A young impressionable boy, Jason Wilson idolised his dad, Anthony Spencer, a straight dealing, straight-talking businessman.
Boss of a dozen furniture shops by aged 22, he also ran motorcycle showrooms, later building a cooker empire, before expanding into fitness centres.
However, the fitness centres would be one expansion too far, and as Spencer's business empire began to implode, he turned to crime. He held up a bank, was arrested, and sentenced to ten years.
It was then the darker side of Spencer's life soon became evident to his son, Jason Wilson, as it dawned on him his father may be successful in business but he was also a villain.
During the years that followed, Spencer would switch business for crime, heading a multi-million counterfeiting ring, rising to the level of crime boss, then a drug importer and smuggler.
A long-term associate of the Nottingham drug lords, during the nineties Spencer would be the key supplier of amphetamine and hashish for the Nottinghamshire region.
Even so, it wouldn't last and Spencer's run would come to an end. A series of raids would uncover a multi-million pound drugs factory at a remote farmhouse and cause Spencer to flee abroad, where he settled in the Netherlands.
A year later, he was involved in a shootout in the docklands of Amsterdam, where Spencer would be seriously wounded and he would shoot dead David Royle, a rival dealer from Bradford.
Jason remembers: "The police named my dad as one of the five most wanted in the Midlands - 'Public enemy No.1' as he was referred to at the time".
Jason, then an animator at the Spielberg Studio in London, recalls how his father summoned him to his Dutch safe house, that once there he discovered his father had been shot in the chest. Even so, Spencer was defiant and without remorse.
"After the shooting there was no regret or anything," says Jason, a married father-of-two. "He was lying on his bed for a day or two. When he did pull through, the priority was his business and preserving it all.
"This set me on the path to discover why he was the way he was. I would reconstruct his past, attempt to uncover the reasons for his life of crime, determined to find an answer".
Spencer would later be arrested in Spain for possession of three tons of hashish and sentenced to seven years.
He would be extradited to the Netherlands where he would stand trial for the killing of David Royle, shot dead on May 26, 2001, during the Amsterdam shoot-out.
Spencer would claim self-defence, and given his own injuries, this was accepted, and he was cleared by a Dutch court.
On completing his Spanish sentence, Spencer returned to the UK where he returned to crime, building up a new drugs ring. However, he would be targeted by the Serious Organised Crime Squad (SOCA) and was soon after arrested and sentenced to five years.
In 2015, Spencer died of lung cancer, which Jason believes was linked to the unmoved bullet fragments that remained embedded in his lungs following the Amsterdam shoot-out.
In all Spencer had served several prison sentences, spending 25 years inside. He had made millions from crime but ultimately wasted it all. Nevertheless, his son Jason felt that his father left behind an extraordinary story, a story he would devote three years to writing.
A true-crime biography, the book charts Jason's journey growing up with his criminal dad and, ultimately, how he spent a decade working for him as his driver.
From Coventry, Jason takes the reader into Britain’s underworld, to discover a father and son bond, enduring years on the run, lengthy prison sentences, trials and murder, and finally into the heart of an international drugs ring where an existential heart beats.
'The Old Man And Me, published by Mirror Books rrp £8.99, is on sale March 3rd.
What is happening where you live? Find out by adding your postcode or visit InYourArea
