This is some listen.
A biopic about the lives of legendary London brothers Ronnie and Reggie Kray has revived the attention and notoriety that once surrounded the gangsters.
Today, an unlikely connection between Reggie Kray and an Irishman surfaced. It turns out that Kray, while an inmate in Maidstone Prison, heard the story of Dublin man Greg Smith and wanted to get in touch.
Smith, 34, had fallen into a coma after being assaulted by two men outside a nightclub. Upon reading about this Kray, a prolific letter-writer, recorded a cassette tape of his own voice begging Greg repeatedly to ‘open [your] eyes’ and ‘talk to [me]’.
Kray, who speaks slowly and deliberately, introduces himself as ‘your friend Reg Kray’, which is unusual as Greg’s brother Vincent knows of no connection between the two men.
On Liveline, Joe Duffy notes that Kray sounds much older than his years on the clip and that it’s possible that he was already suffering from Parkinson’s disease by this time.
Duffy also remarks that audio footage of the two men is so rare that Tom Hardy, who plays both brothers in Legend (released today), essentially developed the voice he used to play both men from one or two BBC archive clips.
Listen to the eerie clip here (tape starts at the seven-minute mark).
Tragically, Greg never did wake up from the coma, but Vincent clarifies in the interview that he never played the tape for his brother.
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