Tam McGraw
Tam McGraw was born on 19 February 1952 in Lennoxtown, north of Glasgow, and became one of the best-known names in the city's East End. He ran the Caravel pub in Barlanark, along with taxis and ice cream vans. The streets called him the Licensee. Some said it was because of the pub. His rivals said it was because the police gave him a licence to operate in return for information, an allegation Paul Ferris made in print. McGraw was acquitted in court in 1978 and again in 1998.
Our films tell his story mostly through Ferris's books, written while McGraw was alive. The papers described him as 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.
In The Ferris Conspiracy, the trouble starts with a fire. Arthur Thompson's son Billy climbed on the roof of the Caravel and poured petrol through the tiles, and the words McGraw is a grass were painted on the road outside. At the meeting called to head off a war, Thompson offered to pay for the damage, and McGraw accepted at once. Outside, a rival team arrived and beat old Arthur unconscious on the pavement. "Don't kill him," McGraw pleaded, knowing it would set Glasgow burning for years. McGraw had saved his life, but Thompson believed McGraw had set him up. The Caravel later vanished overnight, demolished before the police could examine it.
Ferris and McGraw had once been allies. They fell out, and by Ferris's account McGraw put a price on his head. Ferris says McGraw offered two North Glasgow armed robbers £50,000 to shoot him, and they pushed him up to £100,000. Then they went straight to Ferris, their friend of more than 20 years. The £10,000 deposit paid for a party at the Corinthian, with McGraw invited as guest of honour, and a plan to tar and feather him in George Square. At the last moment he sensed a set-up and stayed at home. Word still went round that he had tried to buy a man's life and ended up paying for a night out.
The 2000s went badly for him. In 2002 he was stabbed several times, his body armour saving his life. Early in 2004, in Ferris's book Vendetta, he hit the floor of the Royal Oak bar in Nitshill as a gunman opened fire on the two men beside him; police stopped his jeep speeding through the city with the two wounded men in the back. He was doing his own driving because, in the space of a year, his three main henchmen, Trevor Lawson, Gordon Ross and Billy McPhee, had all died violently. By 2005 he had lost his driving licence after being caught drunk in his jeep, and his marriage was over. He was seen drinking alone in an East End pub, large vodkas, staring into the glass.
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. He was 55. These are the films about him, and the ones where he turns up in someone else's story.