When in 2015 the news broke that a vault in the Hatton Garden diamond district had been ransacked over the East bank holiday weekend, frenzied speculation conjured up a gang of sophisticated European criminals pulling off an epic heist.
The guilty men, it eventually turned out, came from rather closer to home, as recounted in this deliciously gripping documentary that might be described as the reality TV version of a Guy Ritchie film.
The first clue came in the CCTV footage which showed a glimpse of the suspects shuffling along with a distinct lack of athleticism.
As one of the detectives recalls with delightful understatement: “It was clear some of these guys were not in the first bloom of youth.”
Indeed not. The line-up proved to resemble what would happen if the cast of Dad’s Army had been corrupted by the inmates of Porridge: Freedom-pass carrying veterans of the London underworld who – in a plotline that would be hackneyed in a Hollywood movie – were determined to pull off that one last, lucrative job.
Unless you have the misfortune to have been a target of the thieves, just hearing the word “heist” fires the imagination, evoking raffish daredevils blessed with the endless charisma and ingenuity to pull off the ultimate victimless crime: obviously the insurance companies will cover the losses. (Stop press: it’s not victimless, we all have to pay the extra on the premium.)
The brutal reality is that there is nothing admirable in common criminals stopping at nothing for their own selfish gain.
Still, there is a gleeful entertainment to convicted gang member Kenny Collins playing to the camera as a reassuringly roguish kind of character.
Asked what kind of career he has had over the past half century and more, the hefty octogenarian sums it up: “Dishonest, I suppose.”
Then, his eyes always hidden behind dark glasses, Collins contradicts himself almost immediately: “I never used to think of myself as a thief. I used to think of myself as a moneygetter.” So that’s alright then.
How much was taken? No one quite knows. Not everyone was insured. Many owners of safe deposit boxes in the vaults may not have come forward to reveal their full losses for all kinds of reasons.
Some say it was as much as £300m in gems and other valuables that went missing.
But with the criminal’s capacity for infinite self-pity, Collins pleads for our sympathy at little how fences pay out for stolen goods: “You’ve got to remember, if it was £20m, you’d be lucky to get two.”
There are any number of relishable details for the law-abiding to learn and lap up. The moment when the criminals gather together to divvy up their haul? That’s known as a “slaughter” or a “cut-up”.
Why was the last remaining member of the gang who went unidentified for years known as ‘Basil’? Nothing to do with his real name – just the acronym the masterminds of the heist gave to the “best alarm specialist in London”.
Then there’s the way that final suspect was brought to justice, thanks a combination of the distinctive way he walked and a dog in the local park.
Over the past decade there’s been a small industry of entertainment inspired by the Hatton Garden job: at least two film dramas and one ITV series.
So far, Ritchie has resisted turning his own hand to adapting the story to add to his oeuvre. Even the creator of Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels might feel that the reality of this particular tale is unimprovable.
We’re left with a rich haul of entertainment thanks to Channel 4’s no-nonsense film, and a cautionary tale for anyone out there thinking of trying to pull off a similar job.
The message is simple.
Don’t.
To get more from Life, click here to sign up for our free Life newsletter.