I'd some very good looking girls visiting me in prison

Thug claims he had romps behind bars....as quards turned blind eye | Meehan wanted to be pals but Gilligan told him, 'Get the f*** out of it...

- MICHAEL O'TOOLE

JOHN Gilligan today speaks of his fears he will die in prison - as he faces the threat of being locked up in Spain.

The gangster, 70, is accused of sending drugs to Ireland from his bolthole and faces a sentence later this year if convicted there.

"I wouldn't like to die in prison, but when you die... what happens when you die? I'm not squeamish about death," he says in a bombshell new book - extracts of which are published in today's Sunday Mirror.

The pint-sized thug says he regrets his life of crime in The Gilligan Tapes, Ireland's most notorious crime boss in his own words, by investigative journalist Jason O'Toole.

And he brazenly boasts of how easy he found it to serve time in jail and even claims to have had intimate contact with a female visitor - in full view of a prison officer.

Gilligan - who reveals he's served 30 years' jail in total - says he now regrets his career of robbing and stealing.

He says: "It doesn't pay. I'd imagine life is better without crime. And with crime, there's too many ups and downs. There's more downs than ups.

OUTSMARTED

 "I've never won. People think I outsmarted the police. No, I didn't. I can admit that. I'm a gobshite. I was wrong. I'm a fool."

The former merchant sailor brags:  "I could do prison in a dustbin. It wouldn't bother me. I don't care where they put me in a prison."

Brazen Gilligan goes on to say he was inundated with fan mail behind bars even claiming he had a romp with a female visitor inside the supermax Portlaoise jail.

He says: "There was this regular girl who came down to me every second week, and she always dressed really sexy.

"She'd be holding me man thing and I'd be feeling her boobs and feeling between her legs and we'd be kissing."