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The Cabbie
In The Gold episode 5, ‘The Boy You Were’, Micky McAvoy’s fiancée Kathleen meets with Donnie (played by Dorian Lough), a taxi firm operator known as “the Cabbie”. “Do Brink’s-Mat know they bought half the cabs in South London?” Kathleen asks Donnie, inferring that he had stolen Micky’s robbery proceeds for his own use. Sent there by Micky to arrange his escape attempt from prison, Kathleen asks Donnie to take her to meet his “friend with the chopper”, threatening his fleet of cars if he doesn’t agree. Donnie takes her to the meeting, but rain calls off Micky’s escape.
The next time we see Donnie, it’s in episode six ‘I’ll Be Remembered’. A short scene intercuts Micky and Kathleen’s wedding with Donnie’s gangland execution. While the McAvoys are married by the prison chaplain, Donnie is fatally shot outside his taxi firm by an anonymous gunman on a motorbike.
There’s no Donnie in the real-life story of The Gold, but there is Brian Perry, a possible inspiration for the character. Perry was the owner of The Blue Car minicab firm (in the drama, Donnie drives a blue taxi) in South London. According to this report in The Guardian, cabbie Perry was the connection who brought gold smelter and money launderer Kenneth Noye into the operation. In 1992, Perry was sentenced to nine years in prison for handling stolen goods, and in 2001, he was shot dead outside his place of work by a masked assassin. Perry’s murder joins the many that killed those associated with the robbery, sometimes referred to as “The Brink’s-Mat curse”.
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The timelines differ, as Donnie was killed in 1986 on the show, and Perry was shot in 2001 in real life, but the cabbie connection and the allegation that Perry stole Micky McAvoy’s robbery proceeds match up.
The Millwall Fan on the Costa del Sol
The Gold finale opens on a Spanish villa with a mystery man listening to a Millwall v Arsenal football match on the radio. Incensed by the ref awarding Arsenal the penalty they need to equalise in this FA Cup round, he rants about class inequality and throws his radio over the edge of the property. Then in The Gold’s final moments, he and his Spanish girlfriend are seen sunbathing and laughing, while in flashback, we identify him as one of the six armed robbers who committed the original robbery and escaped to Spain to live on his share of the proceeds. The character, played by Sam Spruell, is named as Charlie Miller in the episode credits.
Micky McAvoy and Brian Robinson were the only two of the six actual robbers sentenced for the Brink’s-Mat heist. The real identity of this mystery man, therefore, is not public knowledge. “Charlie Miller” is likely an invention, but perhaps inspired by elements of real-life armed robber Charlie Wilson.
