The brother of the Scots star on The Apprentice is serving a life sentence for a cocaine-fuelled knife murder.
High-flying drama school boss Reece Donnelly, 25, was unveiled as a candidate on the hit BBC show last night. But the Record can reveal that his brother Nico was jailed in 2016 for brutally stabbing Jamie Johnstone, 21, to death in Sandyhills, Glasgow.
Reece and Nico are half-brothers.
And the 29-year-old has had extra time put on his sentence for violent behaviour inside. Reece, from Cambuslang, near Glasgow, told the Record last night of his “heartfelt condolences” to murder victim Jamie’s family.
He claimed he didn’t know his brother despite their four-year age gap. Reece said: “I do not know this family member in question. I was only recently made aware of this news. My heartfelt condolences go out to the families affected.”
A family friend said: “Reece has worked hard to build up his business but had to start it up at a bad time – just as Nico was being put away for life. It was an awful time for his family as they didn’t do anything wrong but had to endure a lot of pain because of crimes committed by Nico.
“The two of them were never close and as they grew older their lives were poles apart.”
The friend added: “Reece wants to think about the future and is concentrating on The Apprentice. He will be up against a lot of high-powered rivals, with many coming from far more privileged backgrounds than him.
“But he is already a seasoned businessman and has great confidence in himself. He thinks he has a good chance of winning and nobody should rule him out. Everybody in Cambuslang, and hopefully Scotland, will be rooting for him.”
Another friend said: “Nico was quite a popular boy at school and you would never have guessed he would have become so violent. By the time he got to his late teens he was going down the wrong track.”
Donnelly was found guilty in December 2016 at Glasgow’s High Court of murder. He stabbed Jamie, from Cranhill, twice in the chest on a Sandyhills street the previous January. He tried to claim he acted in self-defence and that the knife accidentally hit Jamie twice as he tried to shield himself.
The killer – who had taken cocaine and alcohol before the attack – claimed he only brandished the knife to scare Jamie. Lord Beckett, who sentenced Donnelly to life and ordered him to serve at least 20 years behind bars, said: “As a result of your inexcusable violence, Mr Johnstone has lost his life at the age of only 21 and his family has lost him forever.”
Jamie’s friends said Donnelly had shown no remorse. He had been jailed for 27 months in 2010 for another knife attack and was also imprisoned for 30 months in 2014 over a stabbing.
In 2019, Donnelly scalded a prison officer in a “napalm” attack after being banned from New Year celebrations at Shotts jail. The thug threw boiling water mixed with sugar at a prison officer. For that offence, he was sentenced to 18 months, to run alongside his current sentence.
In 2020, he was given an extra 10 months for setting fire to his cell at HMP Grampian. Reece has been acting since he was six. He has appeared in BBC drama Waterloo Road and has done voiceovers for Nickelodeon.
In 2017, he founded the Theatre School of Scotland and Theatre College of Scotland, becoming the youngest college owner in the UK. Since then, many of his students have landed roles in Disney, Netflix, BBC, CBeebies and CBBC shows.
Through his acting work, he has visited jails for workshops with prisoners. Reece has almost 9000 followers on Instagram, where he posts about his work and personal life. He appeared in Britain’s Got Talent at the age of 15 and went on to graduate in drama from Sunderland University.
When he was 20, he set up the theatre school in Glasgow city centre and in 2018 he was a finalist in the Sunday Mail’s prestigious Young Scot Awards. In an Apprentice publicity video, he said: “Despite my age, I have all the experience, drive and personality to take my success achieved in Scotland to link up with Lord Sugar and scale that up across the rest of the UK.”
He admitted he can be guilty of neglecting administrative or accounting tasks but added: “Ultimately though that means I use my time more effectively, delegating those tasks elsewhere and performing where I’m at my best – as a leader.”
Reece said he wants to prove that “Scotland is filled with forward-thinking entrepreneurs and that we are not, in fact, a haggis-eating, kilt-wearing nation”.
An Apprentice insider said production stuff were not aware of Nico Donnelly’s background. The source said: “This is an estranged family member who Reece doesn’t know. Production weren’t aware of this due to Reece only being made aware himself recently.
“The actions of Reece’s estranged family member don’t reflect on Reece, nor is he responsible for their actions.”
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