Brian Brendan Wright, Britain's biggest cocaine trafficker in the 1990s, lived a lavish lifestyle funded entirely by crime, with no bank account and no national insurance number. His nickname, “The Milkman,” reflected his reliability in delivering drugs. He was a regular at Ascot races and Tramp nightclub, thanks to his racehorses and celebrity friends, hiding in plain sight as a top-ranking criminal.
Now, for the first time, the customs officers who spent 11 years hunting him down tell their story in a new six-part series of BBC Radio 5 Live's podcast Gangster.
The Honey Monster Chases the Milkman
Graham Honey, a Scotsman known as the “Honey Monster,” was Gold Command on Operation Extend, the investigation into Wright's cocaine smuggling operation. “It was a case of the honey monster chasing the milkman,” he smiles. “I got that nickname working in Barbados for the drugs team where everyone had nicknames.”
Now 72 and retired from His Majesty's Customs and Excise, Graham told the Express: “I was really a small cog in the wheel to catch Brian Brendan Wright. Some of the team had spent years tracking him down and it was very important that we got him. You felt the weight of responsibility on you. After he absconded to North Cyprus and then moved to Spain I just wanted to get this man for everyone on the team who had worked so hard to find him. BBW was right at the top, one of the biggest cocaine criminals, and catching him was vital in terms of stopping cocaine coming into Britain.”
In the series, presenter and investigative journalist Livvy Haydock explores how Wright's operation moved industrial quantities of cocaine from laboratories in Colombia, through smuggling routes in Venezuela's jungles, to bulk shipments across the Atlantic ending up in marinas in coastal towns across Britain. All the while, he built a seemingly respectable life within horse racing circles as a cover for his champagne lifestyle.
A Bright and Careful Criminal
Among Livvy's other interviewees is Graham's colleague and close friend Barry Clarke, another former customs officer for Operation Extend who did much of the leg work. He spent a decade tracing pay phones, breaking codes, and building intelligence on a drugs network that rarely communicated directly.
Remarking on Wright, Barry says: “He was one of the smartest guys I've ever come across. He's got that street sense. He's a very bright, sharp individual. He understands life. And it was someone who was very careful in the way he operated. He had a strong reputation within UK criminality.”
The podcast takes listeners back to Wright's humble beginnings in Dublin, where he was born in 1946 to a working-class family. The family moved to Kilburn in north-west London to look for work, and young Brian quickly realised that delivering goods to market traders and transporting bets from pubs to bookies was more fun and lucrative than being in school. Wright, who was eventually sent to Borstal for two years for frequent truanting, never paid a single penny of tax in his life and when the law finally caught up with him was said “not to exist” on paper. He was also believed to be illiterate.
“I don't know if he passed any exams but he was the brightest man I ever encountered,” Barry says.
Operation Extend and the Sea Mist
Operation Extend began with the Sea Mist, a fishing boat boarded in Cobh, Cork Harbour, found to be carrying 600 kilos of cocaine hidden inside a dumb-waiter shaft, raided by Irish Customs in September 1996, one of the largest seizures in Irish history. The drugs were destined for Wright, soon to be under investigation by Scotland Yard and the Jockey Club over allegations of race fixing.
As police dug deeper, linking more boat vessels and gang members to the illicit activity, they discovered a cross-Atlantic ocean drug smuggling operation originating in South America and the Caribbean and ending in Devon and Cornwall. Decoy boats were operated to attract the attention of, and bamboozle, customs officers to get as many drugs across continents as possible.
“It all begins on this boat in Cobh one night and just spreads further and further out to the worlds of horse racing, betting, doping and the Colombian jungle – the story seemed to have everything,” says Livvy. “I really wanted to unpack not just The Milkman's personal background but the background of the times and how widespread and mainstream cocaine was in the UK during the Nineties and how in the world of horse racing jockeys use cocaine to keep their weight down.”
Human Cost and the End of the Milk Round
The series also explores the human impact of the cocaine trade. Clare Campbell speaks about the death of her brother, journalist Bill Frost, whose life was consumed by addiction, a stark reminder of the lives destroyed by the drugs being brought into Britain by the Milkman. Bill was a Dulwich College scholarship boy and Oxford University graduate, who joined the BBC and became a respected war correspondent. But after he became friends with Kevin Hanley, the Milkman's right-hand man, he inadvertently got drawn into a world of violence and addiction.
“It was terrible what happened to my brother,” says Clare. “I cannot put it into words. He was always so handsome and talented, a really admirable and brilliant journalist.” In the series, Clare describes bumping into her brother in the street at the height of his addiction. “I didn't recognise him, he looked like a 6ft skeleton with his eyes on stalks,” she says. “He was like a demon.” She was at Wright's trial in 2007. “I know Brian Brendan Wright didn't take a gun out and shoot my brother, but when I saw him in the dock I did feel anger against someone to whom a death from cocaine is nothing and who makes his living out of other people's weakness and misery,” she says.
As the investigation closed in on Wright, allegations of race-fixing and doping saw his Chelsea Harbour flat raided by police. It was later claimed by former jockey turned trainer Dermot Brown that he had doped 20 horses for BBW. A coterie of jockeys were in his pay and supplying him with information for purposes of betting. A covert raid on an Essex lock-up uncovered £61 million worth of cocaine hidden in holdalls, and arrests reached from Colombian suppliers all the way to Wright's own son, Brian Junior.
Wright disappeared, fleeing abroad to become one of Britain's most wanted fugitives. He was eventually traced to the Costa del Sol thanks to painstaking phone tracing work by Barry and others and arrested and extradited to face trial. “It becomes all consuming. Nothing else matters, seven days a week. You want to be successful. You don't want to mess it up,” Graham says of the case in the run-up to the trial. “BBW offered one of my colleagues at the court a bet, a million to one, he wasn't going to be convicted. My colleague, who still works in customs so I can't name him, said to me, 'I gave him a pound and now I'm going to get a million back'. Needless to say BBW didn't pay up.”
The Milkman was found guilty of running an international cocaine smuggling empire on April 3, 2007, at Woolwich Crown Court and sentenced to 30 years. Comedian Jim Davidson, a friend of Wright's since the Eighties, who became godfather to his son, had been a character witness at his trial describing him as “kind and generous”. Davidson even owned a stake in a racehorse with the notorious international drug smuggler and race-fixer. There was no suggestion however that Davidson was aware of Wright's criminal activity.
Other friends of the Milkman included Charlie Wilson, one of the Great Train Robbers, and the London gangster Roy Adkins, also a drug smuggler, primarily cannabis. The Milkman would entertain them in private boxes at Ascot and Newmarket until both were shot dead in 1990. But while his friends may have remained loyal, one by one the people who once moved his cocaine for him turned against him. In total, there were 20 criminals captured, including his own son, Brian Junior, son-in-law Paul Shannon, and former jockey Barrie Wright.
Wright was released from prison in April 2020 and was approached to take part in the podcast. A spokesperson for Wright said: “Mr Wright appreciates the interest in his story but has chosen not to participate in the podcast. He wishes the producers of it well.” Livvy concludes: “It would have been fascinating to speak with The Milkman but he didn't want to. Last I heard he was in London still.” Graham adds: “Maybe if we had had more time we could have gone after the money, not just the powder.”
The BBC Radio 5 Live podcast Gangster: The Story of the Milkman is available on BBC Sounds now.
