- guardian.co.uk, Sunday March 2 2003 01.28 GMT
- The Observer, Sunday March 2 2003
Even though he languishes in jail and his wife, children and former comrades live in exile in England, the Ulster loyalist leader's home in Belfast's Lower Shankill area remains a must-see for holidaymakers.
Three European students - two French and one Spanish - stood filming last week outside the house that once belonged to the Ulster Defence Association terrorist.
Just over a month after Adair's notorious 'C' Company faction was routed by the mainstream UDA terror group, Number 100 Boundary Way sits empty.
The 12ft-high security gates at the back of Adair's mini-citadel, fortified to protect Adair from both his republican and loyalist enemies, are now left unlocked.
In his concrete slab-covered garden, wind chimes click in the breeze. His water fountain is overflowing and a Chinese statue stands beside the wooden fence.
Inside the house the kitchen has been stripped bare, the only sign of human life a half-empty bottle of fetid milk in the sink.
Although the house belongs to Adair the electricity and water have been turned off. The leather furniture, the top of the range hi-fi, widescreen televisions and tropical fish tank have all gone.
All imagery of Adair - the shaven head, the muscular frame, the baseball hat, the earrings and the tattoos - has been erased from the walls of the Lower Shankill. It is as if he never existed.
His opponents and the community workers are try ing to restore some semblance of normality to a former war zone.
But the tourists keep coming and the jailed loyalist commander continues to haunt the area like a spectre. Marie from Dieppe, who works in Belfast, says she and her boyfriend Frank have come to the Lower Shankill 'to see the murals and find out where Johnny Adair lived'.
Frank seems bewildered by the masked loyalist terrorists on the walls and the painted red, white and blue kerbstones.
Denis Cunningham, a community worker who has the task of revitalising the loyalist enclave, admits that Adair, even in jail and defeat, remains a tourist attraction.
'Since the feud ended, the taxis taking people on terror tours have been coming to Boundary Way to see where Johnny lived. They would never have done that before the changes,' he says.
By 'changes' he means the humiliation of Adair's faction, who were banished from the Lower Shankill at gunpoint. They include Adair's wife Gina, his three children and dozens of their allies, including John White, a UDA founding member.
Cunningham points to a newly painted gable wall - a giant picture of a Kalashnikov-clutching Grim Reaper standing over gravestones with the names of Belfast republicans on them once graced it.
'It's our version of demilitarisation. We want to replace the militaristic murals but keep those that relate to loyalist culture,' he says.
Just a few yards from Adair's home is the Big Brother house, a community centre that was a meeting point for his 'C' Company comrades and where The Observer met the loyalist commander shortly before Christmas. Back then Adair was defiant, denouncing the UDA leadership as 'gangsters and bully boys'. He reserved most of his venom for John 'Grugg' Gregg, the UDA assassin who almost killed Sinn Fein's president, Gerry Adams, in 1984. Adair's unit murdered Gregg last month - a killing that prompted the UDA leadership to launch an all-out attack that ended in triumph.
Today the Big Brother house is no longer dominated by menacing young men in their teens and twenties. On Friday afternoon it was packed with children playing pool, darts, video games and reading books.
Cunningham points to the three gaming machines in the main room. 'They're to go as well, they are not appropriate for a place used by children.'
Cunningham says 14 families have returned to the area and more want to be re-housed. Hundreds were driven out during inter-loyalist feuds in the last three years.
Security grills are coming off a nearby community house used as a headquarters by Adair and his comrades until last month's rout. Arches covered in pro-UDA and Adair graffiti have been dismantled. The atmosphere in the area is reminiscent of an Eastern bloc capital after the fall of communism.
One reminder of the past, though, comes into the Big Brother house for a cup of tea. Mo Courtney was one of Adair's allies who switched sides a few days before the UDA leadership invaded and re-took the Lower Shankill.
When The Observer mentions that the house is different from the last time we were here, Courtney simply says: 'Aye, some change.'
Outside a black cab drives past the entrance to Boundary Way and several more tourists take snaps of the street where 'Mad Dog' used to live. Johnny Adair is not just history - he has become part of Belfast's more dubious heritage.
