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The Artful Codgers (C4, 9pm)
THEY were "the most unlikely
master criminals the world has
even seen". A bold claim but you
can see what's behind that comment
as "the head of one of
Britain's most elusive crime families"
arrives for sentencing at court - a fraillooking,
elderly man in a wheelchair being
unloaded from the back of a taxi.
Eightysomething college caretaker George
Greenhalgh doesn't look much like Godfather
Don Corleone. But this is Mr Big, the brains
behind the most successful forgery gang in
history.
The story of the Greenhalghs finds them
flogging a series of fake works of art to dealers,
museums and galleries over a 17-year period.
It's a bit like watching an old Ealing
comedy.
One of the things that makes you smile is
discovering that the centre of this criminal
empire was a council house in Bolton. And
that in the garden shed, George's son Shaun
turned out a variety of objects - paintings,
Egyptian statues, Assyrian stone carvings -
using tools bought from B&Q.
His fakes were so good that they fooled experts
and persuaded Bolton Council to raise
nearly £500,000 to purchase one forgery,
which was shown to the Queen as an example
of a work of art saved for the nation.
Little did she know that the 3,000-year-old
statue depicting (allegedly) the sister of boy
pharaoh Tutankhamun had been knocked up
in a couple of weeks in a garden shed in
Lancashire.
THE police art squad was first alerted to
the Greenhalghs in 1990 and again nine
years later, but never pursued the case
through to arrest.
The gang were George, 84, his wife Olive,
83, and their middle-aged son Shaun, who
never went out to work and lived at home
with his parents.
Shaun, described as "a self-taught genius",
decided what pieces to fake by reading books
at his local library and pinpointing lost or forgotten
works of art. He "found" them, so to
speak, in his garden shed. His wide range of
fakes over various art forms make him the
most diverse forger in history.
George was the salesman, coming up with
the back story behind each piece, usually
something to do with finding them in his
garage or having been passed down through
his family over the years.
One piece remained on public show in the
British Museum in London for ten years. Another
was proudly displayed in Bolton Museum
after a public appeal to raise the cash. I
wonder if Shaun ever went along to look at
his handiwork, resisting the temptation to
tell other visitors that he, not an Egyptian
artist, had made it.
As he gained confidence, he moved from
making missing masterpieces to creating his
own. Like the statue of a faun he passed off
as the first ceramic made by Gauguin. The
origin of the his design can be seen in a drawing
in the artist's early sketchbook.
A London dealer bought it for £20,000, selling
it to a US museum for a reported $125,000.
A carved set of Assyrian stone reliefs
proved the forgery gang's undoing after a
Bonhams expert became suspicious. "Stylistically,
it didn't add up," says consultant
Richard Falkiner. "It looked like an Assyrian
relief, but not a genuine Assyrian relief. It
was made out of the wrong material, the
wrong stone and was carved in marginally
the wrong style."
The real giveaway was that Shaun had put
a modern harness on a horse in the carving.
Falkiner spotted the fakes, many others
failed to do so. Several of those fooled try to
justify their actions, saying that all the evidence
supplied was genuine.
The Greenhalghs are reckoned to have
made around £800,000 from selling fakes, yet
still lived in their cramped council house.
They don't appear to have done it for the
money.
George had a reputation for telling fantastical
stories, so fooling the experts appealed
to his penchant for making things up.
As for Shaun, perhaps he was a frustrated
artist. He was certainly a gifted one.
And a prolific artist. When police searched
the house, they found evidence of forgery on
every shelf, in every cupboard. "There were
a couple of spare princesses thrown into the
back of a cupboard with the shoes," recalls
one policeman.
10:40am Thursday 15th May 2008
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