Does your jewellery contain stolen Brink?s-Mat gold?
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2023
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Brink?s-Mat robbery remains to this day one of Britain?s biggest and most audacious heists. Six armed men stole diamonds, cash and three tonnes of gold bullion from a warehouse close to London?s Heathrow Airport in November 1983. It?s now the subject of a BBC television drama, The Gold, which includes the claim that most gold jewellery bought in the UK from 1984 onwards will contain traces of that stolen gold. But how true is that? Tim Harford and team investigate, with the help of Zoe Lyons from Hatton Garden Metals and Rob Eastaway, author of Maths on the Back of an Envelope.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before this BBC podcast kicks off, I'd like to tell you about some others you might enjoy. |
| 0:05.1 | My name's Will Wilkin and I Commission Music Podcast for the BBC. |
| 0:08.7 | It's a really cool job, but every day we get to tell the incredible stories behind songs, |
| 0:13.5 | moments and movements, stories of struggle and success, rises and falls, the funny, the ridiculous. |
| 0:19.1 | And the BBC's position, at the heart of British music |
| 0:21.7 | means we can tell those stories like no one else. |
| 0:24.5 | We were, are and always will be right there at the centre of the narrative. |
| 0:28.5 | So whether you want an insightful take on music right now |
| 0:31.3 | or a nostalgic deep dive into some of the most famous and infamous moments in music, |
| 0:36.1 | check out the music podcasts on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:39.6 | Hi, Namulanta Combo here and I'm excited to tell you that my award-winning podcast, |
| 0:45.4 | Dear Daughter, is back for a second season and it's available now. Find out more at the end of |
| 0:51.5 | this podcast. Thank you for downloading the more or less podcast. |
| 0:57.1 | Gold like that, you can't control it. |
| 1:00.8 | And if you can't handle it, then it will find its way to someone who can. |
| 1:07.5 | This week, we're going back to London in 1983. |
| 1:12.4 | On November night, six men in a van pull up outside a nondescript looking warehouse near Heathrow Airport. |
| 1:20.1 | The building is a depot belonging to a security company named Brinks Matt. |
| 1:28.2 | Inside, they discover diamonds, cash and a huge stash of gold. |
| 1:33.0 | 3,000 kilograms of gold, or roughly the weight of a minibus. |
| 1:38.3 | We're looking for six robbers and three tonnes of gold. |
| 1:41.4 | Money like that will end up in surprising places with surprising people. |
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