Andy Baker was just 13 in 1979 when the Clash released I Fought the Law. Forty years later, the crime boss sang the chorus as he was sent down for 11 years and six months – his first proper prison sentence in a career spanning more than two decades. Whether his race is run is another matter, and one the Cable explores in this exclusive four-part series about the Cornerman – so-called because Baker took a piece, or corner, from the many opportunities that came his way. Alternatively, he was waiting around the corner if his victims didn’t pay up. In December 2018, local papers ran the police press release when Baker and nine men from his organised crime group were sent down at Bristol crown court. But we knew there was a far bigger untold story, because of the months spent investigating the Cornerman’s rise and fall.

Bristol Section 01 No longer untouchable?

Efforts by the Metropolitan police between 1998 and 2009 to put Baker behind bars – for forcing at gunpoint a director of Queen’s Park Rangers football club to sign over his shares and resign, for the kidnap of a printer and for the killing of an off-duty prison guard – all resulted in acquittals. The Teflon gangster appeared untouchable until 2017, when Avon & Somerset police began secretly targeting his crime group, which operates along the M4 corridor between London and Bristol.

--:-- --:-- Transcript Andrew Baker: When you’re down there… give Ad a call and say “if you could find somewhere he could ramp up a load of debt, we’d appreciate it” yeh…

A bug in Baker’s car secured vital evidence of his involvement in the supply of cocaine from London, where he grew up, and a conspiracy to blackmail businessmen in Bristol, where he lives. During the 2018 trial, one terrified witness gave evidence from behind a screen, and officers were stationed outside the court to prevent Baker escaping. Police sources hope that, now he has been convicted, new witnesses will come forward. But for others, prison will not hinder the Cornerman’s reach. Reputations travel, and Baker has long traded on his links to one of the UK’s most significant organised crime groups to keep people in line.

Liam Waugh moves bag of cocaine

West London Section 02 The plums and the gangster

Little about 52-year-old Andy Baker’s past emerged during the recent two trials except for his role as a ‘security consultant’ to high-society nightclubs. Tim Grattan-Kane, a now-retired senior Met murder squad detective who chased Baker for years, said: "He managed to slip through lawful justice on so many occasions. He controls so many things. He's a nasty influence behind nightclubs."

This investigation took months, joining the Cable takes seconds Join now >

Baker started off as a bouncer in the Epsom, Surrey area where he was born. Before long he was working the doors in a variety of west London pubs and clubs. The overweight young thug caught his big break when he started working for a group of well-heeled entrepreneurs he called ‘the plums’, who in the 90s and 00s provided the negronis and dance floor magic for A-list celebrities, young aristocrats and posh west London socialites, or ‘Sloane Rangers’. A club insider close to the plums said many enjoyed the frisson of having Baker around. “They are almost Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels-type characters – public schoolboys running clubs – and someone’s said, ‘You need a gangster looking after you, sunshine,’ and they’ve sucked it all up and thought it was rather glamorous.”

He managed to slip through lawful justice on so many occasions. He controls so many things. He's a nasty influence behind nightclubs. Tim Grattan-Kane , retired senior Met murder detective

Baker told the jury in his recent trial that his big break came after a conviction in 1991 for assaulting a clubber. “I got in trouble with the law and I was fortunate enough to meet a gentleman called Christian Arden, [who] gave me a chance to work with a public company, earn a good living and live a very nice lifestyle… I used to work on the licensing and things like that, and the hiring and firing of security firms,” he said.

Arden was chairman of the Moroccan-themed Po Na Na bars and Fez club group, which in the mid-90s embarked on a rapid expansion in top university cities, especially along the M4 corridor.

Andrew Baker aka the Cornerman

Baker built a network by putting together security teams for the venues in Reading, Cheltenham, Oxford, Swindon, Marlborough, Bath, Bristol and then further south-west into Cardiff, Swansea and Newport. But the nightclub kingpin whom he has stayed most loyal to over the years is Howard Spooner, a former student of Gordonstoun, the top public school where his parents taught and Prince Charles was educated. Spooner, now 48, has had a troubled association with Baker for over 20 years. The pair were arrested and released without charge in 1999 over an alleged shooting at a garage in west London. A few years later, Spooner financially helped Baker when he was tried and acquitted of kidnapping a printer involved in the club business. The Wiltshire-based racehorse owner told the Cable that he did not see Baker as a gangster until his recent conviction. “I had no idea. I thought he was a bit of a geezer who liked to drop loads of names. He didn’t drop gangster names on me. He dropped the names of posh, rich, influential people who he claimed to do business with. It was all lords and ladies.” But it was while minding the doors of Spooner’s first nightclub that Baker became close to one of the biggest gangster names in the UK: London’s notorious Adams crime family. In fact, the Met suspected Baker of involvement in the murder of two of the Adams’ key associates as he rose through the ranks of the underworld.

South London Section 03 ‘You don’t kill the golden goose’

Spooner became friendly with Princes William and Harry when they and the Middleton sisters started coming to his Chelsea nightclub, Public, in 2010. Spooner first took over the club in 1994, when it was called Embargo. Almost immediately, the Adams’ main enforcer, Gilbert “the Stick” Wynter , tried to muscle in, with Baker at his side. Wynter had been recently acquitted of killing Claude Moseley, a former high-jump champion turned drug dealer, with a samurai sword. “You may not believe in God but you’ll have met the Devil when you meet Gilbert,” said the club insider. Baker and Wynter worked from offices at Linford Studios in Battersea, and had a plan to set up a training company for doormen. The owner of the studios, David Duff , was a struck off solicitor who used Baker to run security for his drum and bass club nights.

You may not believe in God but you’ll have met the Devil when you meet Gilbert Club insider

In 1997, when Wynter went to see his mother in Jamaica, Baker stepped up. "Andy was the brightest of a bunch of goons [working] for Gilbert. He’s got a natural cunning when it comes to making money,” the club insider explained. While Wynter was overseas, Spooner sold Embargo and bought a new club, Leopard Lounge, in Fulham, whose investors included Lord Edward Spencer Churchill. Wynter saw himself as a silent investor in Embargo, and when he returned from Jamaica started demanding his cut from the Leopard Lounge. The demand, it is said, forced Baker to intercede on Spooner’s behalf. But Wynter remained resolute, and told Baker he wanted his share of the takings from the Leopard Lounge or Spooner was going for a long walk. Then, one morning in March 1998, Wynter failed to show up. His body has never been found. The disappearance was a blow to the Adams family – and the turmoil continued. Six months later, two men on a motorbike killed Solly Nahome , their chief money launderer, outside his north London home. Police bugs and phone taps on Terry Adams, the head of the family, showed disarray but no evidence he had ordered the hits. Initially, it was suspected that both deaths could be part of a power play within the family. However, police sources confirm that almost immediately Baker’s name came into the frame. That suspicion hardened when Duff, the struck off solicitor, became a protected police witness. He had fallen out with Baker over a number of issues, including Baker’s demand for £50,000 to pay for his legal defence against the kidnapping charges.

Public interest journalism is expensive, but powering the Cable isn’t Join now >

Howard Spooner was already helping Baker, by supplying him with a surety or guarantee to the court that he wouldn’t jump bail. “Me [and] Christian [Arden] made it plain we weren’t standing surety because we were supporting him but because we knew he wouldn’t slip the country … At the time, Po Na Na had security from [Baker] all over the country. He was running their security and [Po Na Na] were buying my business – they didn’t in the end – and that was what I was told had to be done.” The Met was also investigating Baker over the December 2002 murder of Aaron Chapman, an off-duty prison guard moonlighting as a nightclub bouncer. Detectives received what they regarded as good intelligence that Baker had put out a contract to have Duff killed. In June 2003, the former solicitor was taken into the witness protection scheme and remains there to this day. Documents seen by the Cable show that Duff told police what he claimed to know about Baker’s involvement in the murders of prison guard Chapman, former gangland security partner Wynter and Adams family money man Nahome. Duff claimed Baker had admitted killing Wynter at a flat in Chelsea, then had the body crushed and dumped. Duff explained to his debriefers that Wynter was going to kill Spooner. Instead, Baker murdered Wynter, took over the door security business and justified his actions by saying, “You don’t kill the golden goose.”

He would say, ‘He’s in the O2, I put him there. [Wynter] ain’t never coming back.’ Club insider

The club insider, who knew Baker for over 10 years, told the Cable that the security consultant bragged about murdering Wynter. “He would say, ‘He’s in the O2, I put him there. [Wynter] ain’t never coming back.’” Spooner said he was unaware how close he had apparently come to being killed. The nightclub entrepreneur only realised there was a threat to his life when the police mentioned it years later while inquiring about the Chapman murder. Baker was feeling the heat in London and moved to Bideford, north Devon, with his wife, the daughter of a London policeman, and their son. He continued to earn money helping new club entrepreneurs pick over the bones of the Po Na Na group, which went into administration in 2002 with more than 35 venues across the UK to offload.

Baker is interviewed by police

Spooner, meanwhile, went on to strike gold with a return to the troubled venue on King’s Road that used to be Embargo. He cleverly teamed up with Guy Pelly, a childhood friend of the princes, to launch Public in December 2010. Pelly was the pied piper of young royals and the Sloane Rangers. The palace had once wrongly blamed him for introducing the two princes to marijuana, and he was present at the now infamous fancy dress party where Harry came as a Nazi. Soon, Public was the place to be for A-list celebrities, as well as princesses Eugenie and Beatrice and the Middleton sisters. Harry celebrated his 27th birthday there. However, complaints from neighbours eventually closed down Public in 2012, which Spooner blamed on “anti-royals who hate toffs”. The club entrepreneur continued to do well with another venue, the Clapham Grand, in south London. Last year, it caught the eye of Avon & Somerset detectives who were following Baker up and down the M4. The crime boss’s driver was seen emerging from the Grand with an envelope stuffed with cash. Spooner, who recently invested in a hotel in Yarmouth, gave a statement to the police about his long association with Baker. He told the Cable that he was surprised about Baker’s involvement in drugs and denied the gangster had ever blackmailed him. “Baker earns £300 a week from us as a security consultant. He’s been paid in a variety of ways depending on how he wants it,” he said. All this cash was interesting for another reason: the taxman had recently made Baker bankrupt for non-payment of taxes, yet detectives saw him renovating his large house – located, appropriately enough, in Baker’s Ground, on the outskirts of Bristol in Stoke Gifford.

Bristol Section 04 The Bristol connection

Between mid-2017 and early 2018, police surveillance on Baker showed him frequently meeting in Bristol with Matt Sellars , a former British lightweight champion cage fighter, and Adam Hoddinott , a convicted drug trafficker from Bath. Sellars, 40, had got into financial trouble as the owner of Chasers nightclub and was desperate for cash. Hoddinott, 48, wanted to buy a kilo of high-purity cocaine but didn’t have the £36,000 to pay up front. Baker agreed to act as a “guarantor” to close friend John “the Barber” Gordon , who agreed to supply the drugs from London.

Gordon and Baker went back 20 years to their days working doors as young bouncers, and shared a passion for Crystal Palace football club. It was Baker’s modus operandi to recruit members of his organised crime group from the security industry. Detectives watched 37-year-old Gordon and Baker meeting in January 2018 at a lorry park in a service station on the M25 and garnered vital intelligence. Weeks later, they swooped on the conspirators and took out the drug parcel on route to Bristol. Baker was later recorded in his cell making a revealing comment to the police. “Listen,” he said, “in my circle of people I stand quite high and I won’t give up anyone around me. Do you know what I’m saying? There’s things that I know, that I do know and you know I know because I’m a cunt. I ain’t going to bullshit you. I could put on the table what I can put on the table.” As far as we know, Baker never did trade. Hoddinott, however, who had just come out of prison for a similar offence, immediately pleaded guilty to get a lighter sentence.

--:-- --:-- Transcript Andrew Baker: Definitely, they were old Bill all day long, if I’ve ever seen old bill in my life they were old bill, and you know I’ve seen old Bill. Scotty: Yup. AB: I’ll tell you what done it… Apart from the coat in the back of his car saying police. A green one, flourescent, all I could see on it was I C E, so, unless he’s something else like I C E… S: Could have been I C F. AB: No it was definitely I C E, unless he’s the iceman, it’s just the way there was two of them, and they were in the car, and he looked a right wanker… she just looked far too snotty to be with him.