BBC Radio 5 Live’s hit podcast Gangster returns to BBC Sounds on Friday 7 August with the story of Brian Brendan Wright – the racehorse owner and racing regular who investigators say became one of Britain’s most notorious cocaine traffickers in the 1990s. For the first time, the officers who spent 11 years hunting him, alongside the smugglers who worked for him, tell the story of how he was finally brought to justice.
Hosted by investigative journalist Livvy Haydock, Gangster: The Story of the Milkman traces how Wright’s operation moved industrial quantities of cocaine from laboratories in Colombia, through smuggling routes in Venezuela jungles, to marinas in coastal towns across Britain, while he built a seemingly respectable life within racing circles.
Across the six-part series, Livvy speaks to former customs officers, cartel insiders and people who knew Wright, revealing how he built a transatlantic cocaine network and examining the decade-long pursuit that led to his arrest.
Livvy said: “Brian Wright spent years being the man nobody could quite pin down. This series is about the people who spent over a decade trying, and what it took to finally catch him.”
The investigation began with the Sea Mist: a fishing boat boarded in Cork Harbour, found to be carrying 600 kilos of cocaine hidden inside a dumb-waiter shaft – one of the largest seizures in Irish history. A UK mobile number and a GPS trail recovered on board set investigators on long pursuit that would stretch across three continents.
Former HM Customs and Excise officer Barry Clarke, who was a part of Operation Extend, describes years spent tracing payphones, breaking codes and building intelligence on a network that rarely communicated directly.
Barry said: “He’s one of the smartest guys I’ve ever come across. He’s got that streetwise, street sense. He’s a very bright, sharp individual. He understands life. And it was clear that he had a very strong reputation as a high-class criminal, someone who was very careful in the way he operated. So, he had a strong reputation within UK criminality.”
Asked why Wright was known as ‘The Milkman’, Barry said: “Supposedly, because he always delivers.”
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, offering a reminder of the lives destroyed by the drugs entering Britain.
Claire said: “When I saw Brian Brandon Wright in the dock, I couldn’t think that it was him. He didn’t take a gun out and shoot my brother, but 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 other people’s misery”
As the investigation closed in, scrutiny also grew around Wright’s public life. Allegations of race-fixing and doping saw his Chelsea Harbour flat raided by police. A covert raid on an Essex lock-up uncovered £61 million worth of cocaine hidden in holdalls, and arrests reached from Colombian suppliers to Wright’s own son. As the net closed, Wright disappeared, fleeing abroad to become one of Britain’s most wanted fugitives.
He was eventually traced to the Costa del Sol, arrested and extradited to face trial, where former associates gave evidence against the man who had evaded investigators for more than a decade.
The Gangster podcast series has attracted millions of downloads and critical acclaim for its exploration of Britain’s criminal underworld. This latest series examines how an international drugs network was built and dismantled, and the 11-year investigation that brought its alleged leader to justice.
Gangster: The Story of the Milkman is available as a boxset on BBC Sounds from Friday 7 August.
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