Thomas Dougal "Tam" Paton (5 August 1938 – 8 April 2009) was a pop group manager, most notably of the Scottish boy band the Bay City Rollers, and convicted child sex offender.
He was responsible for beginning a myth that the band members preferred drinking milk to alcohol, in order to cultivate a clean, innocent image.
"[1] In 1979, Paton was fired as manager, and subsequently developed a multi-million-pound real estate business based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
[citation needed] In the late 1970s Paton managed the band Rosetta Stone, and had a romantic relationship with the guitarist Paul Lerwill, who later changed his name to Gregory Gray.
[2] In his autobiography I Ran With The Gang: My Life In And Out Of The Bay City Rollers (2018), Alan Longmuir suggests Paton benefited from friendships with politicians, police officers and senior members of the justiciary, and wrote of his fears that more will emerge about Paton that will show “his depravity ran deeper than we currently know”.
The friends in low places included scum that would slash your face for a bag of Tam’s finest Colombian cocaine.
[6] In 2003, he was accused of trying to rape the Bay City Rollers guitarist Pat McGlynn, in a hotel room in 1977.
[9] In the documentary Secrets of the Bay City Rollers (2023):[10][11] Presenter Nicky Campbell uncovers a near inconceivably sadistic and far-reaching network of cruelty that the young men comprising Scottish pop rock band Bay City Rollers were forced to endure – as their manager Tam Paton controlled every aspect of their lives, sexually and emotionally abused them and facilitated their abuse by others.
[12]In 2023, Gert Magnus, who had lived at a children's home, claimed that Paton blackmailed him into taking other youngsters to his house so he could sexually abuse them.