Donal MacIntyre

This fascinating documentary gets inside the head of one of Britain’s most enigmatic and successful supergrasses – one-time gangster Paul Grimes.

When his oldest son died from a heroin overdose, Grimes launched an audacious campaign against the people he held responsible: the criminals who controlled the city’s drug trade. He started to gather evidence on them and inform Customs and Excise.

This evidence was to become instrumental in the trials of two of Britain’s most dangerous drug barons.

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A MAN suspected of the murder of gangland boss Desmond Noonan has been re-arrested by detectives.

The 41-year-old from Chorlton, Manchester, was re-arrested last night on suspicion of murdering "Dessie" Noonan, reportedly following the discovery of fresh evidence.

Police also confirmed they have arrested a 39-year-old woman on suspicion of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

Mr Noonan was found with fatal stab wounds on Merseybank Avenue in Chorlton on Friday, March 18.

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‘Murder capital’ is really in the pink

DONAL MacIntyre’s latest television series, Gangsters, sees his take on Glasgow’s underworld on Five next week. But we really feel we must take issue with it and defend the "dear green place", as in an interview in the Daily Record, Donal portrayed the city as "the murder capital of western Europe".

Shurley shome mishtake, as there were 134 murders in the Naples area last year and we’d guess there are other more violent places. Old-fashioned stereotypes indeed, as did we not spot "Glasgay" being hailed as the "pinkest" city in Europe just the other day in another Glasgow-based blatt?

Mon 28 Mar 2005
SIMON PIA
The Scotsman
http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=326942005

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Macintyre’s Underworld (C5, Tuesday)

IT’S a tricky one. You’re in a sweaty, Manchester boxing club, with a notorious local crime boss, who has been boasting about his violent life.

Shaven-headed Dominic Noonan is hard, he’s proud, he’s spent 22 years in jail for a litany of crimes, and he rules his patch with a bunch of twitchy, young Manc spides in Reservoir Dogs suits.

But there’s something you’re dying to ask this real life Soprano. Is he gay?

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ON THURSDAY of this week the advance party of the now-annual Scottish invasion of the United States begins. Ministers like Andy Kerr, Patricia Ferguson and Tom McCabe, accompanied by a veritable army of tourist board officials, businessmen, journalists and – for some reason as yet unexplained to me – disc jockeys will start to take over the hotels and bars of New York and Washington.
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WITH its high production values, luxuriant running time and expensive licensed music, you got the feeling that dashing investigative journalist Donal MacIntyre really put a lot into Gangster, the first film in his new MacIntyre’s Underworld series. All that was missing was a GoodFellas-style freeze-frame and voiceover: “As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to make a documentary about a gangster.”
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POLICE have released a man who they arrested for questioning on suspicion of murdering gangster Desmond Noonan.

Officers involved in the investigation appeared before Manchester city magistrates at a special hour-long hearing to extend questioning on Wednesday but the man, from Chorlton,  was released on Thursday when that extension ran out.

Noonan’s body was found outside a house in Merseybank Avenue, Chorlton, on Saturday morning. He had been stabbed.

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"STOP the press," is a phrase much loved in the film industry, but causes editors and lawyers considerable anguish.

The arrival of court papers seeking to halt publication or broadcast of a story at the 11th hour, when presses or reels are ready to roll, does not create the most conducive environment for clear-headed thinking by the courts.

This week, Channel Five had to have an injunction overturned less than two hours before transmission of a documentary about a notorious Manchester gangster family.

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