Noel "Razor" Smith was born in London to Irish immigrant parents: an unemployed and violent father and working mother. He grew up in the Holloway Road area and in Balham. He was first arrested for stealing apples and at that time had a positive view of the police. However, whilst playing truant from school at the age of 14 with a friend, he was picked up by the burglary squad and was beaten and tortured by them. They were then forced to confess to a series of burglaries that they had not committed. When the case came to court, he admitted to making-up the burglaries and the magistrate ordered the police to investigate, leading to the charges being dismissed and a recommendation to sue the police. This then led to harassment by the police on several occasions, for example raiding the family home to the extent where they opted to drop the charges.
In his own words, Smith "threw [himself] into crime", and this led to him being sent to a detention centre. At the age of 16 he appeared at the Old Bailey for armed robbery and possession of firearms and sentenced to 3 years. He used the contacts that he made during this sentence to become a professional robber, and spent his life as a professional criminal in and out of prison.
He committed over 200 bank robberies and was given a 26-year sentence, of which he served 11 years, and spent most of it reading. He was jailed for life in 1997 on the two-strikes provisions of the Crime Sentences Act 1997, after a robbery spree.
Now a reformed character, he has not been in trouble with the law since his release from prison in 2010.