Wayne Thallon has drawn inspiration for his debut film from a childhood spent with a drug-dealing, brothel-owning relative

THERE was a moment when he was just five years old that Wayne Thallon realised his uncle was different.

"We'd stopped at a garage, and he was pumping gas," he says.

"I was watching him, then I looked away. When I looked back he had the hose around a man's neck and spraying this guy's head with petrol.

"Whether it was just that this guy said something he didn't like or whether they knew each other, I don't know. But I think the guy realised pretty quickly that he was messing with the wrong person.

"So yes, at that point there was a realisation that there was something different about my uncle."

By the time Thallon was seven he was spending chunks of his nomadic childhood hanging out at his uncle's Berkeley sauna in Leith Walk, mixing with punters, pimps and prostitutes.

Nothing about Uncle Rod must have seemed particularly normal. For Uncle Rod was notorious Edinburgh crime kingpin Roddy "Popeye" McLean – one of the country's most wayward, violent, bizarre and sometimes even rather swashbuckling of criminals, with a back catalogue of experiences that covered all bases – none of them particularly respectable.

He may have been Thallon's uncle but he was also a one-time mercenary in the Congo, an armed robber, a gunrunner for South Africa's apartheid regime, brothel owner, police and secret services informer, international drugs smuggler – his last high seas escapade led to the death of a customs officer – most bizarrely, a prison officer and, of course, a violent thug.

Said to have accumulated around 5 million from illegal activities by the time of his death, he swaggered around town in a Rolls, dropping in on his Steptoe-style secondhand shops – fronts for his underworld activities – living in luxury at his Boswell Road home with its swimming pool, and enjoying a charmed criminal existence scratching police backs in return for their blind eye.

He was shrewd, cunning, arrogant and, in Thallon's words, "violent, angry and snarling".

But McLean could also add another title to his expansive, if dubious, list of "qualities": he was a prolific, talented storyteller.

McLean died six years ago in mysterious circumstances: his prison category was inexplicably downgraded, he was transferred to an open prison, escaped and, in the middle of another international drugs deal, found dead.

However, the stories he told his wide-eyed young nephew – tales of rampaging through the Congo with notorious mercenary "Mad" Mike Hoare whose exploits went on to inspire the movie Wild Geese, right, and grisly accounts of violence such as the time he dealt with a suspected paedophile by tearing out his teeth with pliers, stuffing his half-dead body in a tea chest with a plan to dump him at sea – survived.

Thallon, hooked by his uncle's vivid storytelling, could easily have followed a similar path of crime. Instead Fettes-educated Thallon drew on his uncle's wayward exploits and his upbringing to become a storyteller himself.

Over three hectic weeks at the start of year writer Thallon, producer Andy Maas, 29, and a 70-strong film crew descended on Art's Complex in London Road, where they created the set for the fictitious Paradise sauna for a black comedy film loosely based around his own experiences.

The result is Thallon's first shot at film directing, a low-budget, black comedy A Spanking in Paradise, shot around the Capital and which he and Maas are hoping might premier at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Thallon, 34, is keen to distance himself from the most despicable elements of his uncle's criminal career. Yet he agrees the film's central character is a combination of his uncle and his own father, Rab, another high profile Edinburgh figure with a habit of getting into scrapes.

"The film is a dramatisation," insists Thallon, "but there are a lot of influences from my childhood.

"And I'm not trying to make my uncle out to be anything other than a crook."

As a filmmaker and writer, however, he naturally draws on his own experiences, and inevitably McLean: "I spent a lot of time in the brothel when I was a kid, and the characters are based on the people I saw.

"I've seen the flipside to saunas. There's no such thing as the 'happy hooker'. When a punter leaves, there's usually a tear. You can be certain that for them, it's not a career choice."

Thallon ended up spending time with his uncle after his parents split up when he was a baby. While his father lunged through relationships, his mother married a foreign diplomat.

"I was 'pass the parcel'. I lived the diplomat life with my mother: one day I'd be in a dinner suit in an ambassador's residence in Washington or Harare or Hong Kong, then listening to Christ knows what at Rod's gaff, then boarding at Fettes – which ultimately was my saviour.

"I was never in the one place for long enough to really be affected by any of it."

Despite McLean's reputation, Thallon never felt frightened. Instead he was enthralled by his huge character, his incredible tales and respect he commanded.

"There was a quirk in his nature that made him a 'people' man. He was a natural storyteller," adds Thallon. "These weren't stories about big Jim going home and beating up the wife or whatever. These were rollercoaster stories about running arms for governments, ships being shot and sunk and run aground on the Limpopo river, tribesmen shooting at him.

"At 13 he was on whaling fleets in Newfoundland, at 21 he was running around the Congo.

"That energy was always there: he was like a shark, if a shark stops moving it dies. He never stood still."

McLean tried anything, even, at one point, crossing sides. "There was a time he'd done something stupid and worried they (the authorities] were on to him.

"He applied for a job as prison officer thinking if he became a screw he'd be OK," he adds. "He ended up at Polmont but he couldn't handle it because he saw himself in these kids.

"That was the kind of nonsense he got up to.

"And it was every little boy's dream to hear that kind of thing."

A Spanking in Paradise is currently in production