James "Jaimba" McLean
James McLean, known as Jaimba, was one of the most feared enforcers in Glasgow in his prime, and a great friend of Paul Ferris. When word went round that Jaimba was coming, grown men shivered. He grew up in Springburn and claimed to have learned to drive stolen cars at seven.
Ferris first met him in jail. Jaimba was only 14 or 15, but so dangerous that the authorities would not put him with the other young prisoners. He kicked, punched and fought every inch of the way. Ferris knew the screws would break him eventually, so he offered the boy some advice. Jaimba listened, and from then on he was at Ferris's side. Years later, on a Christmas drink in London with some of the capital's best-known faces, a fight broke out in an Irish pub, and it was Jaimba who pulled Ferris out.
In 1987 he was jailed for six years for an armed robbery. In Cranhill, a source told the Daily Record, he did a lot of damage, and people were genuinely terrified of him. He had a coldness in his eyes and a fearlessness that took things further than most. He was once shot in the stomach, in what looked like a gang war.
In his book Villains, Ferris tells the secret nobody in their world would have guessed. In the late 1980s Jaimba was suddenly never available on a Tuesday. Ferris set a test, calling him about a job that Tuesday night, and Jaimba, who had never once asked how long a job would take, asked exactly that, then said he could not do it. Any other night, Paul. That evening Ferris and a couple of the boys followed him across the East End to a busy car park. The most feared man on Glasgow's streets was at the bingo, surrounded by women old enough to be his granny. When Ferris appeared at his table, Jaimba stood up as if he had been shot, and blushed. A small woman in a floral frock handed him her lucky marker. The team slagged him for weeks, but Ferris understood. Jaimba doted on his wife and kids, and the bingo was a piece of ordinary life in a world that allowed none.
He died in a Glasgow hospital in June 2019 after years of illness, aged 53. The Daily Record ran his boasts: ties to the IRA, killings for them, a London hit that ended in a scrapyard furnace. Our film does not believe them, and neither did a source quoted in the same article, who said he had become a bit delusional. In his last interview he said he was sure he was going straight to heaven, because he had done nothing wrong. These are the films about him.