The Brighton Bomb: 9. Performance

When you get right down to it, everything in life is a matter of timing.

Any other evening, a knock at the door would put Patrick Magee on alert. As chance would have it, though, it being a Saturday, rent day, Magee, and the four other people in the flat with him on Glasgow’s Langside Road, are expecting the landlord.

Instead Magee opens the door to dozens of police and Special Branch officers who have over the past few hours massed around the address. They rush into the flat and overpower them before they have time to react.

After six years of trying, Special Branch finally have the man they have dubbed ‘the Chancer’, the man only a few of them as yet know bombed Brighton’s Grand Hotel.

Getting him to confess to it, or even speak, is another matter.

Written and presented by Glenn Patterson

Series Producer: Owen McFadden Story Consultant and Sound Design: Alan Hall Producer: Lena Ferguson Archive Producer: Fran Rowlatt McCormick Production Co-Ordinator: Hollie Wallace Composer: Mark McCambridge Sound Engineer: Claire Marquess Mixing Engineer: Mike Woolley Patrick Magee archive courtesy of Peter Taylor and Whistledown Productions

Executive Producer Rachel Hooper

A Walk on Air production in association with Keo Films