Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
One minute I was having tea at Britt Ekland’s in Hollywood, next I was a plumber going round in a little van
number.” He also recalled dining with crooner Dean Martin in Las Vegas. “He took us to dinner in MGM and the waiter came down and said, ‘Mr Longmuir, I know Mr Martin is paying the bill, but not the tip’. I had to pay it – about fifty dollars.”
The band, who for a while made half-mast, tartantrimmed trousers and stripy socks hip, had the world at their feet, but little in their pockets.
Managed by the controlling, and now disgraced, Tam Paton, they saw little of the royalties due to them, which today would be worth around £5billion.
Alan said: “Tam Paton screwed a lot of things up. Just to stir it up one time, he said once that he got paid £500,000 by the record company. He was like a
BAY
control freak. The best laugh I had with Tam was when he got an electric shock at the Edinburgh Palais one night and it knocked him off the stage.” Paton was jailed in 1982 for sex attacks on two young boys. He died in 2009.
His fall from grace was far from the only controversy around the Rollers.
Les Mckeown, who joined in late 1973, just before Rollermania took off, was probably the band’s biggest heartthrob.
In 1975, he was driving in Edinburgh when he hit 76-year-old Euphemia Clunie and killed her. He was later found guilty of reckless driving, fined and banned from driving for a year.
He was with the band until 1978, when he got a letter from the other members which said:“f*** you, you’re fired.”
It is claimed Les abused drink and drugs, including cocaine and heroin. He later had his home repossessed. In 2005, he was accused of plotting a £50,000 cocaine deal, but found not guilty.
Alan’s brother Derek retired from the music industry in the early 1980s and trained as a nurse, working at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
In 2000, he was sentenced to 300 hours community service after he admitted possessing child porn. He was fired from his job at the hospital, although he was later readmitted to the nursing register.
Once, Dean Martin took us to dinner but I had to pay the 50 dollar tip
Derek maintained that the offending material did not belong to him but had been left behind by an acquaintance, and said he had only pleaded guilty in the hope of avoiding a “media circus”.
Alan also insisted his brother was innocent, saying: “He didn’t do anything wrong. They weren’t his pictures.”
Alan left the group in 1976 after a bout