The paper says the arrangement went so badly, a "soldier" from the Gambino crime family flew to London to warn Mr Desmond - to be told by the publisher he was "stupid" and "common".Last night it was reported that soon after the meeting a senior executive at Mr Desmond's group, Northern and Shell, had a Taser-style gun fired at his testicles while on a trip to New York.Richard Martino, a mafia associate, pleaded guilty this week to conspiracy to commit fraud in a scam thought to have netted the mafia $650m (£345m). "I suppose there might be issues about the community that lived here - you know, rising rents and stuff - but that's city life. I'm sure the locals have been OK with that." A chat with a lifetime resident driven out by a self-facilitating media node might tell a different story. But Jeremy's off, weaving in and out of pedestrians on his skateboard.It's curious that Gilley, the only person I met who actually bought into the stereotype parodied by Nathan Barley, was also the only one who is an established media player. But a day on the East End streets has confirmed that Nathan Barley and mates are the work of skilled caricaturists.And if we haven't found the spitting image of Barley in the East End in February 2005, it's because most media trendies who live here have been receiving and relishing the satirists' attention since the "Hoxton revolution" of the early Noughties. "Yeah, I think the area has changed, but I was never here before," he says. Everyone's just doing their thing, you know, being artists and film-makers And those kinds of people tend to congregate That's what happened here."I've found my man.
That impression gets stronger when he talks about the way this part of East London has mutated beyond recognition. Jeremy works in a brewery in Brick Lane, but would rather be known as an independent-film director. I mark him as a Barley-esque Hoxton pseud who calls himself a "director" but has never touched a camera in his life, but I 'm horrified later to discover that Gilley is an accomplished film-maker and campaigner for world peace."Yeah, I've been making my independent film, Peace One Day, for the past six years all around the world. But I've been based here for three years," he says from under his New York Yankees cap. "You should check out the website, Peace One Day dot org."Shoreditch is clearly Jeremy's Shangri-La "There's lots going on It's really friendly, really vibrant. There are more artists than anywhere else in Europe, I hear, so that's pretty cool." But how does he feel about his paradise being mocked by Barley et al? "That stereotype? I don't know I'm a film-maker, too I definitely don't take myself too seriously I think it's great there's so many creatives around here I don't know any of them who take themselves too seriously. "There are a lot of Shoreditch twats here, especially DJs, but this area's still cool, you know.
It may have lost that original cool, but there's still a wicked music scene That's why I'm here. I'm not really in the media scene, as such, but rather the music scene." The enthusiasm with which Luke talks about the new bands he has seen at 93 Feet East makes it difficult to begrudge him his contribution to the "scene".With dusk descending, I'm starting to despair of finding the real Nathan Barley when a vision on a skateboard trollies on to the pavement. He turns out to be Jeremy Gilley, 35, a denizen of the Shoreditch media village. What's the attraction?"You do encounter a lot of victims around here," he mutters "A lot of Nathan Barleys.
