Remember he got put in hospital a few years back, got his legs smashed up. He was supposedly attacked at random, but I always thought his story sounded a bit fishy. I bet it was the bookies.

Gareth will know more but I was under the impression it was a punishment beating rather than coincidence?

When he was shot in 92 that was by the IRA, and that was a punishment shooting.

Im not sure about the baseball bat incident in 2004.

I love his take on the British/Irish Protestant/Catholic situation :

Magee says. 'But I don't care about religion. It has never affected my point of view once. I say this to most people; it is not my fault where my dad put his cock. It is not my problem. If I was born in England, I'd be English. If I was born in Canada, I'd be Canadian. I class myself as Irish, yes, but it's an accident of birth. Whether someone is Protestant or Catholic doesn't matter to me. The sooner people get that into their heads the better.'

Eamonn is a decent guy, likes a joke and a laugh. Ian McNeily posted some bits and peices about meeting with Magee to discuss a biography a few years back and some of the comments are classic.

Both the shooting and beating were in a way paramilitary, the shooting was an outright punishment attack and I think was claimed at the time as the work of the INLA (i think). The beating, I'm not going to go into on an open forum (sorry)

I like Magee he is a straight up guy, with him a spade is a spade, though he does tend to scare people that don't know him