This is the Guardian.

The Guardian Archive Long Read.

Hi, my name is Duncan Campbell and I'm the author of a Long Read called The Selling of the Craze.

How two mediocre criminals created their own legend.

I used to be the crime correspondent at the Guardian and I'm the author of a book called Underworld,

A History of Organized Crime in Britain and another one called Will All Be Murdered in our bed's history of crime reporting.

I was prompted to write this seven years ago because the film Legend about Britain's best known gangsters,

Ronnie and Reggie Kray was about to come out.

Reggie was a gangster prince at the East End.

Ron Kray was a one man mob.

They'd both been jailed for murder in 1969 and they were never released,

Ronnie dying in 1995 and Reggie five years later.

What I was curious about was why there was still such a fascination with the craze.

Even today, if you look for craze memorabilia online,

you'll find that you could buy anything from a silver locket that Reggie Kray once owned.

That's on sale for £7,500 to a Ronnie Kray artwork, which is going for four grand.

In their day, the craze very much wanted to be famous.

They loved having their pictures taken and when I saw Ronnie Kray and Broadmore in the 1980s,

he liked who he wanted to play his part in any film that might be made of them.

In fact, there's been two since.

You should have done it, Reggie.

He's a punts.

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