Paul Ferris dies aged 62, and the Daily Record retraces his Blackhill start
The paper's short obituary of the former Glasgow gangster drew more than ten times the comments its Shorts usually collect, from local memories to open doubts about the mourning.
Daily Record
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 35,366 views a day, 19 times a normal first day on this channel (1,827).
Former Glasgow gangster Paul Ferris dies aged 62
"Former Glasgow gangster Paul Ferris dies aged 62" is a brief obituary Short, and the Daily Record tells it through his beginnings rather than his headlines.
The description traces those beginnings. Ferris was the son of an armed robber and grew up in Blackhill, about 300 yards from the house the paper calls the Ponderosa, home of Arthur Thompson, whom it describes as Glasgow's Godfather. He left school at 16 and worked as a van boy for a brewery firm. Then, the paper writes, came an offer of £500 to drive the getaway car for a jewelry robbery.
The clip passed 30,000 views in its first 17 hours. A Daily Record Short usually ends its whole first day near 2,000. On the same day, the paper's clip of Kemi Badenoch ruling out a pact with Reform sat at around 6,000.
The comment section moved faster than the views. Many viewers write that they remember him from school or from the area. Several call him "wee man", the nickname the 2013 film about his life, The Wee Man, used as its title. Others joke that every family in the city seems to claim him as an uncle. One of the most liked comments asks why so many people are mourning a man it says brought misery to Glasgow families, and that question has drawn replies of its own.
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- Channel
- Daily Record
- Subscribers
- 173,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 764,473
- Channel views, pace per day
- 44,087 (on a normal day: 105,802)
- Video published
- October 7, 2026
- Video views so far
- 30,398 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 35,366
The numbers
This obituary Short ran far ahead of the paper's other recent uploads, on a day when the channel as a whole was quieter than usual.
