So there I was singing ‘The wheels of the buss go round round, round, round’ to daughter Annie when my computer whirrs, coughs, spits, rings a bell and up comes that name again, flashing on screen…Peter Storrow.
Readers of this blog will remember his name from late last year. He’s the upcoming supremo of the commercial gay sex scene in Pattayaw ho has told Britain’s Customs & Revenue and the courts that he is penniless and lives in the Malaysia hotel in Soi Ngam Duplee in Bangkok!
His Pattaya mansion apparently belongs to a friend.
Storrow also got his picture taken with British Ambassador Quentin Quayle, along with others affectionately known locally as the ‘Gay McMafia’.
Last year Storrow was declared bankrupt. This is one of Britain’s new industries. People come from far and wide to the UK to be declared bankrupt because they are automatically discharged after a year.
Did I say automatically? Well, some mistake here. Storrow’s representative went to Brighton Court on January 25th to request his discharge papers. … and never got them.
Seems Customs & Revenue do not believe his tales of poverty and Storrow is not going to be discharged all that easily.
Everybody wants to go to the ball and join the line-up with these British Vice Consuls. No just joking. That’s Storrow up front
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They are very interested in Storrow’s relationship with Lenny ‘The Loon’ Poole, who is a guy you don’t mess with. ….. Well I suppose you can now actually… as he’s dead.
Lenny is an old time crime figure, dating back, well possibly even to the 50’s. His job was to launder cash for crime syndicates. Well maybe that’s too posh a phrase. Let’s just say ‘the boys’, in South London.
A lot of the crime was white collar crime apparently – not stick-ups but more of the VAT fraud type – through various companies, some established in London House, Croydon. Looks like Customs and Revenue may have lost out in many ways.
A lot of the cash gains apparently went through our Mr. Storrow, initially to Spain, where Storrow also has a toreador called ‘Miguel’ apparently, and more recently to Thailand. Of course the local police probably welcome this new source of income.
Lenny’s widow ‘Linda’ , aka ‘Loopy’, likes to keep monetary affairs in the family. She has failed to make a number of appointments with the Customs and Revenue for a variety of reasons, creaking bones, a cough, runny nose, varicose veins, broken zimmer frame, ‘Just don’t feel up to it boys’ etc.
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Anyway to add to Storrow’s worries is the fact that his side-kick in Pattaya, Glen Campbell – no he cannot sing ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ with any conviction- is himself being taken to court by Customs and Revenue to be declared bankrupt on February 10th.
Glen, aka ‘Cleo’, has a company (well Storrow’s really) called aptly Asp(land) Ltd., with a chap called Lord Andrew Dunton. Yes, you could not make this up, and it’s a name that could come back and bite him in the…..a…nether regions. But this story is out of this world in many ways. One of the properties Customs and Revenue have been looking at is in Mimbridge, near Chobham, Surrey, at the exact spot where the Martians landed in H.G. Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’.
And Lord Andrew Dunton? Well I can’t tell you too much about this chap (left) today but he is not one of England’s ‘Stately Homos’*. Used to have a pub in Brighton and worked as a doorman at Brighton’s gay Revenge Club, I gather. Wait he was also chairman of Brighton Gay Pride and according to the Brighton Argus and Brighton internet gay columnist Rita Snatch was once stabbed in Brighton and went on Meridien TV to talk about homophobia.
God, is this exciting? Will it never end? Storrow is busily consolidating himself in Pattaya trusting, with his lawyers, that Customs and Revenue will not be able to see their way through the endless pole-dancing Somchais and Somsaks on his company records.
Of course his cause is not helped by his best mates, Gordon May and Jim Lumsden, who kicked off ‘Boyztown’ in Pattaya twenty odd years ago, and were friends of the late departed Scotsman Martin Frutin, ex-Pattaya Rotary, Pattaya Masons, and Edinburgh Sheriff court where he was convicted of possessing child pornography.
Customs and Revenue apparently have a video-tape of street party during last November’s Gay Festival in which Lumsden puts an end to any doubt as to who owns five shop houses in a row, or about half of Boyztown.
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Dressed in a frock – and believe you me, after dozens of face lifts this guy does look better made up as a woman – Lumsden pointed to Storrow’s properties and told the assembled crowd that the shells of Storrow’s properties within eyesight were alone worth over 50 million baht…..just about the size of the cash Revenue & Customs are looking for…(But they say they are ready to revise upwards)
(Lumsden had incidentally been introduced by a compere who joked: ‘We all know Madame Jim, don’t we? Its always good to see a new face here though’ )
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Perhaps Lumsden knew he was being filmed. He did not bat an eyelid to the cameraman. Anyway Madame Jim as he is known has come into a bit of luck of late. He he has always publicly decried under aged sexual encounters in the gay scene in Pattaya and has even written about it on the net – but he is a smart guy with a nose for a good deal.
Last year Britons Robert Horsman and Malcolm Payne, 59, were arrested together with a German and American in Pattaya in Operation Naga, conducted by the Children and Womens Division of the Royal Thai Police and with assistance from Britain’s CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection) unit.
The operation was trumpeted by CEOP Chief Jim Gamble as a triumph of international police co-operation. ‘We share a clear, joint commitment to prevent harm to children. The Royal Thai Police have demonstrated an unerring commitment to making Thailand a hostile environment for UK offenders and CEOP will continue to proactively support that commitment’
Anyway Jim might have been being a little optimistic. Payne has long since been let out of the coop, and others too I am told. But Payne, who used to run the ‘Regulation’ gay bondage shop in Islington, N. London, had a house to sell ‘on the darkside’, and apparently quickly too. In stepped Jim with an offer of 1/3 of the asking price, so I am told. Going, going gone. Now that is what I call back-scratching. The house will of course be in a company name.
Back to the Pattaya Gay Festival. Storrow could have got up and pointed to the other side of the street featuring ‘Boyz Boyz Boyz’ and made some comments on how that little empire was built. But that would no doubt have led to handbags at dawn.
Finally Kevin Quill, a man who without any doubt at all was framed on drugs charges, is to be released from prison hospital in Bangkok in just a few days and transferred home. Once in England he will testify about Storrow and other related matters. It was Quill who sold Storrow his business in the first place.
What was it again? Standard Chartered?
Just how Storrow and his local police pals, square off against any investigations or requests from the UK is anybody’s guess, I suppose. But nothing comes for free.
*This is a strictly non sexist blog. But old jokes are allowed.
Link to Brighton Country Court
This is a blog only
On her Majesty’s Pattaya Service (2009)
Getaway at last to the eastern seaboard, where a chap called Peter Storrow is celebrating his birthday in his gay venue called the ‘Copa Show Bar’. I don’t go in, but my man-boy does. I take a look around the street and see some chaps who also look definitely out of place in Soi Pattayaland 3.
Not only that, but Pattayaland Soi 3 has also been attracting the interest of another arm of British law enforcement, even more influential and powerful than CO14.
CO14 ‘Keeping London Safer’ could have a field day with Brits in Pattaya I suspect. The other unit, working for her Majesty’s Customs & Revenue should just set up office!
The Yard guys have been staying in Bangkok at the downmarket Plaza Athenee – well downmarket compared to where the boys from Customs & Revenue are staying – the Millenium Hilton.
Still all this activity outside the Copa Show bar got me thinking. So I googled and googled so to speak, and then I came up with this wonderful photograph below.
Yes, it’s our Ambassador His Excellency Quinton Quayle, with a chap called Gordon May, another called Jim Lumsden, a chap called Glen Campbell, no not the singer, and Peter Storrow the owner of the Copa Bar, and a place called Splash (bit like a seafood restaurant, but where you can pick your boy from a water tank; crabs too I suppose) He also owns a gay gym, and a small hotel attached to his bars.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has one of the biggest gay groups in the British civil service. Quinton is not a member but it’s nice to see him showing solidarity.
But not to put too fine a point on it, here is our Ambassador posing with all the Brits who control or have controlled the biggest slice of the gay commercial sex scene in Pattaya for the last 20 years. Still all power to ‘The British Chamber -Eastern Seaboard Members Cleansing Sub-Committee.
(Actually accusing anyone of running a sex business in Pattaya could be libellous in the Thai context. A special enquiry by Chonburi Police has revealed, and I have a copy of the report, that there is absolutely no sign of commercial sexual activity at Boyz Boyz Boyz in Pattayland Soi 3, and I am sure the rest of the bar and club owners in Pattaya can secure similar statements)
May and Lumsden are the controversial creators of Boyztown and set up ‘Boyz Boyz Boyz’ and the Ambiance Hotel with £1/4 m cash they had earned or ‘misappropriated’ ( depends which version you want to believe) from an Edinburgh Property Company called Teague Homes in the late 1980’s.
Two people who invested into Lumsden and May’s businesses in Pattaya suffered terrible misfortunes. First Iain Macdonald, the 27-yr-old gay stepson of the Provost of Inverness (The English equivalent is Mayor) died in a fire in the Ambiance Hotel after bequeathing, strangely enough, his 250,000 pound shareholding in Thailand to Gordon May’s Thai boyfriend. (The phoney will here was signed by James Lumsden)
The family in Scotland never got their money back of course. Macdonald’s mother Eileen made this affidavit in which she made it quite clear what she thought happened to the cash.
Then, second, along came Kevin Quill from West Yorkshire, who invested 1/3 million pounds with May and Lumsden in a business called Patika -with bar-gym-hotel-and the water tank.
Kevin Quill has never been a drugs user but was arrested in the hotel’s taxi on his way to the airport on a trip back to England. When police opened his cases they found a massive haul of Benson & Hedges cigarettes and inside one packed in one carton they found almost 100 yaa baa methamphetamine tablets.
While in jail awaiting trial Quill found that he had been stripped of the directorship of his own company, his apartment had been let out for rent, and that even his sister who came to visit was being charged for the use of his own car and driver!
The British Customs Liaison Officer at the British Embassy suspected immediately that Quill had been framed and the Assistant Commissioner of the Royal Thai Police in Bangkok General Nopadol Somboonsap conducted an investigation, which confirmed everybody’s suspicions.
The Embassy presented the famous ‘Deryck Fisher Letter ‘ to the court……to absolutely no affect. No consular official would testify.
Quill was convicted, acquitted, and convicted again at the Supreme Court after coming back from England for the verdict. He is currently in Khlong Prem Prison Hospital with throat cancer.
He eventually got his property back on the condition he withdrew cases against Lumsden and May. And he claims that the policeman who enthusiastically took his complaint never proceeded with the case or passed it onto the prosecutor.
A good summary of the story was publish in the Glasgow Herald under the headline THE STRANGE TALE OF TRANVESTITES, CROOKED COPS, A MUTILATED BODY AND TWO SCOTS KNOWN AS THE GAY MACMAFIA
I was sued after the Bangkok Post ran an investigation – already publish in the UK – headed: ‘Lock Stock and Two Smoking Boyz’. The issue continues here. Thankfully a whip round among journalists and editors in the UK and assistance from the BAJ have paid my costs.
The case continues and will probably run another ten years!
Anyway as the new guy on the block – he has actually taken over from May and Lumsden as the big man in ‘Boyztown’ – Storrow counts the two Scots amongst his close, friends and has been spotted dining with them all over town. So why the sudden interest from Customs and Revenue?
Well the answer lies at Brighton Court where in January this year Storrow was declared bankrupt. The poor guy does not have a penny, or does he? He gave the court an address in Soi Ngam Duplee in Bangkok. Actually he gave the court the address of the Malaysia hotel, which has its own cottage industry I gather. But in Pattaya he seems to have built this the house below in Soi Kowtelo 4 – actually its two houses – one is for the maids I guess. But he can’t own all six cars in the forecourt, I suppose.
Then of course Storrow has got his club, hotel and fish tank. Customs and Revenue want 1 million UK pounds from him. I don’t know how they came to this estimate because as far as I can deter, H.M. Customs and Revenue do not have a record of Storrow paying any money anywhere.
At least I paid tax for twenty years in the UK, and am doing so again, so that some Pattaya Brits can get their disability allowances.
Anyway Storrow should be cautious – and indeed I guess he is. He has a picture of his local police colonel on his front gate. Now that is some service.
But if I were Storrow I would be cautious. Whoever wanted his money, the money he does not have that is, could just grab it, abstractly I suppose, and say afterwards well he never had it anyway, as he is bankrupt and here is the court order. Get my drift.
Goodness knows how Storrow travels business class.
Still these ‘Solvency Practitioners’ are ruthless I am told and will leave no stone unturned. They have been finding stuff all over the place. I’d be off to the Cayman Islands if I had enough for the fare., or take Thai citizenship.
May and Lumsden by the way are in the Chamber of Commerce as directors of Baan Suay Siam Co., Ltd. Business: Hotel. Where? Have not a clue.
