A reformed drug dealer has revealed how a notorious gangster had a gun forced into his mouth by Joe 'Bananas' Hanlon in a bid to drive down the price of drugs.
Billy McKay, 62, spoke about the chilling attack that took place in the late 1980s, just weeks after Paul Ferris died last month in an Ayrshire hospital. McKay appeared on podcaster Brian Anderson's Naked City show earlier this week.
McKay said the incident happened as Hanlon was just starting to make a name for himself before he went on to start his own crew with Ferris.
Drug price dispute
McKay explained that he was selling 'jellies' - temazepam in gel capsules - in vast quantities to gangland bosses like Arthur Thomson Snr and Tam McGraw as demand for the drug exploded across Glasgow among addicts.
However, McGraw tried to drive down the price he was paying for the drugs and sent two of the henchmen from his Barlanark Team gang, Joe 'Bananas' Hanlon and his brother-in-law John 'Snaz' Adams, to speak to McKay.
McKay said: "I got took away by the Barlanark Team in a car and sat in the middle of the vehicle.
"Joe 'Bananas' put a gun in my mouth and he said he wanted the temazepam for 30 pence.
"They were being sold on the street for £1.50 and I was dealing them in the hundreds of thousands at a time so it was a lot of money at stake.
"I had a gun in my mouth so I said 'no bother.'"
He took the gun out of my mouth and I turned around to Snaz and I told him the next parcel would have to be the last one because I get them for 30p.
But he had a think about it and said to just give them the temazepam for 35p, obviously not wanting to cut his own throat.
"They threw me out the car and I had a wee chuckle to myself because I was actually only paying one penny for them."
Gangland aftermath
Hanlon soon grew tired of working alongside McGraw and started his own criminal enterprise working alongside Paul Ferris and Bobby Glover.
They were blamed for the murder of Arthur Thomson Jnr in 1991 and Hanlon and Glover were shot dead the night before his funeral.
Ferris claimed in a book that Hanlon and Glover's bodies were taken to McGraw's pub, The Caravel, to be inspected by Thomson Snr before they were dumped inside a Ford Orion outside another boozer in the Shettleston area.
McKay bought flats, houses and a pub while racking up a fortune selling temazepam as addiction rates from the drug soared to epidemic levels across Glasgow.
But his life soon spiralled out of control due to his own addiction issues.
Recovery and new book
He spoke on the podcast after launching his debut book Who Turned the Light On earlier this year.
In the book, McKay opened up about how he got started in criminality by robbing racks of clothes out of shops at a young age to fund his addiction to glue sniffing before moving on to heroin.
His downfall came when he started using cocaine and it led to severe mental health episodes. McKay was eventually admitted to a psychiatric unit and afterwards entered a drugs rehabilitation centre.
He believes it was divine intervention and god that saved him and opened the door for him to start his recovery journey.
He continued: "Through scripture I started to find out the real truths in life.
"I got woke up and transformed and began to find my real identification.
"I began to realise that the same consciousness that got me into that situation could not get me out of it. You need to realign your mind.
"My book is primarily aimed at people like this who are lost."
McKay now works as a recovery mentor and uses his own experiences to support others affected by addiction and social exclusion.
