The Krays were just cute criminals.. but Paul Ferris was the real deal
Gangster's biographer Steve Wraith reckons the former enforcer was in a different league to mob twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray
PAUL Ferris’s new biographer Steve Wraith reckons the former enforcer was in a different league to gangster twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray.
The author — a former friend of the notorious East End brothers who penned several books about them — has joined forces with the convicted gun runner for his new biography Unfinished Business.
The follow-up to 2001’s The Ferris Conspiracy is due out next October.
Steve, 44, reckons the Scot’s past puts him at the underworld’s “top table” alongside some of Britain’s best-known crime families.
He told The Scottish Sun on Sunday: “The Krays were self-publicists — they were cute criminals.
“They got others to do the work for them and had big success. But Ron’s mental illness meant they were always on the course to oblivion. They were always going to crash and burn.
“The Krays made the top of their particular tree and they’ll always be these iconic figures.
“When you look back at the big successful crime families though, they weren’t one of them. The mum and dad were still living in council property.
“They don’t epitomise, in my view, what being a good criminal is. When you look at the likes of the Nash family, the Richardsons, Freddie Foreman, those people were the folk who ran London back in the day. In Glasgow there was Arthur Thompson.
“Paul Ferris was certainly somebody who commanded a lot of respect and essentially ran Glasgow for a long period of time.
“I certainly don’t think the Krays come anywhere near Paul Ferris.
“Paul is at that particular level — you’d call it the A-Team. You’ve got Paul, the Sayers family in Newcastle, you had Paul Massie in Manchester and in London you had the Adams family.
“And there’s Freddie who’s still alive to this day. You’ve got those people sitting at the top table of crime and Paul is certainly sat around that table.
“There’s no criminal I’ve met in the UK who doesn’t know who Paul Ferris is. There’s been a movie made about him and that says it all, doesn’t it?”
The pair were introduced by photographer Brian Anderson in 2012 just months before the release of Ferris’s controversial movie biopic The Wee Man, starring Martin Compston and John Hannah.
And they have spent the past year and a half doing their homework on each other.
The Geordie has rattled through The Ferris Conspiracy, Deadly Divisions, Vendetta and Villains – the four books Ferris co-wrote with late author Reg McKay. While the ex-hood, 53, was impressed by YouTube footage of Steve discussing the Krays on BBC show Kilroy in 2001.
The writer — who will pen Unfinished Business with pal Stuart Wheatman of Mojo Risin’ Publishing — said: “Paul’s a very intelligent man but he’s somebody who I suppose is very guarded.
“It takes time to build up confidence with Paul. He was aware of me which is beneficial and liked my Kilroy interview. I found that quite reassuring.
“In the last six months we’ve spoken a lot on the phone and exchanged various pointers about what we can do.
“We’re going to pay tribute to Reg and Paul really wants to do that. He played a huge role in Paul’s life.”
The Ferris Conspiracy charted his rise from childhood to feared underworld figure working for Glasgow Godfather Arthur Thompson Snr.
But the pair fell out spectacularly and in 1992 Ferris walked free from the longest murder trial in Scottish legal history when he was found not guilty of Arthur ‘Fat Boy’ Thompson Jnr’s execution.
Six years later he was convicted of gun running at the Old Bailey. Steve added: “The Ferris Conspiracy was a brilliant read but there’s stuff I’d have put in there.
“Redoing the book would be unfair to Reg — there was nothing wrong with the original. We would just like to put a Mojo slant on Paul’s life. We’d like to bring Paul’s character out, put different stories in. He’s a very funny guy when you get to know him, quite a humorous guy.
“We did an interview the other night about prison life and there’s a lot of black humour in prison. We were focusing on a lot of things that people won’t have heard about Paul but things people can probably relate to.”
The dad-of-four — donating profits from his latest book to the cancer foundation that treated Reg before his death seven years ago aged 56 — vowed to leave a life of crime behind him after his release from jail in 2002.
He now lives in Ayrshire with wife Carolyn.
Three years ago he featured on a Who’s Who list which said he had shown “exceptional commitment to achieving personal and professional success” in his work as the boss of repeat offenders’ charity MIDAS.
Steve said: “It’s a major turnaround for him. We could’ve called the book Going Straight.”
The ex-doorman became pals with the Krays in his late teens after writing a fan letter to them in jail. He flogged Kray merchandise years before going onto release titles like The Krays: Behind Bars and The Krays & Freddie Foreman: Read All About It.
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The brothers’ empire crumbled following Ronnie’s 1967 killing of George Cornell at the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel after his Richardson gang rival called him a “fat poof”.
That October, Reggie stabbed Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie to death and two years later they were jailed for life. Ronnie died of a heart attack in Broadmoor psychiatric hospital in 1995 while Reggie passed away from cancer five years later.
Steve, also a promoter and registered football agent, said: “I visited them inside, Reggie for 11 years in a succession of prisons and Ronnie for four in Broadmoor. I became pals with Charlie before he died too. The way I always described it was that it was like walking inside a book meeting all the characters and walking out the other side with an impression. That’s essentially what I did.
“I was an ordinary schoolboy from Gateshead but I became interested in crime.
“As a young lad the temptation was always there to follow that path but the Krays in particular were always quite adamant that I didn’t do that. “They were pleased I chose to visit them, but they didn’t get me into any skulduggery.
“They told me to stay on the right path and try to make the best of my life and I took their advice.”
marc.deanie@the-sun.co.uk