By the late 1990s Paul Ferris knew there were contracts on his head. It was the price of reputation. But one of them, by his account, turned into something closer to a dark comedy.
The Licensee
Tam McGraw, known on the streets as the Licensee, was a former armed robber turned drug baron, said to be worth £30 million. His home bristled with CCTV cameras and motion sensors. He rarely went out after dark, and every night at 11 he read the early editions of the papers, looking for stories about himself.
According to Ferris, McGraw approached two well-known North Glasgow armed robbers. The price was 50 grand to put a bullet in Ferris. They laughed and pushed him up to £100,000. Then they went straight to Ferris. They had been friends for over 20 years, old-school men who would not take out a mate for any money.
The party
The trap was set at the Corinthian, a swanky champagne bar in the city centre, more lawyers than street faces. McGraw had grudgingly handed over a £10,000 deposit. Instead of spending it on weapons, the men spent it on a party, and invited McGraw himself as guest of honour, alongside a dozen of Glasgow's hardest faces, several of them his sworn enemies.
The plan was to tar and feather him, drag him through George Square and chain him to a statue for the whole city to see. To be humiliated in public, the film says, would have been worse for McGraw than a bullet. At the last moment his paranoia kicked in. He sensed a set-up and stayed at home.
The humiliation never happened, but the story still got out. Word went round that he had tried to buy a man's life and ended up paying for a night out.
How it ended
McGraw did not die by the bullet. On 30 July 2007 he collapsed at his home in Mount Vernon and was pronounced dead at the Royal Infirmary.
Ferris became an author, writing The Ferris Conspiracy, Vendetta and Unfinished Business. Since the death of his brother Billy, he has spoken out about what he believes was a wrongful conviction. In his world, he reflects, real hitmen don't warn you. They just get the job done.