no fee | 

Virgin Media says John Gilligan was ‘absolutely not paid’ for his 40 hours of interviews

In the first of a three part series, Gilligan’s history from being born in Dublin in 1952 to being a crime kingpin in the 1980s and 1990s is dealt with

Eugene Masterson

Yesterday at 13:16

Virgin Media have said that notorious crime boss John Gilligan was “absolutely not paid” in any way for his interviews which will be aired as a three-part documentary series starting next week.

Gilligan sat down to be interviewed for 40 hours over several sessions in the last year for the series despite facing jail in Spain for alleged drugs trafficking and weapons charges.

Asked by the Sunday World if the Dublin criminal was paid to take part, a Virgin Media spokesperson stated: “Absolutely not. No fee or expenses of any kind were paid.”

In the first of a three part series, Gilligan’s history from being born in Dublin in 1952 to being a crime kingpin in the 1980s and 1990s is dealt with.

He tells of his first crime as a boy growing up in Ballyfermot, when he was selling sticks for a penny a bundle from a pram when a woman approached him and asked him for six bundles.

“She handed me a five pound note. I said ‘I will get change off me da’, so I just walked down the path and I left the pram behind,” he recalls. “ That was me first crime, and I ran home to me mother and said ‘Ma look what I’m after finding’. ‘God’, she said, ‘so you’re very lucky’ and she said ‘where’s the pram’. I said ‘I lost it’ and she said ‘not to worry’.”

He describes how he first started going out with his wife Geraldine when he was aged 18 and she was 14 – they have two children, Tracey (49) and Darren (48).

“A friend of mine, lord of mercy on him, Brendan King, he said ‘do you want to do a blag’. I said to him ‘what’s a blag?’. He said ‘rob a bank’. I said what would I get?’. He said ‘may, three, four, five, six, seven grand’. You could get 10 grand, you could get lucky. Usually four or five grand. I said ‘how long would it take?’. He said ‘about 40 seconds’. I said ‘yeah count me in’,” Gilligan recollects.

He claims he never shot anyone during those jobs.

“I shouldn’t be saying that but I was asked to speak honestly. If a Garda was telling me to stop and I couldn’t get away and I had to shoot him Id shoot him,” he remarks.

He explains how he then uses to case factories and rob entire lorries, including one trick he’d use of tying a magnet onto a shoelace to get the keys the driver had left through the door after driving home in his car late at night and leaving the truck to be loaded, making way for Gilligan to drive off with it.

He boasts about how he robbed £1 million worth of Ferguson video recorders from a warehouse in Tallaght and knew the Gardai would raid his house as chief suspect, so went to a electrical store on Grafton street and bought a same model and got a receipt. He was brought to court over it and he maintains a jury found him not guilty after 20 minutes