My life with the Krays

WHEN a dapper gent praised Maureen Flanagan's hairstyle, she was pleased but unsurprised.

- SANJEETA BAINS

"I said, 'Well, I'm a hairdresser," she recalls about the conversation in a 1960s London club that would change her life.

The man then asked 20-year-old Maureen to cut his mum's hair.

"I said, 'Why can't your mother go to a salon?' 'Well, she gets bothered too much"," he told me.

Realising Maureen was puzzled, he added: "You don't know my brothers.

You'll know them soon enough. They do a lot of people favours but they do a lot of people harm." The well-dressed man was Charlie Kray, elder brother of identical twins Reggie and Ronnie Kray, who ran a crime empire from the East End home they shared with mum Violet.

Maureen took the job, going to the two-up, two-down terraced house in Bethnal Green every week to give Violet a shampoo and set.

Chatting over hairpins and rollers, she obtained a unique insight into the Krays and was friends with all of them right up to their deaths.

The Krays were celebrities in the 1960s and Maureen mixed with stars like Liza Minnelli, Diana Dors and Barbara Windsor at The Krays' nightclub Esmeralda's Barn in Knightsbridge.

She has had her own taste of fame as a model and TV appearances with stars like Benny Hill, Dave Allen and the Monty Python team.

In January she was made an MBE for her charity work. Now 84 and a greatgrandmother, still living in Hackney near the Krays' old stamping ground, she shared her memories with us ahead of a new Amazon Prime documentary, Krays: London's Gangsters.

She recalls: "Ronnie was the dominant one but Reggie - the eldest by 15 minutes was the strongest.

"Mrs Kray told me it was like that from when they were born. At the age of two they caught diphtheria. They were admitted to London Hospital.

Reggie thrived and got better, and the doctors said, 'You can come and take Reggie home, which she did.