The Iceman: The Rise and Fall of a Crime Lord by Jim Wilson Read Free Book Online

Many years later, in 2007, pub boss Jim Milligan was still trying to sell Glasgow’s Renfield Street building that houses Cini.
    In the 1990s, fast-talking Milligan was on the way up. He owned these two sleek style bars and other less glamorous pubs in Glasgow’s Springburn area – Thomson’s and the New Morven. At least that is the impression that was given by the paperwork for parent company Jimmy Nick’s Properties Ltd which was lodged at Companies House. The people of Springburn knew that, no matter what such documents may have said, these were McGovern pubs.
    In 1998, Thomson’s, the family’s pub-cum-HQ, was raided by police as part of a high-profile crackdown on the blatant peddling of drugs that the McGovern crew allowed to go on inside with impunity. The police action did not seem to hurt their business – neither the selling of drink nor their illegal trade in drugs.
    Milligan’s business partner was Charlie Nicholas, a former Celtic, Arsenal and Scotland striker whose love of the bright lights of London clubland had earned him the nickname Champagne Charlie. There is nothing, however, to suggest that Nicholas knew of his business partner’s close relationship with the McGovern crime clan. He was known to take a back seat, allowing and trusting the more astute Milligan, who used to date one of Charlie’s female relatives, to get on with running their business. Nicholas, now a Sky Sports football pundit famous for his often-mangled commentary, did not attend the VIP opening night in Greenock.
    Cocaine had, by now, entered the mainstream and was no longer a rich man’s drug. One Scottish celebrity’s headline-making enthusiasm for the drug did more than most to reveal coke’s ubiquity on the club scene. He was another ex-footballer of the Nicholas era, the former Celtic and West Ham striker Frank McAvennie. Later re-invented as a caricature of a ladies’ man thanks to a comedy impersonation by Jonathan Watson, McAvennie famously described the cocaine found during a police search as ‘a little bit of personal’. More seriously, Customs and Excise investigators seized £100,000 of McAvennie’s cash in 1995 and a judge agreed that the money was going to be used to finance drug smuggling despite the ex-footballer’s bizarre claim that the money was to fund a hunt for sunken treasure.
    Milligan’s plan was to introduce the glamour of the London nightclubs frequented by the likes of McAvennie to Greenock. One ex-worker said:
    All the best-looking young girls were hired and told to show off their legs and cleavages. This was to be the sexiest venue for miles around. The money that was spent at the new Cini was completely over the top. The waterfall alone cost an absolute fortune. Milligan was the boss and he would make frequent visits. Sometimes Charlie would be with him but not all the time.
    It was a strange decision to pick Greenock but Jim and Charlie had spoken publicly about their ambitious five-year plan to open twenty pubs around the country. They had even registered the name Planet Football for a chain of themed restaurants but that never took off.
     
    Milligan’s appreciation of a pretty pint-puller was revealed a decade later when it emerged that he was being chased for maintenance by a Cini barmaid who claimed he was the father of her child. The despairing mum even accused Milligan of trying to cheat responsibility by getting a pal to take the DNA paternity test.
    On that late summer opening night in Greenock, Milligan welcomed the invited guests, most of whom had travelled west along the M8 from Glasgow. They included a young self-made business tycoon called David Moulsdale who had made his fortune through his nationwide chain of optician shops. Moulsdale, an entirely legitimate businessman, was a personal friend of the slightly older Tony McGovern who affectionately nicknamed him Noodles. In 2000, the Sunday Times Rich List estimated Moulsdale’s personal fortune at £100 million. It was