Rob Knox: The Light That Went Out

This week Han is living her best funemployed life (interviews pending, privilege duly checked, pottering about as a fun auntie), which means that before we get anywhere near a murder we get into: the great "she's not mine" saga, in which she spent an entire festival being mistaken for Will's wife and handled it with all the grace of a woman several ciders deep; the Broadstairs school trip that gave us the working title of Rachel's autobiography, I'd Like to Not Have Wet Knickers on a School Trip; a very stern telling-off from a five-year-old about the perils of smoking; the discovery of "pissy feach" on a Japanese honeymoon (yes, Japan came up again, it's called growth); and Rach staying up until half four in the morning to silently scream through England v Mexico. You know. The usual.

And then, as ever, things take a turn.

Content warning: this one covers the murder of a teenage boy, knife crime, serious injury and a great deal of grief. Please look after yourselves.

On 24 May 2008, 18-year-old Robert Knox was stabbed to death outside the Metro Bar in Sidcup, just four days after wrapping his breakout role as Marcus Belby in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Rach tells the story of who Rob really was: the Sidcup boy, the M&S Saturday-job hero, the D&B Theatre School kid making twenty-quid zombie films with his best mate, and the brother who ran straight towards danger to protect his little brother Jamie. We get into the man who killed him, Karl Bishop, and his long, violent history. The police failures that left a known, dangerous suspect walking free. The Old Bailey trial, the chilling lack of remorse, and a family who took the most unimaginable loss and built a foundation, a film festival and a knife-crime campaign out of it.

It's a heartbreaker, but it's really a story about a life, not an ending. Watch the documentary (K)nox: The Rob Knox Story when you're done. 

Find us on Instagram and TikTok @SinisterSouthPod, join the Trevors Unite Facebook group, support us at patreon.com/SinisterSouth, and if you've got a spare thirty seconds, a cheeky five-star review on Spotify or Apple makes all the difference.

Transcript

Ep 09 - Rob Knox

Hello, I'm Rachel, I'm Hannah, and this is the Sinister South podcast, your weekly dose of danger from South London. I like dose of danger. It's a dose of danger.

Dose of danger. Hello, love, how are you? Hey, I'm good, I'm warm, like the rest of the world, so that's fine. Yeah, no, I'm good.

I'm, I don't know, just pottering along really. Um, the days are kind of, well, yeah, still technically fun and fluid. Not for long.

No, I mean, yeah, it's okay. But all the days kind of like, because I got no delineation really, between Sunday and Monday. It's quite shocking how quickly I've become accustomed to it.

Fair enough mate. I had to set an alarm the other morning. I was like, oh, what? What do you mean I have to get up for something? Shut up.

Absolutely not. I wake naturally with my own circadian rhythm. I think that's really good for you though.

Like every now and then to have like a proper reset of that, because I do think that sometimes we're all... 3am to 12pm is not suitable sleeping hours. Oh, no, no, no, fair. That's not fair.

Okay. All right. I take it back.

Need to get my shit together. But no, all fine. Just yeah, pottering along, doing nice things really.

Being, it seems to have been quite fortuitous that because I've not been working or not been stressed about working, I've been able to pick the kids up with you more, which has been nice. And see non, arguably very non-friend of the podcast, she does not listen at the school. Stuff like that has been lovely.

And I'm kind of, yeah, loathed to stop. Fair enough. But yeah, I've got interviews happening, like there's stuff going on.

So it's not, I don't think I'm at that phase of unemployment where you're like, oh shit, everything is fucked and everybody is like, what am I going to do? So I had to really check my privilege when I am getting in my own head about it as well. But you're also allowed to, like, I agree with checking privilege. I have to check my privilege, but also I'm reaping what I sowed as well in a good way.

Yeah, exactly. So like, yeah. You're allowed to have some downtime.

Yeah. Like, and it's, you don't have any reason to feel guilty about having that downtime. You're allowed to just be like, you know what mate, this is fucking nice.

Indeed. So I'm happy for you. Thanks.

You were a surrogate mother to my eldest daughter. Well, I would say just kind of like maybe, no, I was exactly who I should have been. I was fun aunt.

Yeah, fair. Yeah, we went to see Biffy Clyro, Nothing But Thieves. Dom, the brand, I always get the name wrong.

Dombreco, Dombronco. I want to say Dombronco and it's not Bronco. Right, okay.

It was a day festively thing. Will and your eldest were already going. I got free tickets.

So Ricardo and I gate crashed. And yeah, just got to be very fun party auntie. I love that though.

With her, which was really good fun. She did say she had the best time. On Saturday, when I asked her, what was the best part of the best time? She just went all of it.

Although I did feel like when Will said to me, I did feel a bit sorry for Rich because everyone kept asking if we wanted a photo. All together. All together.

Like, oh, do you? Well, no, there's one poor woman. She looked so confused when I, because I then didn't think about what I'd said. No, this poor woman.

She came over because I was standing next to your husband and child. And the child was on the shoulders of husband. Right.

So I was taking photos. I've got a thousand because I had a cider by this point. So it was the most sentimental thing I'd ever seen in my entire life.

Thousands of photos of the back of Will's head. But I was taking photos of them both. And she came up and she went, oh, like get involved.

I'll take a photo of the three of you together. And I just went, she's not mine. Didn't give her any other context.

And then I realised what I said. And I was like, oh, no. I mean, like, no, neither of them are mine.

He's mine, points to Richard. And I was like, she's my best friend's kid. She's like, OK.

I did say to Will, I was like, did you at any point say, well, no, no, she's not my wife. Because basically that's all we said all day. It happened so much.

He was like, oh, you three? I'm like, no. I think Will was probably in his element. And me and Will should have stopped snogging.

It did give off the wrong impression. I get that. I understand why it was confusing for everyone involved.

They just don't get our set up. They just don't understand it. Like, that's what it is.

Oh, dear. Yeah, I wasn't at that gig because I was with the other one on a school trip to Broadstairs, which was lovely. It was really nice weather to be at the beach, I think.

It was, apart from the fact that, like, I got there feeling all cocky and being like, yeah, I'm wearing all the right things. This is all fine. Suddenly realised that I'd brought my swimming costume with me and not put it on, which was really helpful when you're then on a beach full of the entirety of the school.

Yeah. Parents and teachers alike and children. Could you not have got someone to hold a towel around you? I mean, possibly, but it was one of those where it's like, it's just the faff and then the this.

So I just assumed, well, I'm wearing short shorts. It'll be fine. I was going to see like this and then got promptly soaking wet.

Of course, it's the sea. I understand that now. You said it to me earlier and you went, yeah, I just couldn't.

The waves just wouldn't stop. They just wouldn't stop. That tends to be its fucking whole thing, mate.

We'd be in right trouble. We would be in real trouble if it just didn't, if it just stopped. Could you just stop a minute waves, actually? Just because, like, these shorts are short, but they're not that short.

And I'd just try to have a nice paddle. I'd like to not have wet knickers on a school trip. That would be, that would be great.

That's the title of your autobiography. Title of my autobiography. It was when I just randomly shouted at a fellow mum friend.

And she went, you're right. And I went, my knickers are dry now. And I didn't think of the anything else.

So what we've learned is that we've both just shouted inappropriate things at women. That's what we've done. She's not mine.

But I said it really aggressively. And I don't know why. I did a poll.

I was like, I'm so sorry. We laughed about it. She was really nice.

But I don't know what came over, why I was so aggressive about it. She's not mine. Jesus Christ.

I have made sensible life choices. We're dinks. We're dinks.

Oh dear. But yeah, I inadvertently went to Pride on Saturday. Yes, so I hear.

It was really good fun. We took, so the little one had her birthday not too long ago. And as part of that, my mother-in-law decided that she would take her to the theatre.

They went to go see My Neighbour to Toro because now all of us, all four of us have now seen the show. But she was very upset that she was the only one that hadn't. Hadn't seen it.

So she specifically asked for her nan to take her to see it. So off they went. And then we thought, well, the three of us are around just sort of like pootling.

What should we go and do? So we thought, oh, well, we'll just, we'll have a wonder. We'll go to, the big one wants to go to the Japan Centre. And then we're going to go to, and by the big one I mean Will and the eldest.

Will wanted to go to Denmark Street to look at guitars that he cannot afford unless we remortgage the house. So we just kind of like completely forgetting that it was London Pride. So it was lovely because I got to teach the big one about what Pride was and got to do the whole obligatory like, oh, aren't I good by being like, she understands, she gets it.

When I was trying to explain to her about sort of like why Pride is a protest and all of that and what it was that, and she was very, when I was explaining to her about like, why we have Pride and all the rest of it, she was just like, I don't understand that. Like, why is it anyone else's business? And I did, I must admit, I did do this. I did the smug mum face of like, you get it.

I've done well. Mine are well rounded. Mine are well rounded.

Thank you. But yeah, so that was fun. Just kids say the funniest things, which is apparently what we're turning this podcast into.

On Saturday, I saw two of my friends, hello, Amy and Kelly, and Amy's children were there. She's got kids very similar age to you. And they were under strict instruction that they were allowed to talk to us and play until there was going to be lamp time, which was calm time in their bedroom.

And then it was bedtime. And if they were very good, then on the Sunday they could do like, you want to go to the park? Amy was very, you know, it can be a yes day, but you've just got to be good for us because she wasn't meant to have them. We were meant to have a nice time.

But right, fine. Anyhow, during said lamp time, we had, we kind of, we went out on her balcony and me and Kelly both smoked. And Amy was like, surreptitiously vaping.

Anyway, the littlest came into the living room and saw us, luckily didn't see Amy. So it's okay. But saw us smoking.

You're smokers. You're smokers. And he got very upset.

Oh, I know. And we had to be like, we know it's bad. I'm really sorry.

And then he just kind of, this is like five minutes later. And he just, he just came in and he went, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.

But I do just have to tell you that, you know, you're going to die earlier, right? Out of the mouth of babe. Yeah. I don't really need reminding.

And then Kelly, because she'd had three glasses of wine and like me is not a mother. So sometimes doesn't see the pitfalls before she says the things. Just went, could get hit by a bus tomorrow, though.

Couldn't I? And then we went, way to teach my son how to be a heroin addict. Thanks for that. Thanks for that.

Oh, I love Kelly. Oh, bless. Yeah.

It is always funny when kids catch you doing things that you shouldn't be doing. And it's just like, oh, fuck off. Go away.

I know. I just become a teenager. I'm like, you can't even tell me what to do.

You can't even tell me what to do, though. I mean, very fair. Very, very fair.

Neither of us had a comeback. We were just like, well, apart from Kelly. Teaching him that bad lesson.

But it's just like, yeah, we know. Shut up. I'm having chicken wine.

Chicken wine. Oh, nice. Yeah, I am.

What did I have? I had a peach cello at the weekend, which is a version of lemon cello, but made with peaches. Oh, my God. Nice.

Did you have it in a spritz form? I did have it in a spritz form. And it was bloody delightful. I am worried that at this rate, I am going to turn into a peach.

Yes, you do like a peach flavoured thing. I love a peach flavoured thing. I mean, I don't know if I've mentioned this before on the podcast, but like on my honeymoon, I went to Japan.

What? I know, brand new information, right? My God, you've not even brought that up for like, I don't know, like 10 minutes. I know, I know. I'm doing so.

It's called growth. OK, it's called growth. But no, it started when I went to Japan and they had, we flew into Osaka.

We'd been in Beijing. We flew into Osaka and it was like a really late flight and trying to find a hotel. And there was one place that had any sort of beverage in it.

So we went in and picked up a bottle of Coke and then like we all got some beer. And I was trying to find, because it's really difficult when you're not actually an alcohol drinker, because I drink alcohol. But only alcohol that tastes like sweets.

Only alcohol that tastes like sweets. It cannot taste like actual alcohol. If it's not squash, I don't want it, which is really hard when you go to a foreign country where they don't have cider because like, or fruity cider, because like, it's just like, well, what am I going to drink? That's where I learned that I like plum wine.

Yes. Man in the restaurant. I don't like chicken thighs, but of course I know what plum wine is.

But we were in there and they had this little can and it had peaches on the front. It's all I could decipher. I don't speak Japanese.

They don't have the little white sticky labels like they have over here when they pour in something and it's then in English. Didn't have any of those in Japan. So I just picked it up because there was peach on the front.

I went, yeah, that'll do. Got back to the hotel, realised that it was 24% in a tiny Coke can sized can. And it was just pissy, pissy peach.

Pissy peach. Oh no. Pissy peach.

Pissy peach. How many did you have today? Oh, I've had my seventh. It was just a fizzy peach juice, but with disgusting amounts of white alcohol, nondescript white alcohol.

Not sure if it was rum or vodka, what it was. It was just, there was something in it and it was incredibly alcoholic and I loved every second of it. And since then I've just been like, oh, love a bit of peach.

Pissy peach. Anyway, but yeah, I had some peach aloe and it was very nice. That was my little tipple.

Well done girl. Walking around town on Saturday. I am exhausted though because I am one of those idiots and I know we say all this stuff like, don't say things that are going to age the episode and what if people come to it late in life, but I was one of those idiots that stayed up to watch the England-Mexico match last night.

It was quite amusing. I don't think I've ever, because I don't know, I must have told this on the podcast before, like Will refers to me as Bricktop whenever I watch football because I go proper South London. The only time I give a shit about any sort of sport is during a... I must admit it's a whole, like every four years I forget and then it comes around and you turn into this other person.

I'm like, what the fuck is this about? And it's bad enough like, I have a vague passing interest in football because of Richard. Yes. Like if he wasn't around, would I be like, oh, I'll put the football on? No.

Would I maybe casually glance at the BBC sport app to see what the scores were? Yeah, maybe. Especially if it is Chelsea, I want to know what mood he's going to come out in. Yeah, fair, fair, fair.

I want to know how many jokes I can make, that kind of thing. Fair enough, yeah. Blah, blah, blah.

I'll stay vague. That's just a mental health thing though, right? Oh yeah, physical violence support. When we go to non-league football and stuff and I can find myself getting a bit involved in that, I will have a glancing interest like, if England get into a final, I will watch it.

Yeah, it's fine. Whatever. But that's like my base level all the time.

And Richard is obviously fanatical. So it's always, if there is news to be known in the football world, I'll get it from him. Yes.

It's very disconcerting when I'm just out with you and you're suddenly like, well, did you see this about Pickford? I'm like, are you quite all right? The other night when we were out, it was like five minutes. I had to look at you. I genuinely looked at you and went, shut up.

Stop. I don't care. It's because I miss that much.

I don't want to talk about this. I have no interest in anything you're saying. It's boring me.

Shut up. Literally the only time. I was like literally going to give you my phone.

Ring Richard. Talk to him. I don't care.

But it is madness because I do not have any interest in sports whatsoever. If I came like just randomly and told you about a Chelsea game that I'd seen, you'd just look at me vaguely. Like you'd just stare through me until I'd finished and you'd be like, okay, cool.

Yeah. A hundred percent. Will watches the snooker.

Absolutely loves it. Can't fucking stand it. I don't mind a bit of snooker.

See, I really enjoyed it when I saw it live because there's something about being in the buzz of it and it was really quite exciting. But watching it on the telly is like watching paint dry. I don't care.

Like it's just no, no. Can't do it. Have you been to the cricket? No, I've played cricket and enjoyed playing cricket.

But I think that's probably... You have no hand-eye coordination. What were you fucking doing on the cricket field? I was picked for the primary school cricket team. Oh Jesus.

Okay. So recently then. Recently I played cricket.

No, going to the cricket is a fun day. Yeah. I like going to the oval.

I can imagine. And I think especially like so when people go, is it this? No, that's rugby. What's the cricket? Is it cricket sevens? No, that's rugby sevens.

What are you trying to say babe? 2020? 2020. 2020. The one that's a bit more fun and a bit faster.

Yes. I used to have friends who I worked with who went to see that every year and absolutely fucking loved it. But then wouldn't watch cricket at any other point but would go and see it in real life.

The team, like the county team that Richard supports is... Is this right? Am I going to get in trouble? No, he is Surrey, isn't he? And they're Sharks. So obviously I've got an interest in that but I am a Sussex fan. By definition, I believe.

You've got a family down there, haven't you? Well, no, but it's where it covers... There isn't like London. Oh, okay. So Surrey is like the home.

Their home ground is the Oval. Oh, okay. Fine.

I don't know where I should be. I don't know. I don't even know why I'm... I've been to the Oval for a corporate event that was lovely.

No, watching the cricket is a fun day out. I can imagine. It is a fun day out.

I can imagine. But I just get like... Because Richard's always like, remember, it's like, it's like five grand or something. It's just not probably a grand.

But I can't remember. It's an amount of money. If you catch a ball.

Oh, okay. It's me. So every time it's even vaguely possible, I will dive behind that man or on the floor or just be like, protect the head.

I'm so scared. I was about to fall off the bed there. Calm down, dear.

Yeah, I guess I'm like, no, a fur. I must have said this on the podcast before, famously, once let a satsuma hit me in the face. Even though the person throwing, I'd ask them to throw me a satsuma and I just let it hit me in the face.

Because that is such is my prowess. Such is your prowess. You are very dexterous and agile and can catch things.

Although I am, Little Miss, Daddy Long Legs bumble about a bit. Not sure what. Little Miss, I played cricket when I was 11.

30 years ago. 30 years ago. When you were in junior school, babes? Yeah, I was in year six.

It's like 28 years ago. Oh, wow. Busy kid.

It's just the idea that anything is 30 years ago. We're old enough for anything to be 30 years ago. I don't like that.

But anyway, the point was with the football. Yes, I become obsessed with it for the short period of time that England are used to. And it's only England.

I was just about to say, if England go out, will you just stop? No, I just stop. I'm bored then. It's literally just the England matches.

And I do it the same with the Euros and I do it for the World Cup. And I get very, very into it. I'm the only one in my house that gives a shit.

It's because my dad, when I was younger, my dad used to watch, my dad used to be very into his club football. He's a Manchester United supporter, which used to be quite a good team to support. Not so much anymore.

And he's bizarrely from Yorkshire, but it was the first gig he'd ever, first gig? It was the first football match he ever went to see live, was when he was three years old and he went and saw Manchester United and they won. So he's been a Manchester United diehard fan since then. But I grew up in a house where it was always like, we'd do the stupid Cantona chant and we'd do like all of that.

And like he had all the kits. So there's a little part of me, I think that when like the World Cup's on and I'm interested in it because it is like a competition. One, very competitive.

Don't like the idea that there's people who are going to beat us, get very upset about it. And because it's the country, I'm a bit like, oh, well, I'm part of that. So actually it's a slight on me personally, if we lose.

And two, I think there is a little bit of me that goes back to being a small child in the living room. And we'd have like big family parties to watch the World Cup and stuff when I was younger. But yeah, Will could not give a flying fuck about football at all.

He calls me bricktop because I go very South London. And last night I said to him, right, I'm going to stay up and watch it. And to his credit, right, he did say, well, that's fine because you're going to be up all night.

I will sort the kids out in the morning. So you can just sleep. I was like, okay, great.

Then I was watching it. It was one o'clock in the morning. I was like, yes, I'm awake.

It's one o'clock. It's going to happen now. This is good.

And then I went, oh, it's been delayed by an hour. I was like, fucking what? So I dozed and then I managed to wake up. I had it on my phone in my bedroom and I managed to wake up 20 minutes in before any of the goals had been scored.

Watched it. It was absolutely epic match. It was like proper edge of your seat.

Like I had fingernail marks in my hands. I was getting so like into it, but I have never heard like me cheering for a football match. Normally, like I, my kids always go, oh, you shocked us because I shout and I jump around or whatever.

But trying to do that silently because their entire house is quiet when it was such a good game. It was just like, yeah. I, I, we kind of did a complete like reversal in time.

So I made it to 20 minutes in and then just said to Rich, I don't know I'm doing this. I'm going to bed. I don't know why.

Well, I don't know what's going on here. So I went to bed and I must've, I was like, as I was dozing off, I did hear him going, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think I got up to wee because it's me. Got up to wee at one point and he went, there's been a red card.

There was a red card. It was a very, oh, I don't know if I agree. It was a red card.

Anyway, we won't do that. We won't turn into a sports pundit show. No, that's quite enough.

Okay, thank you. Goodbye. Yeah, no, it was a very good game for anyone who stayed up and watched it.

I did feel sorry, as much as I was very like happy for the England team and like, yes, we're through to the next round. Brilliant. Did feel bad for the Mexican team.

They were never lost at the Azteca or whatever. Never lost. They were on home turf.

The crowd, the noise coming out of that game was insane. I don't think they stopped. There was not one point where it was like a lull in the cheering.

Like it was insane. But yeah, so I stayed up until half past four in the morning. Watching that.

And then when's the next game? Wednesday? I believe. Oh, look. Oh, now she doesn't know.

Oh, look. Haven't you got a water? I haven't got a water. And I didn't stay up to watch the post-match discussion because it was four in the morning.

Did you see Jordan Henderson break his arm? I did. That was horrible. Yeah.

Also, also not great. I did love the fact that Harry Kane, after screaming, could not talk and then was like, I think he's fine. No, mate, he's not.

He's not fine. No, he's breaking his arm. It's a horrible fall.

Yeah, yeah. You see, it just, just slips. Jumping over the barrier.

Just getting excited. That's what they always say, it'll end in tears. Anyway, shall I tell you something else that ends in tears? Shall I do some nice bits first? Oh yeah, go on then, do that.

I think that'll be nice. Such is our new way. Such is our new way.

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That was expertly done. That's the first time in weeks where we haven't gone, no, not that one. It's this one.

No, it's because you've done it. The only other thing I would add to it is that if anyone wants to go and give us a nice little five star review. Yes, yes.

Little five star, cheeky five star rating on Spotify or Apple. Either of them seem to like make the most difference. Yeah, exactly.

And we have started, we have bursts of strategical conversation about what we're going to do. So that's good. Yeah, we just need to follow through.

Yeah, it's just, it's all very well and good having the ideas. Yeah, we'll make them come fresh and it'll be fine. Exactly.

They will happen eventually, right? Yeah, yeah. Just stick around. You never know when it's going to happen.

That's the joy of Sinister South. But now you may tell me something that ends in tears. Yeah, well, and this one does end in tears.

It ends in lots of tears, like most of the ones that we do, being that we are a true grand podcast. Who knew? Right. Are you sitting comfortably? Are you ready? No, I'm kind of lounging at a weird angle, but that's my problem.

Okay, fine. Shall I ignore it? You start. Okay, fine.

So today we're going to be heading off to SITCUP. And SITCUP sits right on the southeastern edge of London in the borough of Bexley. And it's kind of, it's very much on the cusp between Kent and London, but it is definitely South London.

It's suburban, green at the edges, and usually quite quiet. Not a huge amount happens in SITCUP, but it's a nice area nonetheless. We have a great new Marks and Spencer's Food Hall in SITCUP, actually, I think you'll find.

There we go. You heard it here first. The Boots sells nothing.

I don't even understand how that Boots is still there. But the Superdrug is pretty good. Nice.

And I will have nothing bad said about the SITCUP Morrisons. No, I quite like the SITCUP Morrisons. I will have nothing bad said about it.

I was in there the other week, although it was quite humorous that they had most of their fridges were broken. None of them ever work. None of them work.

Anyway, so today we're going to the 24th of May 2008 onto an ordinary high street where an 18-year-old boy was sadly stabbed to death outside a bar. His name was Robert Knox. Before I go any further, a quick word of warning.

We're about to talk about the murder of a teenage boy. We're talking about knife violence and serious injuries and a great deal of just grief in general. So trigger warning for anyone who might need it.

Robert Arthur Knox was born on the 21st of August 1989. He grew up in the SITCUP and Chislehurst area and was the son of Colin and Sully Knox. He also had a younger brother who was called Jamie.

And I'm just going to put it out there that he would have been in the same school year as us. Yes. So Jamie and his brother, Robert, Rob, were really close.

And we'll come back to that later. But just a little bit more context on who he was. Rob went to Beth's grammar school in Bexley and by his family's own account, he was a typical teenager with a brilliant sense of humour.

He was the one in his big circle of mates who would organise everyone's nights out and he was described as being the ringleader, but in the nicest possible way. The thing that comes up again and again from everyone who knew him and from all of the reporting I could find on this case is that he was kind, thoughtful, generous and he had a very strong sense of justice. He was always kind of doing the right thing, even when it cost him something and was said to always put other people before himself whenever necessary.

An example of this can be seen clearly in an incident that took place a little while before his death while he was at his Saturday job. So he worked in Marks and Spencers twice in an episode. We've got their little shout out.

But yeah, he worked in Marks and Spencers in Bluewater, which for those of you who don't know. Another good food hall. It's a very good food hall.

But those of you who don't know, if you're not from South London, Bluewater is basically like our equivalent of an American mall, shopping mall type thing. It's massive and it's just over the border in Kent and Dartford. He worked there at the weekends and while he was working there, there were two men who assaulted a passerby and Rob stepped in and helped to detain the people who had assaulted the other man.

For this, he was awarded by Kent Police a merit award for outstanding conduct. But the part of this story that makes it incredibly sad is that that award was actually given posthumously. His family accepted it on his behalf after he died.

So away from all this, he was also said to be a very sporty boy. He loved his rugby and did martial arts. But from a very young age, Rob had one goal in mind.

He wanted more than anything else in the world to be an actor. That was his dream. And unusually for a teenage dream, he went and did something about it.

To understand how Rob got into acting, you have to go back to theatre school and to one of his best friends. So Rob trained as a young actor at a place called D&B Theatre School, which I know quite well. I had friends who went to D&B when I was a kid.

I was always doing your cricketing. It's me doing my cricketing thing, yeah. No, I did have friends who went to D&B and I did not.

I went to Francis Cooper School of Dance, which I don't believe is there anymore. But they went D&B and there was always a bit of a rivalry. But anyway, so yeah, Rob went to D&B Theatre School and it was there as a kid that he met a boy called Aaron Truss.

And the two of them grew up together around Chislehurst and it's said that they were thick as thieves from the moment they met. They had the same sense of humour, they had the same ambitions and both of them were the class clowns of their respective groups. They were obsessed with making things and were forever borrowing their parents' video cameras and shooting their own films.

They both wanted to be actors, right? So they took every opportunity they could to be in front of the camera, even if one of them had to be behind it in order for the other one to be in front of it. By Aaron's account, the entire summer of 2005 was given over to making their own comedy version of Doctor Who. Oh, wow.

Apparently, they filmed in schools, in churches, in the park, basically anywhere that they could blag their way into to have their scenes. Now, D&B Theatre School had a casting agency attached to it and it was through this that Rob got into doing proper paid auditions. He and Aaron would quite regularly go up for the same jobs for long-running shows of the day, things like The Bill, which I think every actor in the UK starts a bit part in The Bill.

Or Casualty. Or Casualty, that's right. And from there, work started to come in for Rob.

His first real break was in 2003 when he was about 13 or 14. His family say he answered an advert in a newspaper and won a place on a Channel 4 show called Trust Me, I'm a Teenager. No idea what that was about.

No, can't remember it at all. From there came more small television parts, including he appeared on Junior Masterchef. He was on a reenactment with Tonight with Trevor McDonald.

He was on The Bill and he even had a recurring role in the BBC sitcom After You've Gone, where he played a character called Josh and was regularly acting alongside the greats of British TV, including Nicholas Lindhurst, good old Rodney, and Danny Harmer, who is Tracey Beaker herself. On the film side, his first cinema appearance was as an extra in the 2004 film King Arthur, which was a huge Jerry Bruckheimer production, which he was ecstatic about being involved in. Now, before I go on any more with Rob's background, I just want to very quickly point out something that's just literally popped into my brain.

So he did reenactments with Trevor McDonald. And I've just remembered that there was a period in life where my mum, my cousins, and my aunt used to do modelling shoots for, you know, like, take a break. Yeah, like all of those.

They would be like models pretending to act out the scenes that people had written in. Oh, my God. No.

So, yeah, I've got there are photos of them somewhere. That is hilarious. Definitely.

I remember there's one I can vividly remember of my mum with a very 80s perm and my cousin, Christine, who listens. Hi, Christine. Was on like a bicycle and my mum's sort of like standing behind her looking mildly concerned.

Amazing, dig those out. I will dig those out and I will put them on the Instagram. So there we go.

Sorry, just a random thing that popped into my brain. Back to Rob. So, yeah, he was in the TV show After You've Gone and the connection with Nicholas Lindhurst gives us a really nice glimpse of the young man that Rob was.

Lindhurst said that and this was sadly after he passed away, but Lindhurst said that although they'd only worked together briefly, what had struck him was Rob's professionalism, his dedication to his work and in Nicholas's words, his old fashioned good manners on a frantic film set. So this was just kind of what Rob was like and he was a teenager holding his own among seasoned professionals and the thing that the grown-ups remembered about him was how polite and graceful he was under pressure. Now, before I go on to the role that Rob is most known for, I wanted to tell you about the one that I reckon was more special to him at the time.

So in 2008, his mate Aaron Truss, who he'd been to theatre school with, was in the first year of a film degree at what was then Thames Valley University. I think it's now Southbank Uni, is it? I don't know. I have no idea, sorry.

But anyway, used to be called Thames Valley University in London and a lecturer had set his class a challenge. They had to script, cast, shoot, edit and premiere a film all within 48 hours. Bloody hell.

Sounds insane, right? But also quite a lot of fun. How fun, yeah. So Aaron ended up roping in all his old school friends, including Rob, who had literally just finished filming some big movie scenes that we'll get into in a minute.

And the result was a zombie comedy short called Employee of the Dead. Which I just desperately want to see it. I think you can.

You can. It's in the documentary that's about this case. But I would like to see the whole thing.

So the premise is that there are two supermarket night shift workers and they are having the shift from hell being nagged by their awful manager and then a zombie outbreak kicks off. Rob plays the overbearing manager in the film and they shot the whole thing overnight in a real Sainsbury's in Chislehurst on a single night shift. And the estimated budget for the entire thing was a grand total of £20.

Nice. And this is the little bit that I just love. At one point, because it's so stupid, at one point they use a cucumber as a weapon against a zombie.

That is why to this day, Aaron Truss, who, spoilers, goes on to work in film production, his production company is called Q, as in the letter, and Cumber Films. So yeah, Cucumber Films. And it's a silly in-joke from a 20 quid student film that has carried forward for the rest of his career.

And partly this was because, he says, that Rob was involved. Employee of the Dead was made just weeks before Rob's death and it now lives on inside a documentary that is about him that I will talk about a bit more later. And I will put a link in the show notes because it is very good.

But there has also even been talk of turning it into a proper feature film. So we shall see. But now we're on to the one that most of the reports about this case will mention.

So in 2007, casting opened for the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince movie, which was the sixth in the series. Rob auditioned and he originally went for the part of Cormac McLagan, the arrogant Gryffindor, who, in my opinion, sexually harasses Hermione Granger at Slughorn's Christmas party. And yes, I'm obviously a Harry Potter nerd.

No, I don't agree with the politics and shan't be watching the new TV adaptation or continuing to give Miss I don't believe in trans rights, but happily pretend to be a man to try and sell more books, any more money. However, the director David Yates watched Rob and felt that actually, instead of Cormac McLagan, he would be perfect for a different character, a Ravenclaw student called Marcus Belby. So in the end, Rob was cast and he was cast as this separate part.

He was 18, a teenager from Sidcup who worked in M&S on the weekends. And now he was going to be in one of the biggest franchises of the decade. His family said he was thrilled, excited and so proud.

Of course, he'd just be over the moon. Finally, so right. It's insane.

He had managed to fight off thousands as part of casting calls and he wasn't going to be a one off. Although the character barely features in the later books, Rob had signed on to come back and reprise the role in the Deathly Hallows films. Wow.

The character's main moment in the sort of film and in the books is kind of like he's a character that's on the Hogwarts Express when they're going back to school and Professor Slughorn is there and he's sizing up the most talented and best connected students for his slug club. Honestly, it's a blink and you'll miss it scene in the film. And to be fair in the book as well.

Right, he comes up, the character comes up again in a later scene where they're all together having one of these club meetings, but it really isn't a big character. Nowhere is he mentioned in the last book, but David Yates was like, no, we're going to have you back. We're going to have this kid.

So yeah, so he's there. It is a blink and you'll miss it bit, but it's a real speaking part in one of the biggest film franchises on the planet. This wasn't just a lucky break.

This was meant to be the start of a career that Rob had wanted since he was a child. So he went into filming, he did the work and then four days after his part had wrapped, he went out with his brother and his mates for what should have been an ordinary Friday night. Now, before we get into what actually happened to Rob, I want to take a step back and look at the world that Rob was killed in because his death did not happen in a vacuum.

2008 was a genuinely frightening year in London, specifically for knife crime, especially for young people. According to the BBC's own later analysis, 29 teenagers were killed in London in 2008 and 22 of them were stabbed. That year has become a bit of a grim benchmark that the city has kept being measured against until we got to around 2018, 2019 and then the number went up, which is also terrifying.

Rob was part of that awful run and he was definitely not alone in it. Just a few weeks after his death in the June of the same year, 16-year-old Ben Kinsella was stabbed to death in Islington in a case that shook the whole country in much the same way. And his case got a lot of traction as well because his sister was an EastEnders actress.

And there's loads about the Ben Kinsella case. We obviously can't cover it because it's North London, but if you want to go and look into it, please do. There's so much about it.

There was this dreadful building sense of a generation being lost to knives and a lot of anger about what was and what was not being done about it. By this point, knife crime had become such a political hot potato that the prime minister at the time, Gordon Brown, was publicly calling for tougher sentences for anyone caught carrying a blade. And so that's the backdrop to the world that Rob was living in and into the world that he eventually died in.

A city on the edge, a government under pressure and a generation of parents quietly terrified every time their kid went out for the night. So next up, I want to talk about the person who did this because you can't understand the night without understanding him. So I'm not going to spend a whole load of time on it, but it's important to know.

This man's name was Carl Norman Bishop and he was born in 1987 in Lewisham. But at the time, he was living at an address on Carlton Road in Sickup. He was local, just like Rob.

And at the time, he was 21 years old, only a few years older than Rob himself. Bishop was very far from an unknown quantity. The picture that came out at his trial was of someone who had been in trouble for a long, long time prior to this incident.

By those accounts, he had been known to the police since the age of about 14. But apparently his issues stemmed from much longer before that. He had been excluded from primary school and as a boy, he had been sent to a psychologist for anger management.

In his own evidence at trial, he described himself as having been, quote, a very angry child. But this is also kind of like, this is the bit that makes it even more horrible. Not that it wasn't horrible to start with, but this is not the first time.

So Rob is not the first time that Bishop has stabbed people in South London. Back on the 4th of December 2004, Bishop attacked two men named Ian Sutherland and James Doherty outside a minicab office on East Street in Bromley. By the account given at the Old Bailey, he boasted that he had a knife and jabbed Doherty in the nose with the knife.

In the nose? Yeah. Yeah. He then slashed Sutherland across the face, resulting in Sutherland needing five stitches.

And it turned out that there had been an even earlier flashpoint with one of those men back in 2003 when Bishop had pulled out a butterfly knife and threatened to stab him. For the 2004 attack, Bishop pleaded guilty to wounding with intent and to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and was jailed at Croydon Crown Court. He was released in March of 2007.

And after this, he found a little bit of kind of casual work. He was installing air conditioning and had a little bit of a regular job cleaning windows. But by the time he killed Rob Knox, he was once again unemployed.

And if you, like me, were surprised by the dates, it's only 14 months between Bishop walking out of prison, having stabbed two men in the face and the nose, and him standing on a Sidcup High Street, on Sidcup High Street, with two kitchen knives. The prosecutor would later sum him up in a line that got quoted everywhere. He described Bishop as a man who carried knives the way other people carry pens.

But here's the thing that when I found out made my stomach drop, because Carl Bishop should arguably not have been walking the streets that night at all. And not just because of that old conviction. In the weeks before he killed Rob, Bishop was already a wanted man in everything but action.

About two months before the murder, he had been reported to police as a suspect in an attempted knife point robbery. And then around two weeks after that, there was a burglary and the victim's own mother named Bishop as the suspect. So here is a man with a long, violent history, who's freshly out of prison for slashing two blokes in the face.

He's been named to police in connection with two separate crimes, one of them being at knife point. And the detectives never arrested him. He was apparently never even brought in for questioning on either of those two allegations.

And the enquiries were still sitting open on the night that Rob died. In the months that followed, Scotland Yard had to hold its hands up. The Met did admit a serious error had been made and accepted that it would cause real concern to the public and to Rob's family and referred itself to the police watchdog, the IPCC.

It then launched a force-wide review of every outstanding knife offence on its books. It brought in a new system to track the arrest of violent suspects and two officers were disciplined over it, but I don't know what that discipline actually entailed. But you can't help but do the maths in your head, really.

If anyone had acted on what they already knew, Carl Bishop could have been sitting in a police cell that Friday night instead of standing on a Sidcup High Street with two kitchen knives. And I'm not going to sit here and tell you that Rob would definitely be alive. I can't know that, but he should have had a chance that he never got.

Now let's get into what happened to Rob. About a week before Rob died, on the 16th of May 2008, there was an altercation outside that same bar, which was the Metro bar in Sidcup. By Bishop's own account at trial, he had lost his phone that night, so the night of the 16th, around closing time.

And he began accusing anyone, by the sounds of it, as having taken it. But he really centred his attention on Rob and his friends in a group, and he was adamant that they had stolen his phone. There's absolutely zero evidence that the phone was even stolen, but also no evidence to say that it wasn't.

And this kind of accusation, people have had a drink, we've already got violence from this character. It turned into a fight. Now Bishop admitted punching one of the group, a man called Dean Saunders, and he admitted punching him in the face.

But in this altercation, it seemed to be that Bishop came off worst. I think mainly because he tried to go up against a group of lads who were all friends. So they wanted to protect their friend and they jumped in.

Anyway, Bishop comes off not particularly covering himself in glory. And according to the prosecution at the time of trial, that's ultimately why this happened. That's the trigger.

Bishop had wounded pride. The case that they put was that everything that followed was revenge for losing that fight. And the truly horrible part is that according to evidence reported from the trial in the aftermath of that week before fight, Bishop had said something to the effect of, I'm going to come back next week and someone's going to die.

So before I walk you through that night, I want to flag something. And if I had to listen to it, I'm going to tell you about it. But anyone who's going to go and watch the documentary, just to have a warning in your head that the 999 call is played in the documentary and it's fucking hard to listen to.

They play the actual 999 call that one of Rob's friends makes on the night that he was attacked. And you can really hear the panic in this boy's voice. He tells the operator, there's a man outside the Metro bar with two knives.

He's holding one of them up and that he's after one of his other friends. It's two minutes of someone living through the worst night of their life and it's real. So as I take you through what happened, just remember that this is a group of teenage lads.

None of them is older than 21. Most of them are in their late teens. So on the night of Friday, the 23rd of May into the early hours of Saturday, the 24th of May 2008, Rob, his brother Jamie and a group of their friends were once again out for the night in Sidcup near the Metro bar on the high street.

It was by all accounts a very ordinary night out. They were just enjoying themselves. Nothing had been there to report.

But at some point that night, there was a run in with Bishop. Now this is before the knife attack. Bishop comes into the Metro bar, sees the group of people, realises it's the same group of people that he'd tried to take on and failed a couple of weeks before.

And he goes straight up to them and starts having a go at them. By all accounts, it was a verbal altercation rather than a physical one at this point. Then it all kind of calms down.

It seems like I couldn't really work out from the descriptions sort of like what had happened, but someone manages to break it up. The boys, the group with Rob and his brother Jamie go in one direction and Bishop goes in the other. It all seems to have just been like just dispersed and go about your evening, stay away from each other type vibes.

However, Bishop leaves and he goes home and he comes back with two kitchen knives that he's taken from his own kitchen. And by the time he gets back, a crowd has gathered outside the bar and everything I'm about to describe happens right out in front of the open of that bar. So there are so many witnesses to what happens.

He doesn't try to hide what he's doing. He's got no, there's no kind of like following someone to a back alley and trying to like do it quietly. He is fully there to make a scene.

Bishop first confronts Jamie Knox, who is 17 years old at the time. Words then reaches Rob that his little brother is in danger and that this man is threatening Jamie with knives and Rob does the thing we already know he does. He ran towards the danger and came out to protect his brother.

Jamie has since spoken about what happened publicly and it's devastating to hear him talk about it. He was standing right there when Rob was stabbed. And he described seeing this person who he didn't know swinging knives around towards people and watching Rob go in to try and get the knives off of him.

Jamie says he turned away for a second and described turning back and screaming as he saw his brother slumped and holding himself and stating, quote, I've been stabbed. But it wasn't just Rob who was hurt. The old Bailey later heard that Bishop with those two knives stabbed Rob and some of his other friends a total of around 10 times in less than two minutes.

Blimey. Witnesses described his face as being, quote, contorted with rage. Rob himself was stabbed five times and one of those wounds struck a major artery and it was that one that was the cause of death.

Four of his friends were wounded as well, two of them very seriously. Dean Saunders, the young man that Bishop had punched the week before was stabbed in the neck and left with permanent spinal damage. God.

And 17 year old Andrew Dormer was stabbed in the chest while he was trying to disarm Bishop alongside Rob. Rob was not the only person in that group who was trying to stop Bishop. Yeah.

All of these boys were trying to stop him and to protect one another. Yeah. Rob was rushed to hospital and his family had to live through the wait to see what would happen to him.

Jamie has described about 45 minutes in A&E of waiting and not knowing and then he says he saw a doctor and a police officer walking towards him and his family and he said, quote, I just knew before anyone said a word. Rob died that night. A postmortem found that he had died of internal bleeding from those five stab wounds with the one that hit the major artery being the main cause.

He was just 18 years old. Bishop was arrested shortly after the incident was reported and this piece of shit was so cold about what he'd done. A police officer, PC Craig Reed, gave evidence in his trial about the moment that Bishop was told he was being charged with murder and he said there was, quote, no real reaction and then that the only thing that Bishop had said was, quote, yeah, sweet.

The immediate aftermath of Rob's murder was felt by many. Warner Brothers, the studio behind the Harry Potter films, put out a statement to say they were shocked and saddened and that their sympathies were with his family. At his funeral, co-star Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley, was among the mourners and he was not the only one.

Daniel Radcliffe was there as well as Alfred Enoch, who played Dean Thomas. He also went on to play, I can't remember the character's name, but he was in How to Get Away with Murder, which was a big TV show. I think he's also a London boy.

I might be wrong there, Rob's uncle, John Knox, said that the Harry Potter stars had actually asked if they could come to the funeral because they knew how much Rob had looked up to them, especially being, well, co-stars, but also then kind of, you know, they'd managed to do what he wanted. They'd cracked the industry. The sick up teenager idolised these actors and got to work alongside them and then they turned up to bury him.

Rob's dad Colin described his son in a way that was just heartbreaking. He said, quote, Rob was happy, outgoing, fun to be around and he always put everyone before himself. He was always the first to stand up against something wrong, which, when you know how he died, is just horrible.

Well, yeah, it's poetic in a way like that he died, running towards danger to protect other people, to put a stop to things that were wrong. Exactly. The cast also signed messages in the front of a copy of the Half-Blood Prince book and gave it to Rob's mum, Sally.

Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry Potter, wrote that they were all proud to have known him and devastated to have lost him. Grint wrote that he would think of Rob whenever he was down on the Southend Strip. And I'm not sure why Southend.

Don't know. Anyway. And then the family later chose to share those messages as they began a campaign, which I will get into shortly.

Colin stated at the funeral that his son had been, quote, living the dream only four days before he died. And he had been. I'm just gonna be honest with you, Travis.

I've pasted something into the wrong part of my script, but I'm going to tell you about what it says, because it gives you an insight into Carl Bishop. So not only did he have no real reaction when he was arrested, ended up saying, yes, sweet. The other part that is quite shocking, really, was that the only thing that wound him up about being arrested for the murder of an 18 year old boy was that by being arrested on the night he was arrested, it meant that he was missing a Ricky Hatton boxing match that he'd paid for, which I thought was a bit like, oh, just good.

So, yeah, I've put that in out of context, but there you go. So we're going to jump forward a little bit now to the trial, which took place at the Old Bailey and ran across February and into March of the following year. So 2009, Carl Bishop denied murder and he denied the wounding charges, which were also placed upon him for the attack on the other friends of Jamie and Rob, meaning that a full trial was ordered.

The prosecution was led by senior barrister Brian Altman, and he told the court that this was a young man who, quote, treated stabbing people almost as an occupational hazard and who had already had convictions for knife crime. The prosecution's case was simple and very clear. This was revenge for losing that fight the week before the stabbing.

Bishop, surprisingly, actually gave evidence in his own defence. And this is where a lot of the information we have about his background came from. So he was the one who admitted to being a very angry child.

He told the court about having anger management and being in trouble since the age of around 14. And it's believed that this was trying to be mitigating factors into why he did what he did, that he's always had issues of anger. He can't control himself.

It wasn't calculated. He just saw red. But you went home and got the knives.

I mean, yeah. But that was kind of what the defence was, that he was a very angry young man. After the perceived slight.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not calculated. Fury, fury and rage.

For a whole week. The whole week. Then a whole night.

And then go home, get the knives and then come back again. Yeah. But it wasn't premeditated.

Shut up. Yeah. Red mist came down and that was it.

It's got no control over anything. Luckily, the jury did not buy any of this. Good.

And on Wednesday, the 4th of March 2009, Bishop was found guilty of the murder of Rob Knox. He was also convicted on four counts of wounding for what he did to Rob's friends. The next day, on Thursday, the 5th of March, he was sentenced and he was given life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years before he could even be considered for parole.

And then on top of that, further life sentences to run concurrently for the woundings. Bishop is still in prison. The 20 year minimum means he becomes eligible to be considered for parole at some point around 2029.

The judge at the time was Mr. Justice Bean and he did not hold back when he was doing his sentencing remarks. He told Bishop that he did not think it had been proven that he actually intended to kill Rob. But he did say, quote, the truth is that you simply could not have cared less about whether Rob lived or died.

He described Bishop's, quote, lack of regret, let alone remorse, as truly chilling. And he also called Bishop, quote, a highly dangerous man. He also made a real point of Rob's courage, telling the court that Rob had been among those who had tried to disarm Bishop and that he had paid for his bravery with his life.

He called him a, quote, promising young actor who had already achieved a great deal. While the court was hearing about the devastation that he had caused, Bishop, by multiple accounts, reported from the courtroom, refused to listen to the victim impact statements. He smirked at his friends in the public gallery.

And at one point he laughed, treating the entire situation as a joke. And the contrast with Rob's mum could not have been sharper. Sally Knox said that once Bishop had his sentence and was gone, she would not waste another moment thinking about him.

She said she suspected that there was simply something disturbed in him, something that might have had nothing to do with the life that he had had, but also may have had something to do with it. She wasn't sure, but she was just very calm, very matter of fact. She didn't scream.

She wasn't angry in a traditional sense. She just quietly refused to give him any more of her energy than she had to. Good for her.

After the trial, the Harry Potter movie premiered in 2009, and it was about a year after Robert died. So audiences around the world watched him on screen when he was already gone. At the premiere in London, the cast and crew all wore white wristbands in tribute to him.

Bonnie Wright, who plays Ginny Weasley, explained to the press that night that the wristbands were a mark of respect, not just for Rob, but for everyone who had been the victim of this kind of senseless, stupid crime. And those are her words, not mine, although I agree. And that there had been far, far too many of them.

Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint all wore them. And by every account, the premiere felt subdued that night. There was a huge glitzy event, but had a real sadness running underneath it.

To this day, Rob's name appears on a wand box at the Warner Brothers studio tour. And when they made the 20th anniversary reunion special in 2022, Rob was included in the memoriam section, remembered alongside the adult stars of the film who had since passed away, including the likes of Alan Rickman. Right.

And others. After Bishop was convicted and sentenced, the Rob Knox's family, who very understandably could have broken apart, refused to do so. They decided that Rob would not have died in vain.

And then they got to work. They set up the Rob Knox Foundation, which is a registered charity that has two aims. One is to teach young people about citizenship and street awareness and specifically about knife crime.

The other is to help young people develop their skills in the arts, in theatre, film and television. Wow. The very things that Rob loved.

Out of that came the Rob Knox Film Festival, which ran in his name from 2009 to 2025. Wow. And which platformed new and rising talent in film, television, music and the arts.

Year after year, young creatives got a stage because of Rob. His childhood friend Aaron Truss became a trustee of the foundation and hosted the festival. The boy Rob made home movies with grew up to spend his career keeping Rob's name alive.

And that's something, there's something unbearably lovely about that. The foundation also worked with the Charlton Athletic Community Trust on a campaign called Street Violence Ruins Lives. And in December of 2009, something that, it's funny we're talking about football, something that South London football fans will recognise as almost unthinkable happened.

Charlton Athletic and Millwall and let me put this plainly, these are two clubs who do not like each other. The rivalry is one of the fiercest in the country and it's the kind where policing the operation is basically half of the fun of any of those sorts of matches. These clubs do not give warm gestures to one another at all.

But for one day, they worked together. The players wore special shirts, they covered up their own sponsors and they replaced them with four words across their chests, Street Violence Ruins Lives. And these shirts were later auctioned off to raise money in memory of two murdered local teenagers.

One was Rob and the other was Jimmy Mizzen. And you can hear me tell that story way back in season one, episode 10. And he was killed in Lee the same year as Rob in 2008.

And I didn't know it was the same year. The same year. But I also wonder if that's why so many people assumed that Jimmy Mizzen was stabbed.

Because it was the year of it. Of that. Yeah, that makes complete sense.

So I'm going to keep going on about this football thing because honestly, I can't stress enough how much these fans would cross the road to avoid each other. They would not have anything to do with one another at all. The rivalry is horrible, basically.

But they put all that aside for a day because two local boys had died and they wanted to raise awareness. And that is what this kind of violence does. It's bigger than any rivalry.

And just occasionally, it will remind people of that fact. Rob's dad Colin became a campaigner and years on was still speaking out and still pushing for change. He's talked about crying every single day for 10 years after losing Rob.

He's called knife crime a pandemic and made the point that it's never just one or two people affected by a single killing. It's 30 or 40. There's a whole web of family and friends every single time someone is killed in this manner.

His message has always been about prevention rather than only punishment. He believes that teaching children in schools about the reality of carrying a knife is the one way we're going to try and break this. He says that he wants to make sure that any sentence related to knife crime comes with a proper programme to help pull young people away from the gangs and the cycle that they're so often caught in.

And he basically is calling for us to try and stop the next one before it happens rather than worry about it after the fact. So I read a lot about Rob when I was researching this case, but I also, as I've hinted, watched a brilliant documentary called Knox, the Rob Knox story. And there's a clever play on words in the title as it's Knox with the spelt K-N-O-X, which is how you spell Rob's last name.

But the K is in brackets. And that's because in the Harry Potter universe, Knox, N-O-X, without the K is the spell that's cast when you want to put a light out at the end of your wand. So it symbolises the light going out.

This film was directed by Aaron Truss and he was approached by Rob's dad in 2018 to create the film. And it premiered in 2001 before being shown on ITVX here in the UK and internationally. It is an in-depth look at Rob's life, his time on Harry Potter, the night he was killed and the media storm that followed.

And it featured a lot of people who knew and worked with him, including Harry Potter cast members like Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy, and Jim Broadbent, who played Horace Slughorn. It also includes interviews with director David Yates, who was so, as we mentioned before, was so taken with Rob and his acting ability that he wanted to bring him back into the films, regardless of the character's position in the book. Danny Harmer, as I said, Tracy Beaker, Blake Harrison, who is Neil from The Inbetweeners, who, fun fact, was a close friend of my cousin when we were younger.

Yes. I remember him well. And then the actor, Ray Winstone, who became a patron of the foundation that the Rob Knox Foundation, and he got right behind the campaign for knife crime education in schools.

Now, a couple of things about the making of it are quite telling. Tom Felton, or Draco Malfoy, was the very last person that was interviewed, and Ray Winstone was the first back in 2019. The producer David Heyman and the director David Yates handed Colin, Rob's dad, the footage of Rob, including all of his bloopers and his outtakes, some of which made it into the film, some of which didn't.

And then Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson declined to take part in the documentary. And Radcliffe said, like, first of all, when I read it, I was like, what do you mean he declined to be in it? Like, for God's sake. But then when I read it properly, I was like, OK, maybe I understand.

He said Radcliffe's reason was, he did not want to mislead anyone into thinking he'd been close mates with Rob because he hadn't been and it wouldn't have felt right. He wanted to make sure that the people who knew and loved Rob were able to have their voices heard. Yeah, that makes sense.

If he didn't know him, he didn't know him. No, exactly. I get it.

Wanting that name to promote the documentary, but at the same time. You know, it's kind of fair enough. Yeah, it would feel false.

Yeah, exactly. And I think the fact that like, you know, they went to the funeral, they had the wristbands, like they did recognise that he was one of them. Yeah, but yeah, I just thought it was quite interesting because originally I was like, what do you mean? But yeah, there we go.

And it would have overshadowed. It would have overshadowed. Yeah, and I think that also it's quite telling that even some of Rob's very close friends declined to be involved in the film, mainly because they said it's just still too raw for them to talk about.

So I think that, yeah, in a way it was right. But Radcliffe and Watson basically said, thank you, but no, thank you. And gave space for the people who did know him and love him.

So if you watch one thing after you listen to this episode, I would. I mean, it's fantastic. Yeah, it's a very, very good watch.

It's like it's incredibly heartbreaking, of course, but it is done with so much love. Yeah, yeah. And it's palpable.

Yeah, honestly. For all the grief in it, the thing that comes through the documentary is who Rob was and his life and his friendships and his family and all of that humour. Yeah, the funny, geeky, generous boy who made zombie films with his mates and looks after everyone around him.

That's the bit that stays with you, not the ending. It's his life, not his death. So that's Rob's story.

And the thing that struck me when I was doing a lot of the research for this was that there's quite a contrast between him and his attacker. Yeah. On the one side, you have a boy who ran towards danger for someone he loved.

And on the other, you have a man with a history of stabbing people who went home, picked up two knives, came back and could not manage a flicker of remorse for any of it. Two completely different ideas of what it means to be a man standing on the same pavement. And the thing I want to leave you with is what Colin keeps saying, Rob's dad.

The point is not really revenge. It's not even the sentence. It's prevention.

It's the next Rob and the next family who do not have to go through any of what he and his family have been through. And that feels like the only useful thing any of us can take from something so senseless. The documentary, as I said, is called Knox K in brackets.

The people who loved Rob built it in the double meaning. And once you know that, you can't unknow it. The light has gone out, but it won't be forgotten.

The end. Thank you, darling. Thank you.

And just for those SIGCUP fanatics amongst us, so Metro Bar is now, I think it's called the Iron Horse now. Oh, OK. And it is basically attached to said spectacular Marks and Spencer's food hall.

Oh, well done for the research. I don't research. I just have been to the pub and to Marks and Spencer's.

The thing is, I don't know SIGCUP very well at all. Like I know the bottom of the station, not right. OK, fine, fine.

But I wanted to start a campaign. I've been in how to say this. I'm sure it's fine.

Right. I've never really heard brilliant things about the pub in general. Right.

I've been in it, I think twice, whatever, like fine. But I do want to start a petition to stop it being a pub and let Marks and Spencer's have it because it is adjoining the building. And then I could get a clothes department in that Marks and Spencer's as well.

So that would be the dream. Thank you. Nicely done.

OK, so if anyone from Marks and Spencer's is listening, buy that pub out and create me somewhere to buy my fashion. Yes, please do that for Hannah because that would be lovely. Thank you.

But yeah, no, it's interesting because I don't really know SIGCUP. So I was looking at the photos and it's also bizarre because I was finding photos for the Instagram reel for this case and I was looking at it as a Metro bar and it was like, this isn't it's trying to say that this is from the time that this happened. It's nowhere.

This isn't from then. It looks like it's from 1984. No, no.

That's just 2008's photography. Yeah, it was insane. You'll see what I mean when I put it.

And I can't it wasn't necessarily a particular piece of SIGCUP that was looked at. Like it had some significant regeneration around in recent years. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

The Premier Inn, now all the new flats have gone up at Marks and Spencer's, all of that stuff. It's all very new. Yeah, yeah.

There's also, I don't, I don't know if I don't think it's a secret, but there's a big police training centre right behind. It's like basically bang opposite. Oh, right.

Huge Marlowe house. Interesting knowledge. I've just someone of me walking loops in it, babe.

It is to correct. No, I find it really funny because like SIGCUP is one of those places that I drive through to get to other places. So it's like I go, my cousin lives that sort of direction.

So I'll drive through the high street and like I know exactly what you're talking about with the M&S and all that, because I've driven past it so many times, but I've never actually been on the high street. So I don't know it very well at all. It's all right.

There's a nice pub right up the top kind of behind Morrison's called The Star. Oh, yeah. OK, yeah, that's a nice pub.

Food's been all right in there. There's down on the way towards that, like if you're from the main high street. Yeah.

Down towards the station, which is where this is. Yeah. There's a small bar called Boyle's, which is an Irish bar, which is very, very cute.

I like it in there. And we have a tangential I can't say that word, link to the owners. I see.

Well, there we go. If anyone's in SIGCUP, go and have a check out Boyle's. Yeah, drink in Boyle's.

It's lovely. Their Guinness is good. Oh, nice.

Yeah, nice. There's also quite a pretty park. I don't know what it's called at the bottom.

I get so confused about what's SIGCUP, what's Bexley, what's Footscray, what's like, I just, I'm a bit used to SIGCUP. Green. Green.

We like the green. And it's eight arches, seven arches, seven bridges. Five arches.

Five arches, seven bridges. That's a different park. That's Footscray.

That's a different end. OK, fine. There we go.

I don't know anything. Now you're getting towards Big Tesco. Ah, I see.

Don't get me started on the Big Tesco. Fair enough. Don't get me started on Big Tesco.

Oh, dear. But yes, so there you go. Knife crime.

It's not fun. It's fucking horrible. And he should still be living his dreams.

And it's just the lack of remorse. It's just, it's all very, very fucking sad. It is, it is.

I just, I mean, yeah, the lack of remorse is a fucking, like, it's a killer. I just don't know. I mean, I don't know that I'm ever supposed to know, because I'm hopefully never going to be the sort of person that just goes, right, that's it.

Snap. I'm going to get a knife and hurt someone with it. But the, like, at what point in your brain do you go, do you know what's gonna be a good idea? This.

It's senseless. And it feels, bear with me, OK? But it feels even more. There is a part of me that can fathom, not necessarily understand or accept or whatever, but can kind of get my head around.

If you know everyone in your, that you are socialising, if you know everyone in your circles is carrying a knife, then you feel like you have to carry a knife in order to protect yourself from danger of everybody else doing the exact same thing, right? There is something even more, that just smacks of even more just awfulness, is that he wasn't carrying it. This wasn't a spur of the moment, poor judgement. He went home and got them.

Like what you tell, like, you're going to try and tell me that there's no intent there. Yeah, no, it's just a very angry man. It's very angry.

Wow, there we go. I mean, I don't know. I just, I'm terrified of knives to the point of, like, I don't even like using sharp knives when I cook.

It really winds me up. It's more dangerous if they're blunt. But like, I genuinely, I can't, the idea of them just scares me.

I do like, I will stand there and sharpen. I've got one good knife. Right.

And I'll stand there and sharpen it. And I just do feel like I'm in, what's it called? Oh, well, I was going to say Edward Scissorhands. And that is not what I mean.

What do I mean? With Johnny Depp. The pies. Sweeney Todd.

Sweeney Todd. There we go. Fair.

Yeah, I just, just the idea of carrying one. I mean, I suppose I'm also a middle-aged white woman. So why would I need to carry one? But even as a teenager, like, just, it wasn't, and we would have been the same age as Rob.

We would have been 18 in 2008. Like, I just don't, I didn't run in the circles where that was the norm. So potentially that is exactly, as you said, why I don't understand it.

It just smacks of like, it's the same thing as when people in America go, do you know what we should do to stop school shootings? Give teachers guns and then they can stop the shoot. What? Do you know what stops fire? More fire. More fire.

More fire will stop the fire. That's exactly what we need. But no, and I think it's just, it's just terrifying when you think about the number of boys.

And let's be honest about it. Majority of them are young men who were stabbed and killed in 2008. And like such a waste of fucking life.

It's ridiculous. So yeah. And the really sad thing is that it just doesn't seem to have gotten any better.

No, no. That is the scary thing really, isn't it? Yes. I mean, we have this problem where it's a fucking horrific conversation to have to have is we have to space out.

Yeah. The stories about stabbing. Otherwise it could just be a whole season.

Yeah. Where that's every case. Every single case is a stabbing.

And then you end up getting to the point where it's like you become so desensitised to it. That it's just like, but even like, to be fair, I kind of am that now having lived in South London for as long as I have done. Like the stories of knife crime that we hear so often from the newspaper, on the news, just walking the street and seeing the fucking yellow boards up that say, you know, serious incident and all of the rest of it.

Because we do see a lot of them around here. It's just, you just go kind of go, oh, it's another is it with a knife? Like that shouldn't be such a blasé statement. Like it should be, it should fill you with horror.

It should fill you with fear. And to be honest, I just go, oh, another one. You become desensitised completely to the horror of it all.

It is horrible. But there we go. So well done, darling.

Thank you for telling it. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

Yeah. And as I say, go and watch the documentary because it is brilliant. Yeah, it's really good.

I just, I laughed at cucumber films. Yes. Which was just, yeah.

And if anyone wants, I don't know if there is like a Kickstarter or anything like that, but if we can try and start a petition to make Employee of the Dead an actual film. Yes. I would be very happy because zombies are my second favourite genre after true crime.

So there we go. Right. That's your lot for the week.

Yeah. Hi everyone. Stay safe in the heat.

Yes. Drink enough water, please. Yes, please do.

And go and tell your friends about us. And we'll be here again next week. We will.

It's Hannah's turn. It is. And if I can get my arse in gear, I might have something slightly different.

Or just another story that I also have prepared. Fine. OK, fine.

We don't know yet. Fine, fine. We'll see.

We'll see what happens. We'll see how. I'm obviously very busy, Rachel.

You are incredibly busy. I'm very important. Anyway, Trevors, have a good week.

We love you. Take care of each other. Take care of yourselves.

Go and do all of that stuff. All right. We love you.

Goodbye. Bye.