Paul Ferris

Paul John Ferris was born on 10 November 1963 in the tough Blackhill area in the north east of Glasgow, to a Protestant father, William, and a Catholic mother, and was brought up Catholic. He was the youngest of six children, with an older brother, Billy, and four sisters, Carol, Cath, Janet and Maureen. In The Ferris Conspiracy he described years of bullying by members of a local criminal family, the Welshes, which he believed triggered the psoriasis he suffered from for the rest of his life. He knew Ian McAteer, who later became a Glasgow gangland figure, from childhood.

As a teenager Ferris carried out revenge knife attacks on the Welsh brothers. At 17 he was arrested for assault and robbery and remanded to Longriggend Remand Centre, and he was later sentenced to three months at Glenochil Detention Centre and then a year at Glenochil Young Offenders Institution after fleeing police in a car containing a shotgun and knives. Weeks after release he was arrested trying to rob a jeweller's shop. His continuing campaign against the Welshes brought him to the notice of Arthur Thompson Sr.

Details of Ferris's formal schooling have not been made public. Much of his adolescence was spent in remand centres and young offenders institutions. While serving his firearms sentence at Frankland Prison in the late 1990s he began writing, working with the author Reg McKay, his former social worker, through letters and phone calls to produce his first book.

Underworld years. At about 19 Ferris became an enforcer for Arthur Thompson Sr, collecting debts and, according to published accounts, carrying out stabbings, slashings and knee-cappings. He was acquitted with a not proven verdict on four counts of attempted murder following a shooting, and in 1984 was jailed for 18 months for possessing offensive weapons. After release he started Cottage Conservatories, a double glazing business.

The Thompson trial. After Arthur Thompson Jr was shot dead on 18 August 1991, Ferris was charged with his murder, the attempted murder of Thompson Sr and other offences. Defended by Donald Findlay, he was acquitted on all charges in 1992 after a 54 day trial with more than 300 witnesses, then the longest and most expensive in Scottish legal history. He then ran a car dealership, Jagger Autos, and consulted for a security firm.

Gun running conviction. Following a two year MI5 and Special Branch operation, he was arrested in London in 1997 after collecting machine pistols, silencers and detonators from a dealer. In July 1998 he was jailed at the Old Bailey for ten years, reduced to seven on appeal in May 1999. He was released from Frankland Prison in January 2002, recalled in May 2002 and freed again in June 2002.

Author and businessman. Ferris co-wrote four books with Reg McKay: The Ferris Conspiracy (2001), the novel Deadly Divisions (2002), Vendetta (2005) and Villains (2006). He appeared at the Festival of Scottish Writing in Edinburgh in 2006, and published Unfinished Business with Steve Wraith and Stuart Wheatman in 2018. His businesses after prison included Frontline Security and a construction company. In his last years he was developing a podcast, Here and Now, and two sequels to The Wee Man, titled Ferris and Going Straight.

Ferris lived for many years in Ayrshire with his wife, Carolyn. He said he had five children and that none of them were involved in crime. His son Dean, who was six weeks old when his father was jailed on the firearms charges, helped him with his later books. In 2007 Ferris and Carolyn complained to the Press Complaints Commission about newspaper coverage of the birth of their daughter.

His older brother Billy Ferris served long prison sentences for two murders and died in custody at HMP Low Moss in September 2025, aged 75. Ferris said the bereavement delayed his podcast plans. His friend and co-author Reg McKay died before him, and Ferris donated profits from Unfinished Business to the cancer charity that treated McKay. McKay once described Ferris's later life as one of contented domesticity, devoted to his children, his garden and his home. Ferris also lived with psoriasis from childhood.

In later life Ferris presented himself as proof that a person could leave organised crime, while also remaining fiercely critical of the police, the security services and banks, which he accused of using "disruption tactics" against him after his release. He said the turning point came in prison when he saw the scale of MI5's surveillance of him and concluded, "You can't fight the government."

He argued that crime held no glamour, pointing to the 13 years he had spent in prison, and said parents had given The Ferris Conspiracy to teenagers drifting towards gangs as a warning. He described his stance on Scotland's modern gang feuds as strict neutrality. On social media he wrote about Scottish identity and clan history, and supported rehabilitation work led by his friend Bobby Cummines.

Ferris remains one of the most recognisable names in Scottish crime history. His 1992 acquittal, the killings of Bobby Glover and Joe Hanlon, his feud with Tam McGraw and his MI5 investigated gun running case have been retold in books, documentaries and podcasts for more than three decades. The MI5 operation against him was cited by the service's official history as the start of its work supporting police against organised crime.

His memoirs helped shape the boom in Scottish true crime publishing and led to The Wee Man, which made his story familiar to a new generation. His public reinvention was always contested: police officers and politicians accused him and the media of glamourising violence, while his supporters saw him as an example of rehabilitation. That argument was still unresolved when he died.

Ferris did not receive formal awards or honours. His first book, The Ferris Conspiracy, sold around 20,000 copies while he was in prison, and later books were described in the Scottish press as best sellers. Scottish newspapers have described The Wee Man, the 2013 film adapted from his memoir, as BAFTA award winning.

Books: The Ferris Conspiracy (2001, with Reg McKay); Deadly Divisions: The Spectre Chronicles (2002, novel, with Reg McKay); Vendetta: Turning Your Back on Crime Can Be Deadly (2005, with Reg McKay); Villains: It Takes One to Know One (2006, with Reg McKay); Unfinished Business (2018, with Steve Wraith and Stuart Wheatman).

Film: The Wee Man (2013), written and directed by Ray Burdis, starring Martin Compston as Ferris, with Patrick Bergin, John Hannah, Stephen McCole and Denis Lawson as his father. A sequel, Ferris, with Paul Brannigan as the older Ferris, and a third film, Going Straight, were in development at his death.

Television and online: Ferris gave a widely quoted television interview to John McVicar in 1995, was filmed for a planned fly on the wall series for Five in 2004, and appeared in many documentaries and podcasts, including British Gangsters, Faces of the Underworld, Anything Goes With James English and Shaun Attwood's channel.

Ferris's life was marked by violence and serious criminal charges. He was acquitted of the murder of Arthur Thompson Jr and of several attempted murders, but was convicted of offensive weapons offences in the 1980s and of gun running in 1998. In 1994 a Manchester court fined him 250 pounds for possessing crack cocaine, which he said he used to ease his psoriasis.

After his release his security firm drew criticism for being hired to guard the Rosepark nursing home after a fatal fire, speed cameras on the M8 and Dumbarton Sheriff Court. In 2005 Edinburgh police examined reports that he wanted to invest in the city's taxi trade. A planned 2004 Five documentary and the 2013 film The Wee Man were both accused of glamourising crime. In 2007 Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson announced plans to stop convicted criminals profiting from memoirs; Reg McKay had previously said Ferris did not profit from their first book. He consistently denied allegations that he remained active in organised crime.

Ferris was admitted to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow on Sunday 4 October 2026 and died there on the night of Tuesday 6 October 2026, aged 62, following a short illness. The cause of death was not made public. His death was first reported by the Daily Record on 7 October 2026 and confirmed by the Scottish Sun and Glasgow Live. A family friend said: "This has come as a great shock to everyone who knew Paul over the years. No one was aware that he was unwell." Funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of writing.