Danny Dyer speaking to proper naughty geezers for another gripping documentary, what a time to be alive it was.
The year was 2008 (the last time Spurs won a trophy) and the Cockney icon was launching season one of Danny Dyer’s Deadliest Men.
If you are feeling nostalgic, the intro to the show went like this: “I’m Danny Dyer. Playing hard men and acting tough has been my bread and butter.
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(Image: officialdannydyer/Instagram)
“But now I’ve got a new role. I’m tracking down some of the most feared men in the world operating on both sides of the law. I’m gonna find out what makes them tick. How they got their fearsome reputations. And why they are considered to me some of the world’s deadliest men.”
It has been 16 years since the programme aired and below we explore what happened to some of the hard nuts Danny came face-to-face with in season one.
Barrington Patterson
Barrington Patterson – better known as One-Eyed Baz – was a former football hooligan turned community campaigner. He earned the nickname after being blinded in one eye after his sister chucked a can at him at a young age.
The kickboxer and MMA fighter used to scrap on the terraces with the Birmingham City Zulu Warriors and the reformed character opened up to Dyer about his wild antics.
(Image: BPM Media)
During the interview, the pair did some martial arts training together – leading to Dyer tapping out after Baz wedged him in a rear naked choke.
In the years after the show aired, the proud Brummie did his bit to try and combat homelessness and knife crime in the Midlands.
But in 2022, his wife Tracey, revealed his tragic death. She wrote on Twitter: “At 6am this morning my beloved husband had a massive heart attack. Paramedics worked for over an hour to save him unfortunately it wasn’t to be, our hearts are broken.”
Stephen French
In one particularly tense episode of the series, Dyer travelled to Liverpool to talk to infamous mobster Stephen French – who was chillingly known as ‘The Devil’.
He told viewers he was a man who “terrorised the underworld with extreme violence” and someone who “left drug dealers in fear” because he used to rob them.
(Image: LIVERPOOL ECHO)
It was the first time French, who has survived seven assassination attempts, opened up about his life and previous prison stints on camera.
But he ditched ‘The Devil’ moniker and instead preferred to be called ‘The Fighting Preacher’ after finding God when a postman handed him a bible one day.
But five years after the Dyer doc aired, French found himself back in prison for possessing a knife and threatening a business associate with an imitation firearm. This three-year sentence was then extended by ten months for perverting the course of justice.
He now keeps a relatively low profile and runs an Instagram page where he has 4,200 followers, but his latest post was back in September 2013.
Bradley Welsh
Bradley Welsh was first arrested for football violence some four years before he was legally able to buy a beer.
(Image: Daily Record)
Dyer called him a “teenage godfather” and the “original baby-faced assassin” when he, along with his camera crew, visited the ex-gangster in Edinburgh.
He spoke with Welsh, who owned his own security company, about being “Britain’s youngest mastermind” who ran the Scottish underworld.
But Hibs supporter Welsh had managed to turn his life around to become a successful gym owner and actor – appearing on the likes of Trainspotting 2.
However, on April 17, 2019, he was gunned to death outside his flat in his beloved Edinburgh at the age of 48. His distraught loved ones reportedly fell to his side after the shooting before armed police swarmed the scene.
Welsh, by then a father to a young child, was blasted in the head at close range with a shotgun from the 1890s in what a judge later described as a “premeditated and meticulously planned assassination”.
The man responsible was contract killer Sean Orman who was sentenced to life behind bars for Welsh’s murder and the judge told him: “To shoot an unarmed man as he approached his own house was a cowardly and a wicked thing to do.”
After his death, Dyer paid tribute by writing: “So sad to hear the news about Bradley Welsh. A good soul with a massive heart. A massive loss. Rest in Peace my old son.”
Dominic Negus
Dyer didn’t have to travel far to meet fellow East End bloke Dominic Negus – who he described as an “old school brawler who gained notoriety for nutting Audley Harrison”.
(Image: BKB)
Back in the day, Dominic was a famous boxer who simultaneously worked as a gangland enforcer debt collector – with Dyer saying he once “managed to fight off three geezers with an axe in the head”.
His criminality ultimately stopped his boxing career from ever truly taking off – but that may have changed this month. That’s because Dominic, at the age of 53, became the oldest fighter to take part in a sanctioned bare-knuckle boxing fight when he beat Stanlee Wilson.
Afterwards he spoke to Daily Star Sport about how his previous illegal activities had hampered his boxing progress – but he is now keen to right those wrongs.
“I was a class fighter,” he told us. “I got involved in silly things when I should have concentrated on my boxing career. I was the real deal, but I was too militant and did it my way.
“I wasted my career, now I’m 53 and playing catch-up. This is why I’m doing it now, to exercise those demons that play up in my head. I now want to prove I’m not a wally.”
He dedicated his win at the Indigo arena at London’s O2 to his “life coach” Ricky Hatton and he added: “Time’s running out for me, I know that, I’m 53. I’ve just got to wrap up what I’ve got to do. I know this is a young man’s sport, but I’m a fighter and it’s what I do.”
Samuel McCrory
Samuel McCroy was a paramilitary terrorist from Belfast who was recruited into the Ulster Freedom Fighters group when he was just 18.
Speaking to Dyer, the killer said he was a “good friend” but a “bad f***ing enemy” in what was the first time he had told his story.
And describing his past, where he fought the IRA during the troubles, he said: “I’m not proud of what I done, but it had to be done, I was dedicated to it.”
At the time of the documentary, he was described as “living in exile” in a town in Scotland where he was known as the first openly gay loyalist paramilitary.
Speaking to Dyer, he said: “I grew up seeing British soldiers coming into my country, houses burning, buses being blown up, rioting, shootings. I was about four or five when my dad was a vigilante, a vigilante who worked to protect us from what we thought were the enemy, the nationalist community, Catholics, republicans.”
He had served seven years in prison in the 1990s for terrorist activities but in 2022 he passed away after falling backwards and smashing his head on concrete steps.
This happened at his flat in Ayr, Scotland, when the father-of-two was just 57. Afterwards, his loyalist friend Johnny Adair said: “At first, I couldn’t get any information from the police.
“But I then realised this was because they didn’t really know what happened. And of course Sam was still hanging on by a thread. Around 10pm the police confirmed to me he had gone. I was in complete shock.”