John Lawson was born in Scotland and raised in South Africa until the age of ten. John's mother had returned to the UK to nurse her dying father when John's policeman father locked him in their apartment and ran off with his mistress never to return. After four days without food he was rescued and sent back to the UK. Both grandparents died quickly and they were left penniless and homeless. His mother eventually found them a flat in the roughest housing estate in Europe, just outside Glasgow Scotland. John became an angry young man and grew up to become a violent criminal, he joined a biker gang, worked with the Maltese Mafia in London's Soho and managed the largest brothel in the city.