PEOPLE: Roller Pat's prison ordeal

THE cold, hard nozzle of a police drugs squad officer's gun pressed down on the back of ex-Bay City Roller Pat McGlynn's head as he lay face down in the car park of an Essex hotel.

Sirens squealed in the background, above him sounded the rotor blades of a police helicopter, all around were officers in flak jackets, firearms pointed menacingly in his direction.

Someone was pinning down his legs, someone else was tugging at his hands, snapping on police cuffs, growling that he was under arrest.

All of a sudden, bouncing around on stage trussed up in tartan trousers singing Shang-a-lang before a packed auditorium of tear-streaked teenagers must have seemed a very long way away . . .

Pat sits on the edge of his white leather couch strewn with plump Versace cushions in the living-room of his Liberton Brae home and speaks frankly for the first time of how he thought he was going to die on that sunny day nine months ago.

On the wall to his left are two gold discs and one suitably covered in tartan from his days as a member of one of the world's first "boy bands", while to his right, above the glowing open fire is a wooden crucifix which he and wife Janine regularly prayed to as the reality of his situation sank in.

"It was absolutely terrifying," he begins, leaning forward, speaking rapidly, desperate to tell his side of yet another bizarre story linked to Scotland's most famous band. "I really thought I was going to be shot, that I was going to die right there and then," he continues. "I didn't have a clue what was going on. I thought maybe it was terrorists or something, people posing as police officers. It was the worse moment of my life.

"I'm not joking," he adds, breaking into a grin: "I just about wet myself!"

Pat, still fresh faced at 47, talks at breakneck speed, his mind flitting from the day of his arrest to his six weeks in the category B Chelmsford Prison in Essex, alongside more than 570 other prisoners, to his nerve-wracking appearance at Basildon Crown Court last month to finally hearing the words he had prayed he would hear: not guilty.

Now six weeks have elapsed since the headline-grabbing court case ended with a unanimous jury verdict clearing him and fellow Roller Les McKeown of conspiring to supply cocaine, yet Pat still wakes up shaking in the night, his sleep disturbed by vivid nightmares of police, prison and guns.

He freely admits he has been through dark, depressing days when his usually upbeat demeanour has crumbled, when he's driven across the Forth Road Bridge and contemplated throwing himself over the edge.

And there have been other days, more recently, when he looks back on it all, shakes his head in disbelief and cracks another joke. "I don't want to ever hear anyone singing Bye Bye Baby again," he throws himself back on the couch and starts to laugh. "Every night inside, the other prisoners thought it would be funny to sing it and hammer on the walls. Funny for them maybe, but really scary for me."

The nightmare started when he arrived in Essex last May on his way to meet up with former band mate McKeown to discuss the prospect of a national tour alongside clean-cut Mormon brothers, The Osmonds and fellow Seventies pop idol David Essex.

"I went down to London to see Les because I was going to do some guitar on stage with him," says Pat. "I was looking for a new car and Les had put me in touch with some friends of his. So I went to this hotel car park to look at this Porsche they had. We were standing around, talking about music when the next thing I know we're surrounded by police with guns.

"Ha!" he laughs again, "maybe they were worried that I was going to start playing Shang-a-lang."

Pat and financial systems analyst Alistair Murray were arrested at the car park, along with Tony Burt, a 48-year-old car dealer and Jason Abbott, 34, an engineer. Les McKeown was arrested later at his London home. Detectives were said to have found more than GBP 16,000 in cash in a washbag in the car Pat and Murray had been travelling in - money they claimed was for buying the car.

Meanwhile, a bag of cocaine worth at least GBP 16,000 was found in the car Burt and Abbott had travelled in. Once processed, the drug would have had a street value of around GBP 50,000.

Burt and Abbott both admitted conspiring to supply cocaine. But for Pat, McKeown and mutual friend Murray, a two-week court case beckoned. But first Pat was thrown behind bars, remanded in custody alongside convicted murderers who were only too eager to warn him that he could be facing ten years in prison.

On the outside, wife Janine frantically tried to raise the GBP 50,000 needed to release him on bail at the same time as retaining an air of calmness for the couple's six-year-old daughter, Mia.

"It was Mia that kept us both going," says Janine, 45, a pretty long-haired blonde singer who became Pat's partner 22 years ago. "But it was so frightening. I wanted him back home as soon as possible, but for some reason they refused bail. We had to try a second time - it was six weeks before we could get him out of there. I had to raise GBP 50,000 for bail, we found our assets had been frozen and he was 800 miles away.

"I was driving up and down, then when I got to visit we couldn't properly talk . . . it was the worst time of our lives."

Which is going some considering what a bizarre life it has been for Pat McGlynn. Plucked from school in 1975 to join perhaps the most successful group in the world at the time after founder member Alan Longmuir left the band, he embarked on a drink and drug-fuelled existence as a pop star, with on-tap groupies and sell-out concerts in front of screaming fans.

He quit the band in 1977, later claiming he stabbed the band's manager Tam Paton in the shoulder with a bread knife he kept under his pillow.

Eventually there followed a complaint to police that Paton, who was jailed for three years for gross indecency towards two teenage boys in the 1980s, had tried to rape him.

To cap it all, the Rollers have been embroiled in a decades-long battle against their former record company, claiming they are owed millions in unpaid royalties.

"The curse of the Rollers strikes again," Pat shrugs. "There's millions of pounds at stake and I don't think I'll ever see any of it. As for Tam Paton, well, I haven't spoken to him for 30 years. There's no point feeling bitter about things, it just messes up your head. You just try to forgive so you can move on. What I've been through makes you realise that there are more important things in life, like your friends, your family and being free."

The couple are now turning their sights to the future. Their plans to develop two acres of land at Loanhead into a hotel and recording studio complex were temporarily shelved by the case, their lives in limbo for nine months.

"I was putting a lot of things together just before this all happened," says Pat, the son of a Niddrie scrapyard boss.

"I'm producing a few bands, I've been working on starting my own record company, writing songs. I had my web page almost ready to go . . . there was a lot happening.

"I've lost nine months because of this. Now, well, I don't know where to start."

One thing he's clear on. The affair has certainly altered his friendship with former Rollers' frontman McKeown, who has battled drug and drink addictions for decades.

Pat sighs: "Les said he didn't know his mate was involved in things like that - he has known him for 20 years. There was me thinking I was going to prison for ten years for something I didn't do, thinking I might not be there to see my daughter become a teenager. I was thinking about jumping in the harbour, I was on medicine for depression.

"So, no, I don't really want to go near Les now; I don't want to be involved in that situation, whether it's drinking or anything. To be honest, I just want to get on with living my life and enjoying it."

Edinburgh Evening News March 13, 2006