Gangsters, Guns & Me - Now I'm in Eastenders, but once I was on the run. This is my true story. Jamie Foreman

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       THE WAY IT WAS

      I was brought up to be what we call a ‘straight goer’. I was taught to live my life honestly and not to do anything wrong. I was raised to be a good boy. To behave myself at all times and never to take anything that didn’t belong to me.

      Yet taking things that didn’t belong to him was exactly what my father went out and did every day. You could call it a moral paradox, but to me it was just the world I was born into. Dad did what he did to put food on our table and clothes on our backs. He did it because he wanted a slice of the good life and he had no other means of getting it. It was what he did; he loved the buzz and that’s the way it was. There are no two ways about it. I come from a criminal background and I can’t say I’m ashamed of it.

      I was born the second son of one of London’s most successful gangsters, Freddie Foreman. He had been at it for years before I came along and, wherever he went, his reputation preceded him. For years my dad had been involved in some of Britain’s most audacious armed robberies, and dealing with the most dangerous criminals working in Britain. It was his world, and there was no way my arrival on the scene would change that.

      Not that I had much of a clue about what he did. I was just a kid and my dad was, well, just my dad. He might have been out grafting and building his reputation, but it didn’t mean Dad wasn’t there to tuck in his kids at night with a story and a kiss. One of my earliest memories is the rustle of his mohair and silk suit, the faint smell of brandy on his breath, his strong, masculine aftershave and the feeling that I didn’t have a worry in the world. Dad was always there for us. There would come a time when I’d need to be there for him, but that was later. Much later.

      ‘Us’ was my mum, Maureen, my older brother Gregory and my younger sister Danielle, and, although we moved about a bit when I was young, my childhood really got going in Kennington, South London. We lived in Braun House on the Brandon council estate in a lovely, newly built high-rise flat and, at six years old, I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else in the world.

      It sounds like a cliché, but I was born into a time when the indomitable spirit of the British was at its strongest. The adults surrounding me had survived the war and the ensuing austerity. They had seen their neighbourhoods destroyed – there were bombsites on every corner (which made great playgrounds for us kids) – they had run out of food and lost loved ones in the blitzed London streets as well as on foreign fields. Yet they were bonded by values that nowadays are being sadly eroded. There was a marvellous sense of togetherness among the working classes – you didn’t steal from your own, you didn’t hurt your own and, yes, you did leave your front door unlocked. It really did happen, I promise. I remember two old sisters who allowed me and my mates to walk into their flat through the back door and make ourselves a sugar sandwich whenever we pleased. The only rule was that you never went past the kitchen. We never broke that rule, nor did it ever enter our minds to.

      In those days, council flats were something to be proud of. All the women used to clean their front steps and the landings, and the only smell on any block was that of Jeyes Fluid. That lovely, clean smell of antiseptic just about summed up how houseproud and respectable most people were back then.

      Not that I spent much time around the house. When I wasn’t at Henry Fawcett Primary School, I was mostly off playing with my mates. There was no better place to play than the streets. We’d be out from dawn to dusk, forever inventing new games, fighting new battles. I saw my fair share of fights, but they were mainly between older kids. I could hold my own and was always a good puncher. But I never had a fight with anyone smaller than me. Mind you, there weren’t many people smaller than me.

      If it wasn’t Mum calling me in at night, it would be my lovely auntie Nell, a pivotal member of the family. My Nell was a ‘Spitfire’ – small, feisty and beautiful. She looked after me when Mum and Dad needed to keep me ‘at a safe distance’. There’s no denying that Dad’s business meant it was sometimes best if I was temporarily out of harm’s way. But it didn’t bother me one bit – spending time with my Nell and my two beautiful cousins, Barbie and Geraldine, was always a joy. Barbie was like a big sister to me, and I loved her dearly. Nell would take me shopping down Lambeth Walk and then to the pie and mash shop – my favourite. Still is today. She was always fussing over me with the best food she could afford. I remember sitting in her tiny council flat in Lambeth North with her and my other aunts watching the Saturday-afternoon films on BBC2 while they drank tea and smoked cigarettes. You could have cut the smoke with a knife. I just loved sitting there with my gorgeous, indomitable aunts watching A Tree Grows In Brooklyn or some other weepy, and seeing them by turns crying, laughing and gossiping about anything and everyone the films reminded them of. They often talked of the war and, although there were plenty of painful memories, it inspired such awe in me when I saw them laughing the past away together. Those precious afternoons played a huge part in teaching me to laugh in the face of adversity.

      Becoming aware of what Dad did, and of his power in the criminal underworld, was a gradual process. I would have had to be blind, deaf and dumb to think that he was a regular man working regular hours in a regular job. However, as a kid, I wasn’t told any more about him than I needed to know. And the truth was, I didn’t need to know much. Not that I wasn’t interested. The older I got, the more fascinated by the mystery of it all I became. As a result I was a sponge for everything that happened around me. It was like being a detective in one of the movies I loved – Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep, say – only the case I was working was my life, and it was anything but dull.

      I remember walking with my auntie Nell down Lambeth Walk one day, and a man stopped me in the street. I must have been five or six years old, and I could immediately sense the alert in Nell. She obviously recognised the bloke as one of Dad’s enemies, and immediately created a bit of a brouhaha before stealing me swiftly away. It was incidents like this, combined with my dad’s insistence that I always told him where I was going, that made me realise I had to be on my toes when I was out and about. That is still true today. No one told me I was unsafe – I’m sure Dad always had me covered without telling me – but to certain people the Foremans were a prime target and I was taught not to take anything, or anyone, for granted. It was a valuable lesson that has stayed with me all my life. I developed a sixth sense for smelling a dangerous situation, and it would help me through many a tight spot in the future.

      There was plenty more for me to soak up when Dad moved us from our council flat into one of his new businesses, the Prince of Wales public house in Lant Street in the Borough. It was so exciting for a seven-year-old. To say my dad owned a pub was a big step up in my social circle – being the son of the local publican gave me a great degree of kudos with my mates that I have to admit I liked. Of course, there was another side to the enterprise that I was only dimly aware of back then. As well as being a good money earner, the pub was a good front.

      It was at the pub that I began to get more of an inkling about who, and what, my father was. Criminal or not, Dad was a man who didn’t take kindly to bad manners. And it soon became clear that, as a landlord, he wouldn’t have these principles trifled with. My mum told me that, soon after we moved in, he had a run-in with the local bully, who obviously didn’t know who my dad was. One day Dad was laughing and joking with some customers at