Man behind Netflix’s Bank of Dave gets a ‘kick’ catching scammers, and thinks Gen Z has got work wrong
You might not have heard of Dave Fishwick, but Bank of Dave – the Netflix biopic about the unlikely bank manager from Burnley – was one of the most Googled films of 2023. That same year it topped the streamer’s charts, and now a second installation is on Netflix.
Fishwick grew up with “nothing” and went on to establish a multi-million-pound series of businesses. Through his real-life Bank on Dave community bank in Burnley, Fishwick has helped thousands by offering loans with relatively low interest rates, alleviating financial misery for the worst off.
Fishwick has hundreds of stories, but the ones about the people who borrowed a few hundred out of desperation and have been hit with repayment plans spanning decades and spiralling into the thousands hit the hardest.
His message is simple: “I’m going after bad, bad people.”
He has won BAFTA and Royal Television Society awards for Bank of Dave, but there is more to Fishwick than worthiness: his instinct for catching fraudsters is addictive. He screws up his face whenever he talks about the latest scam, from phone thieves to get rich quick programmes and the scourge of payday loans. Millions are glued to his formula: a piece with ITV where he confronts a phone thief face-to-face was ITV News’ biggest story of the year.
Does he get a kick out of it? “I do,” admits Fishwick. “I’m from Burnley, I’m frightened of nothing and no one on the planet, and we will go after them.”
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“That’s the whole thing with payday loans,” he begins. “They pray on the poor and vulnerable, they’re terrible. The average person that borrows off me has a couple of hundred pounds in the bank. People are taking loans and threatening to kill themselves ‘cause they can’t afford to pay it back.”
Starring James Bond’s Rory Kinnear as Dave, Bank of Dave 2 is largely shot in Burnley, providing some much-needed on-screen representation to the north of England. As much as it is a tale about the people who are being unravelled by the very worst side of capitalism, it is a love story about the Lancashire town and its people, pubs and places.
Fishwick can’t say whether there’ll be a third Bank of Dave film, but I sense that if there were, it might tackle the ‘buy now pay later’ loans that seem to be his current grievance. Klarna just got slapped with a $46million fine, the biggest in history by regulators for breaking anti-money laundering laws.
“I’m looking into it in a big way,” says Fishwick. “They don’t do affordability checks. That’s the problem. They know the person can’t afford it but they’ll get every last penny off them. That needs to stop. The future is going to a credit union if you can. I’m working with them too. It’s about getting people access to money.”
“Literally a few weeks ago we put a loan shark in prison who’d been praying on elderly. He’d lent a few hundred pounds to a pensioner and for ten years he were taking interest off her. We pulled him out of the house and arrested him.”
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He belly laughs when I ask if there’s a ‘get rich quick’ scheme that he thinks isn’t a scam. “You see these kids on the internet spraying bottles of champagne into the sea saying you don’t have to work hard. Well let me tell you, that’s bollocks. There’s no easy way. There’s no such thing…”
He hasn’t taken a two-week holiday in 20 years, and despite his wealth, the idea clearly doesn’t cross his mind. I could see the cogs turning when I asked Fishwick if there was anywhere he’d like to go on holiday and he reflects on a recent work trip to Africa. “I enjoyed it more than I thought. The singing and the culture.”
Similarly, he’s turned down I’m A Celeb and Strictly Come Dancing because of scheduling conflicts to do with Bank of Dave and his wider work. “I just couldn’t fit it in. They’d like me to look at this year, but with the time I’ve got spare, I want to focus on the things that make a difference.”
He concedes that he will slow down at some point – but just not quite yet. “We’re going round kicking the doors in and pulling the baddies out. We’re trying to make it a bit better.”
Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger is on Netflix now
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