“Inside the most unusual and secretive crime family in the UK...” The Quality Street Gang rose to power in the city in the 1960s, thriving on subterfuge and brass neck showboating, even now there is a question mark over whether this most famous Manchester gang really exists. Their moniker was given to them from a ubiquitous TV ad of the era featuring a ‘sweet bunch of characters’ from ‘the Quality Street Gang’ who arrived in a Rolls Royce for their villainous capers. Many saw them as classic anti-hero figures; proud sons of Manchester: the apocryphal story, circulating for 50 years and counting, is how the QSG sent the Krays packing when the London firm came to muscle in on the city’s booming 60s nightlife. They owned nightclubs, car pitches and pubs and were homespun celebrities. Thin Lizzy wrote two songs about the gang in the 70s: ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ and ‘Johnny the Fox meets Jimmy the Weed’, inspired by the three brothers at the heart of the QSG: Arthur, Jimmy and Johnny. Arthur’s scrapyard, in the city centre, gained folkloric status. Now 81, Arthur recalls his rise from an impoverished Irish immigrant background to king of the heap. His Teddy Boy 1950s and 1960s scrapes, schemes, crimes and first partner, Albert ‘the Blade’ Gibbons. Known as the ‘Freddie Foreman of the North’ Arthur’s dark sense of humour casts soft light on ‘Operation Bluebell’, the six -month police surveillance sting into him and his sons’ Gio-Goi fashion empire in the 90s. He was jailed for eight years, alongside some of Britain’s most-notorious names such as Paul Massey, Micky McAvoy, Vic Dark and Rab Carruthers, but maintains he was fitted up by the police. Godfather of the North is the ultimate account of the rise and rule of the QSG, and the failed attempts of the police to try and bring the gang to heel.