Gangster
In the 1990s, Brian Brendan Wright, known as The Milkman, became one of the UK’s most significant cocaine traffickers. His operation stretched from coca labs in Colombia, through Venezuelan jungles and Caribbean sea routes, to quiet marinas and racecourses in Britain. Bulk shipments crossed the Atlantic by sailboat. Cartel brokers negotiated deals in Miami. Public phone boxes carried coded conversations.
At home, Wright cultivated a different image: racehorse owner, gambler, a familiar face in elite restaurants and private boxes. Behind that public life sat an organisation moving hundreds of kilos of cocaine at a time. Couriers, skippers and middlemen handled the risk. Cocaine flooded British streets while its organiser remained largely unseen.
The investigation to dismantle the network lasted 11 years. Customs officers, DEA agents and police forces across multiple countries tracked phone numbers, cracked codes, followed boats and recruited insiders. Arrests reached from Colombian suppliers to UK logistics men. As pressure mounted, Wright fled abroad and became one of Britain’s most wanted fugitives.
Gangster: The Story of the Milkman follows the rise and fall of a transatlantic cocaine empire — the smugglers who ran it, the officers who pursued it, and the human cost left in its wake.
© BBC 2026 · more info
Artwork and data is from the podcast’s open RSS feed; we link directly to audio · Read our DMCA procedureThis podcast may use tracking and attribution, dynamic content insertion and is insecure
Stats: Statistics are produced by BBC to help Gangster to understand how many downloads it is getting, or how many people are listening. Your device’s IP address and user agent is used to help calculate this figure. Here is more detail about podcast statistics.
Tracking and attribution: BBC or its partners may connect the fact you listened to this podcast to an action elsewhere on the internet. For example - it may spot a device that downloaded an episode of Gangster later visited the website of an advertiser; or it may track that a device that listened to Gangster also listened to a different show. This form of attribution is used to measure advertising effectiveness.
Dynamic content insertion: BBC may use limited data that they know about you - the device you’re using, the approximate location you’re in, or other data that can be derived from this, like the current weather forecast for your area - to change parts of the audio. Gangster may do this for advertising or for other forms of content, like news stories.
Gangster is able to use the above tools since its podcast host or measurement company offers this service. It doesn’t mean that this individual podcast uses them, or has access to this functionality. We use open data.
This uses an insecure connection. This podcast uses an HTTP, not HTTPS, address for its audio files. These are not encrypted, and may allow people who can see your internet traffic - like your internet service provider, employer or even your government - to know that you listen to this podcast.
Here’s more about insecure links and unique domains.
In the news
BBC Sounds reveals their top 10 most popular podcasts of 2023 with podcast listening up 34% on the platform (Dec 28 2023)
Listen and follow
Information for podcasters
- Podcast GUID:
cefe721e-f9ee-5b22-877a-bf91b0321061 - This podcast appears to be missing from Truefans, iVoox, and Luminary. We list all the podcast directories to be in.
- See this podcast’s listener numbers, contact details and more at Rephonic
- Validate this podcast’s RSS feed with Livewire, Truefans or CastFeedValidator


Apple Podcasts