-
Pretty Boy Floyd
Born in Barrow County, Georgia, in 1904, Charles Arthur Floyd, alias "Pretty Boy", participated in the Kansas City Massacre in 1933 when four law enforcement officers, including one FBI Special Agent, were killed. A leading light in the classic age of American gangsters, Pretty Boy was up there with John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde and…
-
Albert DeSalvo
AKA The Boston Strangler. Or was he? And come to that, was he really a plumber? His father Frank DeSalvo certainly was, although he let down the profession by being an alcoholic who knocked seven bells out of the missus, broke every one of her fingers, occasionally sold his children as slaves for $9 and…
-
Russ Conway
He was the pianist who brought joy with his tinkling fingers and his twinkling smile. This attractive combination brought Russ Conway huge success in live concert and on record, and made him one of Britain’s biggest-selling artists of the 1950s and 1960s. From his first chart success in 1957 with a medley of other artists’…
-
Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle
A comic genius from the golden age of the silent cinema, the Prince of Whales was the first comedian ever to be hit by an on-screen custard pie. He was working as an overweight plumber in 1913 when he was discovered by Mack Sennett. He had come to unclog the film producer’s drain but Sennett…
-
G Gordon Liddy
The former FBI agent who helped plan the Watergate break-in has capitalized on his burglary legend and taken his political views to the airwaves. George Gordon Liddy’s ultra-conservative radio talk show based in Fairfax, Virginia is broadcast on 232 stations nationwide. Liddy was convicted for his role in the Watergate break-in, for conspiracy in the…
-
Simone DeCavalcante
AKA Sam DeCavalcante. AKA Sam the Plumber. He was the boss of the Mafia’s New Jersey based DeCavalcante Family from the 1960s until the mid 1970s. In 1961, the FBI planted a listening device in DeCavalcante’s plumbing supply shop, and recorded him discussing criminal activities with other Mafia members and with politicians until they removed…
-
Rashid Abdul Dostum
General Dostum is the whisky-drinking former plumber who rose through the ranks of the Afghan puppet army that the Soviet Union ran in Afghanistan in the 1980s. He was eventually appointed head of Khad, the hated Communist secret police agency, where he had ample opportunity to indulge his penchant for ruthlessness and savagery. Dostum is…
-
Stockline sorrow
Haiku on the Stockline factory explosion
-
Unreliable
On the occasion of a slight hiccup in the justice system
-
David Kelly RIP
Well blow me down with a gift voucher from B&Q. I was in this house in Argyll Avenue, up to my elbow in this woman’s waste pipe, when I heard the news on the radio. Turns out Tony Blair did nothing wrong in the whole David Kelly Iraq thingy after all. He’s cleaner than a…