnie branded the jewel thief Lenny Hamilton, with a white-hot poker; Jack "the Hat" McVitie was stabbed to death by Reggie; George Cornell, a member of a rival gang, the Richardson gang, was shot to death by Ron. Despite all this, you will not find a single photo of the Krays holding a gun, a knife, or an axe.  Nor will you find an image of them with a split lip, bruised hand and broken nose. To operate in plain sight, the thug-gangster must appear – well-behaved, gracious, civilised, and unthreatening – the opposite of what he is. The suggestion is that gangsters have become involved with Chinese players in snooker. Some players have dismissed these concerns. Chinese players have been accused of being weak. What’s a gangster or two to worry about?

There is nothing funny or trite about gangsters. If there were, nobody would fear them, and they’d be out of business. A gangster who is not feared has no business claiming to be a gangster.

The rumours of gangster involvement in or penetration of a tight group of Chinese players must be taken seriously.  A straightforward evaluation of corruption in sports indicates that whenever sporting bodies become aware of mass corruption within their game, they are way behind the curve. The rot has set, and it's been there for some time.

The players are a sad symptom of what may well be a form of long-standing rot within snooker; they are not the cause or the primary beneficiaries. Unless snooker takes steps to inoculate itself from criminals properly, it will never cure this problem. The Krays’ over-exuberant business machinations ended when they were imprisoned, not their victims.

samjhere@icloud.com

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