Not a Lot of People Know That...

• Maurice Colbourne was shortlisted to play the title role in the Orwellian epic Blake's 7.
  
  
• Due to the lack of availability of copies of Gangsters, considerable confusion has arisen with regard to some characters' names. The assassin referred to in the BBC credits as Double Petal is referred to in reference books and webpages by such bizarre variations as Double Peril and White Petal; the restaurant in the second series, the Nirvana, is sometimes called the Havana; John Kline himself is sometimes cited as "Jack" or else entirely without first names.
  
  
• When work was slow to come in, Colbourne considered a number of alternative careers, including mushroom farming and running a Malaysian restaurant.
  
  
• At the time of filming The Littlest Horse Thieves, Colbourne was living in a condemned former brothel in the East End of London, and was being picked up by limo every day to go to the studio. This was actually a step up from where he had been living a few years beforehand-- the balcony of the Half Moon Theatre, which he had been sharing with another actor and the actor's wife, children and Irish setter.
  
  
• One of Colbourne's compatriots at the Half Moon, Guy Sprung, went on to found the Canadian Stage Theatre in Toronto.
  
  
• Gangsters was the subject of a 1978 Open University debate on violence and surrealism in the media. The same year also saw a one-day Society for Education in Film and Television-West Midlands Arts conference on the programme, which produced three papers, two of which were published (and one heavily excerpted) in Tony Bennett et al., eds., Popular Television and Film (London: BFI, 1981).
  
  
• Colbourne has a Bacon number of three: Maurice Colbourne was in The Duelists with Harvey Keitel, who was in "Little Nicky" with Clint Howard, who was in "My Dog Skip" with Kevin Bacon (Thanks to Jim Finnis for this information).



• In 1979, a ska group called "The Specials" recorded a song called Gangsters. It doesn't look like it has anything much to do with the programme-- but the timing was suspicious enough for at least one good friend of mine to still be convinced that it really was an homage to John Kline.



• On a related note, the theme from Howards' Way, performed with excruciating saccharinity by Marti Webb, made the top 20 in the UK charts in 1990. We must have been mad.

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