In many ways Richard Lubbock is your typical north London Jewish granddad. He has a penchant for flash cars (a golden Rolls-Royce at one point) and sunny holidays, a therapist on speed dial. He loves a bargain, could spend hours kvelling about his son and more than once forgets the question you’ve just asked him.
But Richard’s bad memory isn’t just down to old age; he’s a drug addict and dealer who was responsible for Metropolitan Police’s largest-ever haul of crystal meth once they had caught up with him at his east London penthouse flat. Expecting to find a hardened gangland boss, they discovered, instead, a skinny Jewish geek who liked classical music and war documentaries.
His story is just as insane as that of Breaking Bad’s Walter White; a chemistry teacher who turns crystal meth manufacturer and gun-toting dealer when he discovers he has cancer and cannot pay for the treatment.
Richard was once a happily married Stanmore coin dealer with a gorgeous wife and privately educated son. But when his wife revealed she was gay – and he admitted that he was too – it led to him spiral out of control; drugs, bondage, dealing and eventually prison.
The way we were: Richard and James Lubbock in Jerusalem
Five years ago, his son James bravely wrote a book about his father’s story. Now it has been turned into a two-part series for Prime Video called, inevitably, Breaking Dad. It is jaw-dropping from the off as it delves into Richard’s relationship with his own father, his secret gay life and how he slowly became entranced by drugs.
The 77-year-old is an odd character in the flesh; charming, sweet and seemingly naive. Could he really not have thought about what he was doing?
“The people I met in the drug industry were nice guys, as strange as it seems,” he insists. “I didn’t really think about creating drug addicts. I suppose I had the feeling that they were already hooked, that it wouldn’t make much difference what I was giving them.’
Working at his coin dealership
Lubbock's coin dealership
Prison, he says, was enjoyable. He made lots of friends. As for the drugs; well, he liked them. He never expected to be caught. Never thought about it. And while prison meant he was forced to get clean, perhaps most shocking of all is when he tells me that within a few months of his release he was back on crystal meth and that he gave up for good only after suffering from a heart attack earlier this year.
“I didn’t realise things had got out of hand,” says Richard of his drug dealing. “I should have, yeah. But I didn’t. It is easy to blame something that isn’t me – of course it was me. I should have realised what was going on. But I was an addict and I never realised it would be a big deal.”
Richard had a conventional enough upbringing. His dad was rather strict but welcomed him into the family business of coin dealing. Richard was very good at it; people trusted him. He was good at picking up bargains and always carried a lot of stock – something that was to serve him well when he turned to drugs.
While he had gay experiences at school, when he was in his early 20s, he saw an advert for a new charity club for young people in the Jewish Chronicle and went to widen his social circle. He fell in love with the group’s leader – a wry and clever young woman called Marilyn – and within a year they were married. Their son James followed soon after.
James remembers a happy traditional upbringing. His father was the softie in the family while his mother was the more volatile one. It was when he went to university that things changed.
Richard and Marilyn Lubbock at their son James's graduation
Unbeknown to him, his parents had both been playing away. His father had got involved with a gay crowd while travelling to South Africa on business and his mother had fallen in love with another woman.
“My wife said it first and after she spoke it was easy for me to say, ‘I am gay too’,” recalls Richard. ‘It was astonishing but also a relief for each of us. It was quite funny really. And we were determined to not be childish about it.”
Despite the shock, the change in circumstances seemed manageable. Richard, Marilyn, and James still did many things together as a family. James adapted.
Gradually, however, it became clear that Richard was taking drugs, a lot of drugs. He first started taking them while in nightclubs in Cape Town. As a shy man, still coming to terms with his sexuality, they afforded him the opportunity to be a more gregarious and charming version of himself – or at least he thought.
“They became an important part of my life and I loved being on them,” he says of the drugs. “I am not going to pretend I was thinking every day about how I was going to give them up. I wasn’t.” He just about held on to his coin dealership, but after a violent robbery in his store, increasingly began to hate the job. And lost himself more in drugs.
It took James a while to realise what was going on. He recalls one trip with his father see family in Los Angeles in 2004. “We went to San Diego to see a Darkness gig and he was great but I remember he went to the loo for about ten minutes and when he came back, I could tell he was different,” he says. “I had no idea about the crystal meth at the time but I just found that a bit odd.
Richard Lubbock
‘On the way back to the hotel he was so tired he almost fell asleep at the wheel. We got back at midnight and then he announced he was going clubbing. The whole thing was becoming increasingly bizarre and surreal; I was the one worrying about my dad.”
At home in London, he saw his father’s East End flat becoming a refuge for increasingly large groups of people. And one day James saw a large bag of cocaine on a chair, his first sign that his father might be dealing. “I was shocked,” recalls James. “I knew that it was not a normal amount and he would not be having all of it to himself. But he said he was for him and his friends and I thought it was sort of feasible that he could do that sort of thing.
“He wasn’t getting much social interaction; his friendship group seemed almost like a trade-off with the drugs.” Another time at the flat, James walked into one of the bedrooms, which was filled with sado-masochistic gear. It was a lot for a young man to take in. He contemplated calling the police about the drugs but worried that it would result in his father never speaking to him again. By then his mother had incurable ovarian cancer.
James held a desperate hope that Marilyn’s death in 2007 might straighten Richard up. In fact, it seemed to have the opposite effect; he was even late for her funeral, which he says today is one of his biggest regrets.
In 2009 the net closed and Richard was arrested at his home with police finding a haul of drugs they estimated to be worth £1.5million. Crystal meth – still quite new in London at that point – was Richard’s favourite drug and at the time it was the biggest amount of the drug the police had found.
DJ Fat Tony is interviewed in the film
Richard was jailed for eight years and spent half his sentence inside. He also lost his flat and his Rolls. He cleaned up his act and became a mentor and a teacher for young criminals. But he admits, for the first time, that within a few months of coming out of jail he was back on the crystal meth.
“I would still be taking it if I hadn’t had a heart attack earlier this year,” Richard reveals. “I was back on it after a couple of months. Even though I hadn’t had it for years, I just felt like I wanted it. Once you’ve had it, had that feeling, it doesn’t take long before you want to feel like that again.”
Until a couple of years ago when he found Richard almost dying of pneumonia, James thought his father was clean. He described his father’s physical history to the paramedics who in turn pointed out all the bongs in Richard’s home. It was a huge blow for father-of-two James.
In January this year Richard had a heart attack and doctors warned that unless he gave up the drugs and smoking cigarettes, he would kill himself. The reality of his situation finally penetrated.
Richard Lubbock with his father
“The heart attack shocked me even though I had had many warmings from the medical people to give up smoking and give up the drugs. I took no notice,” Richard admits. “Now, I find that I miss the cigarettes more than I do the drugs.” If this was Hollywood rather than Stanmore, Richard would like be a changed man, full of zeal to warn people not to go down the path he walked. But in real life, Richard says he doesn’t believe even his story of addiction and jail will make any difference to those already on his journey.
“Once people are addicted, they just are,” he says. “Nothing I or any ex-addict say is going to make any difference. You just don’t want to listen.”
‘Breaking Dad: Britain’s Unlikeliest Drug Dealer’ is on Amazon Prime Video
There will be a special charity screening of the film for Ovarian Cancer on Wednesday June 12 at 7.30pm at the Reel Cinema in Borehamwood. To book a seat go to https://breakingdad.eventbrite.com
