Stephen McGhee went to America to train as a professional boxer, but ended up a hip-hop artist headlining shows, recording albums, and filming music videos on both sides of the Atlantic.

As well as carving out a new career as a rap artist, he also got himself a new name and persona, Stevie Creed – The Brooklyn Scotsman.

It’s thanks to the help and kindness he received from the Black community, in Brooklyn – who befriended and adopted him as one of their own – that Stevie triumphed over the adversity he faced on his coming-of-age odyssey to become The Brooklyn Scotsman.

Stevie performed his Brooklyn Scotsman stage show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and he also featured in a television documentary.

Now Stevie is telling his compelling story in full detail as never before in an autobiography that reveals –

* The motel he had booked into when he first arrived in Brooklyn turned out to be a home from home for ladies of the night;

* He had an Uzi machine pistol held to his head by one of the Crips gangsters and he witnessed shoot-outs and murders on the streets;

* To fool robbers that would sometimes confront him, he would carry a wallet full of Monopoly money to hand over and he once pretended to be a drugs detective from the UK to get himself out of a sticky situation with a group of gang members;

* His Scottish accent and bravado saved him on many occasions, opened doors and created opportunities;

* How he was so poverty-stricken after a music business deal went wrong; an apartment he stayed in turned out to be a crack den and when he became homeless, he slept rough on a subway platform living on one cream cheese bagel a day;

* And amongst all the drama, he bluffed his way to being hired as a male model during New York Fashion Week.

While the world erupt in protest after African-American George Floyd was murdered by a police officer, Stevie reveals how the systematic racism he witnessed in American society affected the Black friends he now calls his second family.