Mine's bigger than yours, Paul Ferris

Gangster's photoshoot like something out of Scarface | Stunt resulted in police kicking in door of villain

- JOHN DINGWALL

A SCOTS gangster smuggled a machine gun into his home to prove he was a bigger threat than Paul Ferris.

Michael Healy, considered the most dangerous man in Britain, assembled his high-powered weapon so that he could be caught on camera during a photoshoot.

Out of vanity, the Glasgow villain wanted to go one better than a photo of former gangland figure Ferris wielding a shotgun.

Street photographer Brian Anderson said: "Healy had liked a Paul Ferris photo I had taken for the book called Vendetta and he wanted a photograph like that.

"He was competitive and wanted to go one better than Paul.

"There was a chap on the door and somebody came in with a silencer in a polythene bag.

"A little later in the day there was a second chap on the door and it was someone with part of a machine gun in a toolbox.

"Eventually, Healy had smuggled enough parts. He put together a machine gun like he was putting together IKEA furniture.

"He had the machine gun assembled and I asked if he could shoot it. I was only joking but he said, 'No, because everybody in the city will hear it'.

"He was taking lines of coke. It was like something out of the film Scarface."

The stunt led to 'Mad Mick' Healy's door being kicked in by police.

In 1991, he was on the run when he led a gang of six, which included Ian 'Blink MacDonald, during an armed raid on the National Westminster bank in Torquay.

Sentenced to 10 years in 1988 for a gun raid at a Glasgow post office, Healy had escaped from Shotts prison in the back of a van.