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.

In Blink, MacDonald provides an eye-opening account of his highly eventful journey through life in Glasgow’s brutal gangland.