As a young man in Glasgow’s underworld, Ian ‘Blink’ MacDonald fought, robbed and slashed his way to the top, developing a taste for the high life along the way. His notoriety earned him an offer of work from Scotland’s most feared gangster, Arthur Thompson, but MacDonald

 had other plans: to finance a new life in Spain with the multimillion-pound proceeds of a high-risk armed bank robbery. But the job went badly wrong, and MacDonald was jailed for 16 years.

In prison, he met scores of high-profile inmates, including torture-gang boss Eddie Richardson, high-society serial killer Archie Hall, notorious lifer Charles Bronson and Ronnie O’Sullivan senior, father of the snooker star.

On his release, MacDonald became a magnet for trouble, enjoying a hedonistic, drug-fuelled lifestyle and finding himself drawn into conflict with police, gangsters and businessmen. Rearrested several times, he was the target of more than one terrifying murder attempt.