List of Hustle characters

"Hustle" is a British television comedy-drama series made by Kudos Film & Television for BBC One in the United Kingdom.

"Please note that the main characters are in the main article".

Contacts

*Neil Cooper (played by Tom Mannion) is another con artist who helps Mickey in Season 1, Episode 1. He impersonates a police officer named Martin Depalma who heads the investigation into the crew.

*Tip Jones (played by Brian Pettifer) is a forger of classical art. (Tip takes offense to the term "forgery," insisting that he does not create forgeries, but "clones".) Albert says that Tip is the best forger in the business but is very untrustworthy. When he is first seen it is said that an operation went wrong and he has thus suffered from brain damage. However, this is all a ruse by Tip to fool the Fraud Squad so that he doesn't have to stand trial. Once Albert mentions how much money they intend to con Meredith Gates out of then he soon comes out of his "brain damaged" state. Tip forges an original Mondrian which the crew sell to the collector Meredith Gates. However, Tip betrays the crew and attempts to take the crew's money, only to be outsmarted: a police squad (called by Mickey) comes to arrest him for a minor fraud, he has to play "brain damaged" and the crew escapes with the money.

*Samuel Richards (played by Richard Harrington) is a thief, who wants to steal the diamond that Moore's Bank stole from his father. The crew help him because Victor Maher (the Head of Security at the Bank) forces them to catch Richards but they con Maher as well. Mickey forms a bond with Richards because he feels that their fathers were similar people.

*Adam Rice (played by Paul Nicholls) is a thief regarded by the police as "The Ghost" due to his ability to just disappear from the crime scene or elude people trying to follow him. He is the kind of person who is used to being followed and so every so often he pulls a vanishing trick just to be on the safe side. He is a keen parachutist and this hobby has come in handy in his line of work when he has needed to get over electric fences and the like. He only works with people he has hand-picked and doesn't like being approached for jobs. He turns Mickey and Danny down when they try and get him to recruit them for his next job. They try and convince him that whatever he is going to steal they will make copies of it and then sell them on as the original thus increasing the take (just like they did with the Star of Africa). He then he shows up in their flat willing to recruit them (well Ashley Morgan really as he needed Ash to shut down the security systems) while Mickey, Danny, and himself steal an original Hans Christian Andersen manuscript.

*Archie (played by Tony Rohr) is involved in horse-racing, and is able to supply the crew with a horse and "paint" another horse during the con in season 4, episode 2. He obviously has a history with the group - he is nervous on seeing Stacie as he's "always nervous around grifters" and she "always wants something".

Marks

Series 1

*James Laurenson as Peter Williamson:Peter Reginald Williams is a businessman that resides and operates in London. He started his pharmaceutical company in the early eighties. His first wife was from old money and he used her family’s connections with the government to get research contracts. He regularly makes the top 500 rich list but he is greedy and will cross the street to pick up a one pound coin. He has recently bagged a new young wife but she is high maintenance and spends his cash faster than he would like. He is generally a sucker for a pretty face, spends money to impress, the shorter the skirt the looser he gets. He is an objectionable little man with the morals of an alley cat. He moves in high circles and regularly plays golf with the chancellor.

*Robert Pugh as Frank Gorley:Frank Gorley is a renowned bully and the owner of a top London casino and hotel situated in the West End. The casino is bent, he ships in girls from Eastern Europe for the hotel, and the punters lose their money on the tables then curl up with one of the girls. There are twenty four girls working there in this way. Gorley is very careful with his money, to the point of being almost miserly. He is not the sort of man you take liberties with. The last person that cheated in his casino ended up in intensive care. He is surrounded by women, gambling, and alcohol but he has no discernible vices and is a bit of a loner. He is a film fanatic though and is a big fan of Cagney. Other than his love of films he is a block of ice, always calculating the odds and never goes out on a limb. He has certain rules about business, one of them being never invest money in businesses he knows nothing about. This probably stems from him once dabbling in stocks and shares and losing heavily. He now doesn’t trust them and has decided never to do them again. His laptop carries all the information about the casino and hotel and is always with him.

*Liz May Brice as DS Terri Hodges

*Orla Brady as Meredith Gates:Meredith is a businesswoman that owns an art gallery in London called Gates Gallery. She is an avid art collector with a particular interest in the artist Mondrian; she once spent ₤250,000 on one of his pieces. She is unscrupulous, greedy, selfish, and has ripped off many poor struggling dealers and buyers over the years. She pretty much makes a hobby out of fleecing dealers. She likes to keep mere mortals at a safe distance. She is a stunning brunette and is chauffeured around in a Jaguar.

*David Calder as Victor Maher

*Tamzin Outhwaite as Katherine Winterborn:Katherine Winterborn is a businesswoman who used to be married to Steven Winterborn. After they got divorced, Steven tried to float his hotel chain on the stock market, but as they were divorced Katherine would not make any money from this. She felt this was wrong as she had helped him to build it up so she seduced Mickey into ruining Steven's presentation to investors.

*Ben Miles as Steven Winterborn

*Philip Jackson as Arthur Bond:Arthur Bond is a rich fairground owner. Mickey and Danny "sold" him the London Eye for £100,000; when the con was exposed on the media he was ridiculed. Now he is thirsty for revenge.
*David Haig as Anthony Reeves:Anthony Reeves is a businessman that received a payoff of ₤500,000 from his company even though he had run it poorly. This was shortly before the gang targetted him. He believes that anyone who earns less than ₤100,000 a year is part of the "great unwashed". He is a member of the same club as Albert. He likes gambling, especially the gee-gees, and prostitution of which his wife knows nothing about.

Series 2

*Charlie Creed Miles as Howard Jennings:Howard Jennings is a young high flier; a ruthless and Machiavellian property broker in London. He finds land for the major developers to work on. He considers London his city; there is not a patch of undeveloped land in London that he doesn’t know about and has first refusal on. He is a nasty piece of work, his mantra in life is “see what you want and get it.” He will do anything he can to get what he wants. Recently he bought a piece of land in Islington. There was an 83 year old tenant blocking the deal, she wouldn’t move because she was worried that her little cat wouldn’t find its way home. So Howard ran over the cat and the woman signed within a fortnight.:He looks like a typical city boy; red braces, no socks, expensive suits, and plenty of arrogance. He is obsessive, always one step ahead. His files are always perfect; he checks everything out, leaves nothing to chance. A rival company snatched a large parcel of land from under his nose so he took a nine iron to his glass desk. It was made worse when a large stash of Roman coins was uncovered during excavation, worth a fortune. He was a laughing stock, reputation with him is everything; he has to be top dog. He reads the telegraph.:A few years back a con man took him for £30,000. Afterwards Howard became obsessed and did a bit of research. He now knows all the tricks and is paranoid about being conned again. Due to this he records every conversation that takes place in his office. A couple of months back a con man tried to work a long con on him. Howard saw straight through him from the start but played along, took the convincer off him. When the con man asked Howard to part with a hundred grand for a half million return, Howard called security and then the police. Gave the police the taped conversations he had had with the con man and made a full statement. His comments were “make sure he is given the maximum sentence, he played the game and lost; now he must face the consequences.”

*Ronald Pickup as Harry Holmes

*Stanley Townsend as Johnny Keyes:Johnny Keyes is a prominent restaurateur and celebrity chef in London, but has a notorious gangland past. He is an arrogant powerful thug whose past is that of a renowned killer and all round bad guy, who was demonised by the national papers. He grew up on the streets, robbing houses, talking with his fists, not to mention turning over a few banks which he has does time for. Some say they should have thrown away the key. He was evil personified. Inside he was like everybody else; a nobody. He did kitchen duty to pass the time and fast. Soon it got into his blood and he devoured books, hungry to learn. He ended up cooking for the Governor. When he got out he bought a restaurant and now he runs Keyes that is very exclusive. There is an eight week waiting period for Saturday night, and a four week waiting period for Sunday lunch. However they always keep a few tables free in case of last minute celebrities wanting to dine there. He has reinvented and smartened himself up. He no longer behaves like the gangland person he used to be. Today he acts like a gentleman but he still retains his aggressive nature. He wears expensive clothes and his car is a silver very expensive Mercedes. He has brown hair but is beginning to bald. He has to be careful of the activities he does as these days his heart is very weak. Due to his poor health he is worried about never finding his son he lost to a gangland kidnapping. He is consumed by guilt for not paying the ransom but he has no idea where to start his search. The kidnapping too place in 1974 and his one year old son James was never heard from or seen again. Johnny had a lot of enemies in those days. He was a vicious armed robber into everything from extortion to protection rackets. The kidnapping was orchestrated by some of his gangland associates who wanted revenge for Johnny swindling them out of money. Johnny had the cash to pay the ransom but he called their bluff. He wanted to use the money to start up his business. He is onto his second wife, his first and his son’s mother died of cancer. She and Johnny were separated at the time. His present one is named Julietta who is a short woman with blonde hair. Johnny is her third husband. Johnny is not a church goer but Julietta is and encourages him to go. He employs a wine expert to make sure that the wine he sells in his restaurant is always the best. He also sees some wines as investments and once paid a record amount for a bottle of vintage Bordeaux. Johnny wrote a book called Keyes Kitchen King that went into the bestsellers list.

*Rebecca Lacey as Juliette Keyes

*Fay Ripley as Samantha Phillips:Detective Inspector Samantha Phillips is a bent policewoman who tries to blackmail Mickey and his crew. She has a safe deposit box where she stashes all her ill-gotten gains.

Series 3

*Mel Smith as Benny Frazier:Benny Frazier, also known as Benny the Boozer, is an obnoxious nasty piece of work who owns 16 licensed pubs and clubs across the East End. He is also a major importer of booze through his company, Benny Frazier Import/Export Company Limited. Nobody asks any questions because of all the bars he owns. What people don’t know is that he uses the alcohol shipments as a cover to smuggle in Eastern Europeans. The police have been after him for a while but they can never get anything on him. Rumour is that he hands out backhanders as if they were confetti. He is wealthy enough to be able to get £100,000 together within a day. He bought the Iron Duke in Bow about 20 years ago. It was a dive with fights every night. Benny turned it around by beating up the troublemakers.:He married above himself, some rich sort called Sharon. He showers her with gifts, but most of the jewellery is knocked off. Her father helped Benny to buy the Iron Duke. Together they live in a rather large house in Essex and have a 17 year old son called Joey. He is the apple of Benny’s eye and is a budding rap star, keen to hit the big time as a British Eminem. However, he is a talentless fool. Sharon thinks Benny indulges him too much but Benny had nothing as a kid so he always promised to himself that when it came to his son he would do whatever it took. As such Joey is a spoilt brat with a serious attitude problem. A right chip off the old block.

:Some of his pubs are:

# The Iron Duke
# The Well
# Henry VIII
# Frog & Stone
# Duke Of York
# Park Horse
# Horse & Cart
# Meeting House
# Stone Wall Arms

*Silas Carson as Kulvinder Samar:Kulvinda Samar is a greedy and very wealthy businessman. He owns and runs a network of small factories making counterfeit designer clothes (sweatshops in other words). He is based in Bradford but travels to London once a month on business to check up on his factories there. He was lured to the UK in the 1980’s where Thatcher’s Britain made it a perfect climate to set up his factories.:When he was younger he wanted to become a Bollywood actor. His father, a businessman, put a stop to that and so Samar took over the family business. His acting days, though, have given him a passion for Bollywood films and he spends every weekend sitting in cinemas. However, he has become bitter and twisted from not being able to pursue his dream and so takes it out on his workers and everyone else. He has brought pain and suffering to the Asian community for many years. He is a cruel, arrogant, and obnoxious man that has taken delight in crushing other people’s dreams as he could not follow his. He has this air about him that everyone else is beneath him. He pays his workers £2 an hour. They look upon him with hate in their eyes but know they can do nothing about it.:He is a control freak and a perfectionist that strives for perfection in his life. He likes to surround himself with beautiful things, especially plants like Bonsai trees and an orchid known as the lady slipper worth £30,000. He believes the art of doing the perfect business deal is in finding a person with limited options. But, like any perfectionist he knows that when something is too good to be true then it usually is.

*Charles and Quenton Cornfoot:Charles and Quenton Cornfoot are bankers and owners of Cornfoot’s Merchant Bank which was established in 1706. Cornfoot’s Merchant Bank is situated in the City. Charles is the Director of Trading and is the shake down artist. All banks are greedy but Charles has an insatiable appetite for other people’s money. If there is one thing he really enjoys it is poaching clients from someone else. Quenton is the Director of Corporate Finance. He is the roper who romances the clients and brings in the business.:They don’t care what they offer the public. As Quenton says “we stack the shelves, we don’t set the prices”. There is pretty much no kind of company that they wouldn’t float on the market. They are also guilty of insider dealing, driving the market, and selling their own clients short.:They are not averse to taking over a company, stripping out the assets, trashing the pension fund, and bankrupting the place. The fact that the workers have just lost their jobs does not bother them either.

Series 4

*Robert Wagner as Anthony Westley

*Patricia Hodge as Veronica Powell

*Chris Tardio as Johnny Maranzano :Johnny Maranzano is a Mafia boss in Las Vegas who owns his own casino/hotel. His father had a touch of class but Johnny is just an animal. The only things he seems to care about is himself and money. He has no regard for his staff and constantly abuses them - verbally and sometimes physically as well. His casino has a fruit machine called Big Daddy that has a jackpot of $5 million and is in honour of his deceased father. The prize money sits behind a huge fishtank. This is because his father once bought him a fishtank as a child and told Johnny that the bubbles rising to the top of the tank represent Johnny's eventual rise to greatness. Johnny gets very angry if the bubbles in Big Daddy stop so he has cleaning firm come out to clean it every so often. He hates grifters and if his security catch a grifter in his casino then he has them brought up to the security office, held down on the desk, and he brings down a baseball bat on one of their hands to teach them a lesson. This is one of his milder punishments and he is not above killing anyone who crosses him.

References