The elegant Rolls-Royce left the Berkeley Court Hotel in leafy Ballsbridge that sunny Friday evening and glided noiselessly through the traffic until it reached St Stephen's Green, where it came to a halt outside Dublin's most expensive restaurant, White's on the Green.

The driver did not park in a normal fashion, the occupants simply got out, leaving it in the middle of the busy street. As the traffic ground to a halt, three handsome "lads" strode up the granite steps and burst into the restaurant with the nonchalant air of men accustomed to creating a stir wherever they went.

They gave off an aura of money and glamour but also lurking in the background of one of them, was a powerful whiff of danger.

The first two were the Hollywood actor Patrick Duffy -- known at that time all over the world as "Bobby", JR Ewing's younger brother who had just been "killed off" in the hit television series Dallas -- and his flamboyant friend, the Irish actor Daragh O'Malley.

The third man was James "Danger" Beirne, a former Roscommon football star with a questionable past and an even more dubious future.

Duffy and O'Malley were business partners in an exciting new venture that was to be launched that night in the exclusive Dublin restaurant.

Waiting to greet them at the door of White's on the Green was Hylda Queally, a one-time teenage Irish dance champion from Ennis, Co Clare, and O'Malley's then girlfriend. In time she would go on to make a name for herself as one of the most powerful women in Hollywood, but that night, June 15, 1986, she was just delighted to be present as the city's glitterati came out to play.

Eimear Haughey, whose father Charlie was then the leader of the opposition and a man with a whiff of danger himself, chatted with Duffy while her mother, Maureen, reminisced with O'Malley about his father Donogh. Also among the guests that night was PJ Mara, the smooth-talking Fianna Fail spin doctor, and his wife Breda; the LA film director Joseph Losey, a frequent visitor to Dublin; and the colourful theatrical impresario Noel Pearson.

Although the two actors were the centre of attention, the owner of the Rolls-Royce, known to his friends by the nickname "Danger", was probably the most interesting man in the room. As he ordered more champagne and greeted the guests, he was in the throes of buying almost the entire world supply of Norwegian dried fish to sell to some customers in Africa.

Yet apart from the flashy second-hand Roller, his only assets were his friendship with O'Malley and a suburban house in Castleknock.

Originally from Elphin, Co Roscommon, the sharp- witted Beirne was, O'Malley later recalled, "a man of sublime intelligence".

He was also an excellent footballer. "If you got past 'Danger' Beirne you were entitled to your score," maintained one seasoned observer of the Roscommon county championship. And whoever gave him the nickname "Danger" had a precise idea of the life path James Beirne would follow.

In 1966, the 18-year-old Beirne was a member of the Roscommon Under-21 football panel which, after unexpected victories over Mayo and Galway and with star players like Dermot Early (the current chief of staff of the defence forces) and Joe Finnegan, sensationally defeated Kildare in the All-Ireland final in Croke Park to win the first Tim Clarke Cup.

Sent to the College of Dentistry in Dublin, he found the profession far too dull for a man of his talents and although he spent a couple of years there, he never finished the course. Instead, he established a succession of business ventures, some of which ended in mysterious fires.

"The Danger" later turned up in London in the late Seventies, where he teamed up with another Irishman to supply building workers, Irish navvies, to construction firms for what was known in the trade as "the lump". He was making a pile of money, but invariably he was broke by Monday morning after gambling it away on the weekend.

It all ended rather abruptly in 1983 when James Francis Beirne was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison for obtaining 353 gold Kruggerand coins worth the considerable sum of £96,000 from a Jersey bank with a forged bank draft.

The court was told that the defendant was "under very extreme pressure" because of gambling debts and that he feared for his life.

When he got out of prison, he decided that Ireland was a safer bet than his old London haunts. Back home he took out a bookmaker's licence and ran what was later described as an "unprofitable" business, with a shop in Dublin and a pitch at The Curragh racecourse.

With his young wife, Joan, he appeared to settle down to suburban life in Maple Green, a nice little housing development in Castleknock, after their daughter was born.

Around the same time O'Malley started the European Motion Picture Company in Dublin. Tall, debonair with a head of black hair and well-connected socially, O'Malley was laying the groundwork for the arrival in Ireland of his friend Patrick Duffy. "I started the company with Patrick Duffy, who had just been written out of Dallas," recalled O'Malley. "Duffy had an option to make three films for Lorimer Pictures and the first was to be called Dillon, which was to be shot in Ireland. We got a suite of offices in Harcourt Street. Hylda Queally was my girlfriend at the time. We had met Patrick Duffy in the United States. Everything was going fine with the Dillon project -- Duffy was coming over to Ireland and it was a very exciting venture.

"One night in the Horseshoe bar, I met Jim Beirne. He told me he was in the fish business and had a few horses in training. He said he was looking for investments in Ireland and he mentioned that he wanted to open an office in Dublin. I told him he could have one of ours which wasn't in use at the time.

"Jim loved it and you would have thought he was part of our company the way he played it up," O'Malley recalls. When Jim Beirne moved in to the office it was "like the League of Nations".

That night in White's on the Green was the high point of the European Motion Picture Company. But after the champagne went flat and the publicity died down and Patrick Duffy went back to LA, the European Motion Picture company went into a slow and unspectacular decline.

"One day I got a call from Patrick Duffy's agent, Joan Scott," recalls O'Malley. "She told me he was putting the whole Dillon project on hold -- he'd been written back into Dallas.

"'How can they do that? He's dead,' I said.

"'That's the pictures business for you,' she replied, and that's how it ended."

Meanwhile, his companion, James "Danger" Beirne, was soon at the centre of his own high drama -- and the script was something even Hollywood would find difficult to dream up.

It had started on March 18, 1986, when two executives, one a businessman, the other a banker, arrived at Dublin Airport from Norway to clinch an important business deal with a mysterious Irish tycoon. They were met at the airport and taken by helicopter to an impressive stately home deep in the midlands where a lavish house party was in full swing in what they were told was the country manor of the Irish-born Hollywood film producer James F Beirne.

The Norwegian executives were introduced to a Mr Eugene Keaveney and given to understand that he was a high-ranking executive of Northern Bank, then an off-shoot of Midland Bank, one of the biggest banks in Britain. When Keaveney told them that the man they were waiting to meet, James Beirne, was an old school friend who had "worldwide" experience with assets sufficient to cover the IR£17m business deal they were negotiating, they took him at his word.

Wind-dried herring, known as stockfish, is a prized delicacy in Norway but with its small population (4 million) and massive fish stocks, the country produced far too much for its own consumption. Oddly enough, the only other people partial to stockfish were Nigerians (population 63 million). Because it was relatively cheap and the dried fish did not rot in West Africa's hot, humid climate, there was a brisk trade between the two nations.

But then corrupt Nigerian government officials began to impose import barriers on stockfish. As the trade wilted, thousands of tons of stockfish began to pile up in the centre of the industry, Tromso, a pretty Norwegian town just over the edge of the Arctic Circle. Desperate to shift the "herring mountain", the main stockfish producers offered a commission of 15 per cent of the value of any consignment of stockfish which could be exported.

This piece of commercial intelligence soon found its way to Icelander Joe Grimson, who was living in Dublin and was conveniently acquainted with Tom Forde and "Danger" Beirne. Grimson contacted the stockfish co-op, called BJA, and said he had just the man to do the deal. And that is how the Norwegians ended up in a remote location in Co Leitrim. Although Beirne wasn't present, the reverence with which his name was treated impressed the Norwegians no end.

Later they were ferried by helicopter back to Dublin where they met Beirne at what they were told was his £4m mansion -- the location of which they couldn't later recall. They were also introduced to some of his more interesting friends, including leading Irish actor O'Malley and a man posing as Beirne's bloodstock adviser.

The Irish consortium led by Beirne agreed to buy $21m worth of stockfish in three shipments. Essentially there would be no cash payment from the Irish until after the second consignment was at sea. But the commission, the 15 per cent of the value of the cargo, would be paid "up front" before each consignment left Tromso.

On March 25, 1986, the Norwegian bank received a promissory note for $7m worth of fish, signed by Beirne and endorsed by the banker Keaveney. They instructed Hambros Bank in London to pay Tom Forde, acting on behalf of Beirne, $2.12m in commission. A bank draft for this amount was cashed in London the following day.

On May 5, a second promissory note for $4.7m was signed in London by Beirne and endorsed by Keaveney. On May 14, the commission of $1.3m was paid to Forde, again "acting" on behalf of Beirne.

On May 26, the Norwegians returned to Dublin to conclude the deal and the third promissory note to the value of $9.6m was signed.

The Norwegians were collected by Rolls-Royce and after the paperwork was signed, the Norwegians were brought next door to the headquarters of the European Motion Picture Company where they were re-acquainted with the Irish star O'Malley.

Afterwards, they all adjourned to the Horseshoe Bar in the Shelbourne Hotel to celebrate the conclusion of the deal. Bottles of champagne popped and it was as if his horse Fishy Business had just won the Ascot Gold Cup instead of the 4.30pm at Ballinrobe.

But just as the third commission of over $1m was about to be cashed, some bright spark in Hambros Bank raised an eyebrow and asked the Norwegians to check that Keaveney was indeed acting on behalf of the Northern Bank. The bank's financial controller in Belfast was somewhat surprised by this query -- as nobody at headquarters had heard of the $21m stockfish deal.

More surprising still, when he checked into the matter, he discovered that this gigantic transaction was guaranteed on behalf of the bank by the manager of its smallest branch in a rural town in the Republic.

The London bankers suggested that the promissory notes had been forged. Mr. Keaveney was suspended from his duties and an internal inquiry was ordered by the Northern Bank.

The Norwegian company BJA stopped the second shipment of stockfish somewhere in the St George's Channel.

On Monday July 21, 1986, when a Norwegian bank manager and two executives from BJA flew in to Dublin to collect payment of the millions, it was a very different welcome from their previous visits. Now there were no lavish entertainment and no helicopters or Mercedes limos.

Arriving at the Northern bank in Carrick-on-Shannon in a rented car, they were told their contact, Keaveney, was suspended and there was no money in the account they were enquiring about. The bank would not honour the promissory notes as there was "some doubt" about the bank guarantee.

It was just the first of many shocks that day.

They then met a solicitor in Dublin and when the real Beirne was tracked down, the bankers were aghast to discover that the tycoon and film mogul lived in a modest suburban house and not a £4m mansion.

The Tromso Sparbank rushed to get an injunction against Beirne, restraining him from reducing his assets in the state below $7m. Similar injunctions were taken out against his associates: Thomas A Forde, c/o Irish Permanent House, Grattan Crescent, Dublin, and Joseph Grimson, Cedarwood Gardens, Dublin.

"The background to this case was one of deceit," concluded Judge Henry Barron when it came before him. "It has all the hallmarks of a confidence trick."

By the winter of 1988, Beirne was adjudged a bankrupt in the Bankruptcy Court in Dublin and the Norwegian bank Tromso Sparbank registered a judgment for $9.6m against him and the debt carried an interest rate of 8 per cent until it was paid off -- which of course it never was.

The Norwegians also took a case against the Northern Bank, which was eventually settled and the terms never disclosed.

As far as is publicly known, no money was ever recovered by the Norwegian banks and the only consignment of stockfish to arrive in Nigeria was looted from the docks in Lagos.

The stockfish saga was over but it wasn't the end of James "Danger" Beirne.

The first inkling of his new career path and new friends came on September 3, 1992, when a man named John Francis Conlon, originally from Westport, Co Mayo, arrived at Dublin Airport from Miami, Florida. He was picked up at the airport in a van driven by Eamon Kelly. Unknown to them, Detective Inspector Martin Callinan had a fleet of vehicles, including a specially modified secret surveillance van, watching Kelly's every move.

Conlon was observed withdrawing £2,000 from a bank and they proceeded to Jury's Hotel in Ballsbridge. Conlon went into the hotel and later emerged to rejoin Kelly in the van. Two garda witnesses, Detectives Noel Clarke and Sean Butler, said they saw Eamon Kelly examining the contents of a plastic bag, which contained three packages of cocaine, and assisting Conlon in putting it in a secret compartment of the van.

A short time after driving out of Jury's Hotel, both of them were arrested.

Conlon told gardai he was working undercover for Scotland Yard. When the two men were later released on bail, Conlon disappeared.

Eamon Kelly, a well-known criminal in the city, vehemently denied that he was aware that Conlon was carrying drugs. He said he had simply collected him from the airport at the request of a friend, named in court as James Beirne, from Co Roscommon. He said Conlon told him the bag contained money "for a friend of Jim Beirne".

In 1994 Eamon Kelly, then with an address in Furry Park Road, Killester, Dublin, an established underworld figure, pleaded not guilty to the charges but was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 14 years in prison by Judge Gerard Buchanan for possession of £500,000 worth of cocaine.

Conlon was re-arrested in London two years later. He was extradited to Dublin, and pleaded guilty before Judge Cyril Kelly to the cocaine charges and was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

Curiously, Conlon again claimed to have been working for international intelligence agencies. It later emerged that officers from Scotland Yard and the FBI had been in the Dublin court observing his trial.

Beirne was living in Paddington, London where his new "associates" were a colourful collection of criminals and drug dealers. Among them was Charles Russell, a notorious London gangster, and a handsome Peruvian drug runner called Miguel Urena-Wong.

The Irishman, the Englishman and the Peruvian ordered a consignment of cocaine with a street value of stg£6.5m which was hidden in a container of parquet flooring and dispatched to Europe from Peru.

To avoid detection the consignment was routed to Estonia and then by a circuitous route back to London docks.

But the consignment was off-loaded by mistake at Felixtowe in Britain in March 1997 and the cocaine was found.

Beirne was arrested on the morning of April 28, 1997, and it would take three trials and millions in legal fees before the gang was convicted. The first trial collapsed after the jury could not agree a verdict after a record 16 days of deliberations. In the next trial, the Peruvian deliberately revealed a murder conviction against Russell and the case had to be scrapped. The trio's luck ran out in the summer of 1999 when the jury returned a guilty verdict after six days of deliberations. Russell got 20 years in jail and Beirne and his Peruvian co-defendant got 18 years each.

Although Beirne is not due to be released from high-security prison until 2017, Britain's prison service said last week: "Our records do not disclose J Beirne to be in prison custody."

Since the conviction, he was reportedly sighted at a celebration in Hyde Park, Roscommon, to mark the 40th anniversary of the county's Under-21 victory back in 2006.

People say he is living somewhere around Strokestown with a new identity. Others have him in some far more exotic locations, but like a lot of things he has been involved with, nobody knows for sure.

"Jim -- I haven't seen him in donkey's years, but I hear he's living in north London," says O'Malley. "He was one of the nicest people I have met in my life -- a gentleman, a compulsive gambler, but a gentleman."

The Dark Side of Celebrity by Liam Collins is published by Mentor Books. Price €14.99

- Liam Collins

Sunday Independent