Donal MacIntyre

‘We want to leave a historical record, we want people looking back at our programmes 20 years from now and seeing an accurate depiction of the criminal underworld – their lifestyle, their language. We want this to live and breathe."
Donal MacIntyre has grand ambitions for his fly-on-the-wall documentaries following Britain’s most notorious gangsters, but we would expect nothing less from a man who once infiltrated a gang of football hooligans by acquiring a Chelsea FC tattoo.

He talks fast and to the point – like a man on the run, with an urgent message – but there is one question he can never quite shake off: is television glamorising our nation’s criminals?

He will be answering that very charge at the upcoming MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV festival, in what could prove to be a rather more heated discussion than the event is used to. Joining him onstage will be one of the interviewees for the Five series MacIntyre’s Underworld – notorious former crime boss Paul Ferris, who became a household name across Glasgow following a summer of violence in 1991, and was later jailed for gun-running.

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This woman looks like a hit man, and tells me she’s out for revenge. Janet Street-Porter is plotting retribution on all those who slagged her off for I’m a Celebrity.

Gangsters make better company than television executives. For one thing, they’re usually better-read (all that time in prison) and certainly funnier – you always laugh harder at a gangster’s jokes, I find. But who genuinely scares you more? I’ve been through quite a few hit men and TV executives, and it’s a close call.

This week, I entertained Paul Ferris, a man who stabbed, shot, robbed and scalped for a living – he had a reputation as a hit man and looks uncannily like a television executive. I pondered what it must be like to witness the life-force draining from victims in the last moments of life. Ferris, a major Glasgow gangland figure, is known as "The Accountant". Like many TV executives, he has never been convicted of murder, but has assassin’s eyes.

On the way to meet him, I encounter another assassin – outside Glasgow airport. I had seen her but she hadn’t seen me. A mutual friend, though, beckons me over. This woman looks like a hit man and she’s on a mission. Tall, slim, striking and unmistakably scary, she tells me she is out for revenge. I know her.

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This woman looks like a hit man, and tells me she’s out for revenge. Janet Street-Porter is plotting retribution on all those who slagged her off for I’m a Celebrity.

Gangsters make better company than television executives. For one thing, they’re usually better-read (all that time in prison) and certainly funnier – you always laugh harder at a gangster’s jokes, I find. But who genuinely scares you more? I’ve been through quite a few hit men and TV executives, and it’s a close call.

This week, I entertained Paul Ferris, a man who stabbed, shot, robbed and scalped for a living – he had a reputation as a hit man and looks uncannily like a television executive. I pondered what it must be like to witness the life-force draining from victims in the last moments of life. Ferris, a major Glasgow gangland figure, is known as "The Accountant". Like many TV executives, he has never been convicted of murder, but has assassin’s eyes.

On the way to meet him, I encounter another assassin – outside Glasgow airport. I had seen her but she hadn’t seen me. A mutual friend, though, beckons me over. This woman looks like a hit man and she’s on a mission. Tall, slim, striking and unmistakably scary, she tells me she is out for revenge. I know her.

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Donal will again take MacIntyre’s Underworld to the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival this year.  He’ll be accompanied by Vendetta’s Paul Ferris.

The festival runs from 26th to 28th of August.

Further details are available at http://www.mgeitf.co.uk

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A survey carried out on behalf of Mencap has found that the media believes there aren’t enough people with learning disabilities such as autism and Down’s syndrome working in the industry.

Lloyd Page, the author of the survey, works for Channel Five’s MacIntyre Investigates. Page found that 90 per cent of those questioned said representation in the press and on television of people with learning disabilities is not sufficient.

Seventy per cent could not name anyone such as Page, who has mild learing difficulties, in a positive role model on television or radio.

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Being senior programme controller at Five has its perks. But there was an unexpected one for Chris Shaw this week. Yesterday Chris and his star interrogator Donal MacIntyre headed off to Leeds, having been asked to cut the ribbon to open the new offices of production company True North. That’s one way to help get a commission.

Thursday June 16, 2005
Media Monkey, Guardian
http://media.guardian.co.uk/diary/story/0,,1471537,00.html

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A MAN is due to appear in court today charged in connection with the murder of one of Manchester’s most notorious gangsters.

Derek McDuffus, 41, of Merseybank Avenue, Chorlton, Greater Manchester will appear via video link from prison at Preston Crown Court, charged with the murder of Desmond Noonan.

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What could be better than a BBC documentary by hunky Scots journo-sleuth Donal MacIntyre? Two documentaries by hunky Scots journo-sleuth Donal MacIntyre.

Well, in theory, anyway. It turns out that quantity, and even quality, doesn’t always make for a riveting hour’s viewing, and both TV One’s Body Butchers, and TV3’s Parents Under Attack last night were a shade disappointing.

Current affairs exposes only work when we are told about something we didn’t even know the half of, or when a phenomenon we did know a bit about is not just presented to us, but explained and analysed.

JANE CLIFTON

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