NOTORIOUS criminal Gerry Hutch went from Monk to drunk yes-terday after spending an estimated €30,000 on free booze for his guests as he celebrated his 50th birthday in style.

These exclusive Sunday World pictures show the legendary crook clearly the worse for wear at 3.30am yesterday after a three-day bender in Lanzarote. Hutch spent this week desperately trying to avoid our cameras and shouted "the paper, no" when confronted by our snapper. He then ordered his wife into a taxi before speeding off into the night. Around 250 of Hutch's friends and family flew to the sunshine island to help the criminal mastermind celebrate turning 50 on Thursday.

Despite telling gardai he has gone straight for years, the Monk clearly has plenty put aside from his various crime and business ventures. He spared no expense and is said to have personally footed the bill for the flights for 40 fam-ily members and made sure they didn't put their hands in their pockets during their stay.

The paranoid robber was so concerned that the media would crash his bash that he booked out an entire bar in Lanzarote's New Town on Thursday and Friday and employed a team of Irish bouncers to make sure there were no unwanted guests. The criminal put his credit card behind the bar of Mulligan's Irish bar, with sources saying that thirsty revellers drank more than €20,000 worth of gargle dur-ing Thursday's knees-up alone. Three security men patrolled while 'the Monk' belted out songs with three local bands.

They confiscated revellers' mobile phones and deleted footage taken of him singing Frank Sinatra's My Way. One reveller said that Hutch's wife Patricia employed a party planner for Thursday's main event, with guests able to help themselves to unlimited platters of food, while the bar sold out of pint bottles of Bulrners cider Notorious Several of Hutch's criminal cronies looked on, including his best friend Noel 'Mr Kingsize' Duggan. The 52-year-old is a notorious cigarette smuggler who paid the Criminal Assets Bureau €4m a decade ago. Gerry Hutch got his nickname because he would never get involved in selling drugs and never touched alcohol — but he took up drinking two years ago and is obviously catching up for lost time.

He drank so much on Thursday night that he had to be carried out a back entrance to get a taxi. Patricia Hutch and the couple's five children had left the party before the Monk's pals had to bun-dle him into a waiting car. One of his sons brought a bin liner full of presents in another cab to take them home for safe keeping. Despite the boozy 50th cele-brations, Hutch and his guests were eager to put their hang-overs behind them and attended a karaoke night in Mulligan's on Friday night. Hutch was the last to leave the bar at 3.30am, letting his guard down and stumbling to a taxi and was shocked to be confront-ed by our undercover team.

It can also be revealed that Hutch has effectively moved to Lanzarote full time and spends at least three weeks each month on the island. He owns a villa near the Old Town, but vacated it this week to let his three daughters stay there and instead moved him-self and his wife into a plush hotel in a village near Puerto del Carmen. It is believed that Hutch has investments in at least two pubs on the island. Around a dozen of his associ-ates travelled to Lanzarote from the UK, while people also came to the island from the Spanish mainland.

Influx At least 200 people arrived from Dublin Airport last Wednesday and Thursday, with gardai observing several crimi-nals among the travellers. Hutch paid a visit to several pubs in Puerto del Carmen on Wednesday night and told pals that he wanted to make sure that as many local businesses as possible benefitted from the influx of his guests.

It is understood that the enter-tainment and food bills for both nights topped €10,000.Hutch became the gardai's public enemy number one in January 1995 when he pulled off the heist of the century, escap-ing with €3.6m from the Brinks Allied depot in Clonshaugh. He was also behind the C1.9m Marino Mart robbery in 1987 and had to pay CAB €1.5m in 2000. He set about becoming a 'legiti-mate' businessman and famously bought a limo company in 2005.

However gardai still believe that the Monk is involved in the planning of armed robberies although younger criminals actually carry out the raids. Because of the unwanted attention he still has a strained relationship with gardai. Hutch is obviously on much better terms with the local police in Lanzarote, though. Last Thursday night an undercover Sunday World team was stopped by an unmarked police Jeep in the New Town carrying four plain-clothes officers. One of the policemen drew his gun and ordered one of our Hum ruin Up VAMIK oar bill for 250,pals at 506 birthday on holidatiste team to get out of the car and interrogated him for 20 minutes. He asked what we were doing near Hutch's 50th birthday par-ty and knew exactly who the criminal was.

After taking copies of our driving licences we were allowed to go. However, at 3am on Friday morning the same officers vis-ited our team's hotel and all the men displayed their firearms and quizzed us about what we wanted with Hutch. Brawls However, local police were kept busy by the heavy-drinking gang from Dublin's north-inner city and were called by worried bar own-ers to deal with several ugly brawls last week. Six young men who arrived on a flight on Wednesday got into a fight in the Route 66 bar in the early hours of Thursday morning and 10 police officers were on the scene within minutes.

There were no further inci-dents on Thursday or Friday, but while the local constabulary could relax, four local prosti-tutes were kept very busy. We observed at least six middle-aged men disappearing to the beach with prostitutes between 1.45am and 3am on Friday morning. A local drug deal-er operating from a strip joint near Mulligan's was also doing a brisk trade. Hutch spent yester-day at the poolside of his hotel with his wife by his side trying to get rid of his hang-over. His enjoyment of the 23-degree heat was spoiled by the fact that his attempts to frustrate our photographer were in vain.