He was the boy from Glasgow’s tough Possilpark that rose to the top of the criminal tree from humble beginnings. Jamie Daniel has been described in the past as the head of Scotland’s richest crime family.
He has even been compared to Harold Shand, the fictional London crime boss in the British gangster epic The Long Good Friday played by the late Bob Hoskins. As a young man Daniel was said to be into shoplifting, loan-sharking, stealing car wheels and scrap metal.
One of his big earners in his early days was melting down aluminium beer barrels stolen from outside pubs. In 1983, at the age of 25, he was jailed for four years in England for heroin smuggling.
Undeterred Daniel was said to have gone on to built an international criminal empire stolen cars, firearms and major drug smuggling and forged links with gangs in London, Manchester and Liverpool. His underworld dominance remained secret until January 2003 when our sister paper the Sunday Mail named him for the first time as the leading criminal figure in Scotland ahead of people like Tam “The Licensee” McGraw and Glasgow’s McGovern brothers.
At the time his criminal empire was said to be worth £16 million a year. By this time his family had embarked on a feud with the Lyons family who were based in the neighbouring Milton housing estate over control of the city’s drugs trade.
Over the years he earned the reputation as someone not to be crossed. Two doormen who had attacked a family member at a Glasgow nightclub later were then said to have had their cars blown up.
And in 2000, he was linked to the murder of drug dealer Frank McPhie, a career criminal who was shot in the head by a sniper outside his home in Maryhill, Glasgow. McPhie was said to have attacked a member of Jamie’s family weeks earlier.
The murder to this day remains unsolved.
Daniel spent most of his criminal career successfully staying away from the long arm of the law. However his temper let him down in 2010 when he became involved in a road rage incident with a young student driver near his luxury home in Glasgow’s Jordanhill
Daniel chased after him, tried to reach into his car and grab him and battered the car with a metal pole. At Glasgow Sheriff Court Daniel admitted breach of the peace, as well as two charges of assaulting a fellow prisoner while on remand in Barlinnie prison He was jailed for a year and served six months.
In 2016 he died after a four year battle with cancer. On the day of his funeral ‘In the Ghetto’ by Elvis Presley was played over the sound system in Clydebank Crematorium as 600 mourners filed into the chapel building.
The 30-minute non-religious service was conducted by civil celebrant who described as a scrap metal dealer who enjoyed bungee jumping, hunting, jet skiing, playing pool and supporting Rangers. The celebrant made no reference to Daniel’s criminal past but said he was a loving family man loyal to his friends who had fathered 10 children and had 10 grandchildren.
She added: “He was someone who liked to be in control and was usually two steps ahead of everyone else. You either loved him or hated him. But Jamie liked it that way.”
In August a 2019 Channel Five TV documentary said Daniel had been one of country’s most feared criminals. It had been due for broadcast the previous year.
However it was postponed because of the trial of six members of the Lyons crime gang accused of attempting to murder Jamie Daniel’s nephew Steven “Bonzo” Daniel.
In the programme former Detective Inspector David Moran said of the late crime boss: “He had the reputation of being one or two steps ahead of the police and pretty much untouchable”. In July we told how a top London crime gang called in Daniel to sort out a Glasgow drug dealer who owed them £200,000 from a cannabis deal.
The very mention of his name was enough for the errant dealer to pay up that night having earlier been summoned to a Chinese restaurant in Glasgow where Daniel had been eating. A London enforcer Psycho Nick – also known as Nick the Greek – had been sent to Glasgow to get the money and called in Daniel for assistance.
He was taken for dinner to the Chinese restaurant where Jamie Daniel phoned the man – known as Brave Alan -over the drugs debt. Later that night Brave Alan arrived at Daniel’s home in Glasgow’s posh Jordanhill carrying a rucksack containing the money and handed it to Nick.
He then told Daniel: “When I heard your voice on the phone, Jamie I thought I was dead.”
The story was related to the Daily Record by Andrew Pritchard once compared to Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug lord. Over a period of almost 30 years Londoner Pritchard smuggled millions of pounds’ worth of drugs into the UK hidden inside everything from coconuts and coffins, to crates of fruit and vegetables.
Pritchard went straight after his release from prison in 2019 and has now brought out a book about his life of crime titled ‘Empire of Dirt’. He says the Brave Alan incident forged a friendship between Psycho Nick and Jamie Daniel that lasted up until his death.
Pritchard added: “Jamie was a big guy in Glasgow. He was a very serious man but you knew what strength he had.
“Jamie Daniel came in through our network. One of the local firms in London was connected to him. When they had an issue up in Scotland he was their man to go to.”
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