Carlton Leach is an author, occasional actor, and a former criminal.

Early life

Leach was born in

Canning Town Canning Town is a town in the London Borough of Newham, East London, England, north of the Royal Victoria Dock. Its urbanisation was largely due to the creation of the dock. The area was part of the ancient parish and County Borough of West Ham, ...

. A fan of West Ham United F.C., he became involved in the

Inter City Firm The Inter City Firm (ICF) is an Football in England, English football List of hooligan firms, hooligan firm associated with West Ham United F.C., West Ham United, which was mainly active in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. The name came from the ...

, a gang of hooligans who followed the East London club. Leach was the original model for the cover of the '' Strength Thru Oi!'' album (1981).

Criminal career

Leach started work as a bouncer in East London, where he became involved with Tony Tucker, then Pat Tate, both of whom worked as large scale dealers in ecstasy during the rave era in the late 1980s. Tate, Tucker and Craig Rolfe were shot dead in December 1995 in a Range Rover on a farm track in Rettendon, in the Rettendon murders.

Later career

In 2003 Carlton Leach wrote a memoir about his criminal exploits, entitled ''Muscle''. In 2007 a film based on the book was released, entitled '' Rise of the Footsoldier'' and starring Ricci Harnett as Leach. In 2015, Leach worked with Harnett to organise another film about his life, ''Reign of the General'', but after losing a legal battle over copyright, the film was taken over by the owners of ''Rise of the Footsoldier'' and released. The same people went on to make a third film in the franchise in 2017. Leach claimed to have no part in the film, and commented on

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

that it was fictional and no longer his story. In 2021, Carlton released what he called his last (autobiographical) book. Co-authored with Jason Allday, the book was titled, ''The Final Say''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leach, Carlton Living people 20th-century English criminals 21st-century English memoirists Organized crime memoirists People from Canning Town Association football supporters Former hooligans Year of birth missing (living people)