Get here for sunrise.. you are shooting an IRA funeral

Summoned to take coffin pics of terrorist Kevin 'Tiny' Donaghey. Meetings with notorious UDA leader Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair

- JOHN DINGWALL

A CRIME photographer has told how he was called in to cover the only paramilitary IRA funeral ever held on the UK mainland.

Brian Anderson, 55, received a latenight call at his Glasgow home from Salford gangster Paul Massey.

He was told to drive to Manchester, and came face to face with hardened gangland figures and paramilitaries at the funeral of the former IRA member, Kevin 'Tiny' Donaghey.

Later draped in the tricolour, Donaghey's coffin was carried through the streets of Salford by balaclava-wearing pallbearers.

Mourners then fired a gun salute as the coffin was lowered into the grave. Massey was Mr Big in Manchester. He phoned me and asked if I could be in Salford for sunrise because he had something really good for my book.

"I jumped at the chance. When I arrived I got taken into a room full of Irish and Salford guys. There was a guy in a coffin and people were crying.

"I was told, "Take the f***ing picture, wee man. Don't take pictures of the women crying and keep it out of Ireland and out of the press"." The funeral was planned for Donaghey, who had been suspected of killing soldiers in Northern Ireland.

"He got a paramilitary funeral in mainland Britain which had never been done before and that was what I captured," Brian said.

"They were carrying the coffin through the streets of Manchester draped in a tricolour.