'The Milkman': How an Irish 'gentleman gangster' built a global drugs empire – and how it all came crashing down

As criminal underworld nicknames go, ‘The Milkman’ certainly stands out. The moniker may conjure cartoonish imagery, but the reality was quite simple – Brian Brendan Wright always delivered. Having swapped out Cork for London at the age of 12, Wright grew up in a working-class Irish community before carving out a distinctive personality for himself. In time, he would boast quite the collection of acquaintances, rubbing shoulders with celebrity names like Frank Sinatra, Clint Eastwood and Michael Caine, while also emerging as a well-respected “gentleman gangster” in the criminal underworld. And so it was that when a suspicious yacht anchored in Cobh, Co Cork, on a stormy September night in 1996, investigators eventually found themselves on the trail of The Milkman. On this episode of The Indo Daily, host Kevin Doyle is joined by Irish Independent southern correspondent Ralph Riegel to look at how an Irish expat built a global drugs empire and how it all came spilling down around him. The Indo Daily is part of the Trust Project. You can see our ethics policies at independent.ie/ourjournalismSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.