Brian MacKinnon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brian MacKinnon (born 4 June 1963) is a Scotsman who posed as teenager Brandon Lee to get back into medical school.
MacKinnon was a medical student in the University of Glasgow but he kept failing his exams and was eventually taken off the course. According to his later interview, he felt he had to abandon his studies because of an illness. He later returned to study biological sciences, but because he failed to register, he never officially graduated.
Determined to become a physician, he adopted a persona of Canadian teenager Brandon Lee who had been orphaned and was now living with his grandmother. In fact he was still living with his mother at the family home in Whitehurst, Bearsden. He intended to retake his Highers to circumvent his academic record and 1993 enrolled in the same school he had graduated from 13 years previously - Bearsden Academy in Bearsden, a suburb of Glasgow.
He changed his appearance by taking a perm and plucking his eyebrows and forged two letters of introduction; one of which was supposed to come from '60s celebrity Marsha Hunt; so in spite of the fact that he was then 30, the teachers (many of whom had been there when he was studying there in the 1970s) and students accepted him as a 16-year-old newcomer. During the time of his imposture at the school he took an active role in pupil activities, participating in the debating society and playing the role of Lieutenant Cable in the school production of South Pacific.
The imposture lasted for two years, during which he obtained five 'A' grade Highers in 1994 in Maths, English, Biology, Chemistry and Physics. He was accepted by the University of Dundee's medical school to begin classes that autumn. He had left the Dundee University after four months due to financial problems but was accepted to begin studying again in September 1995. Shortly before he was due to re-commence his studies, he took two girls from the school to a holiday in Tenerife and after their return an anonymous phone call to the school headmaster (presumably from one of the girls) exposed him. His exposure lead to media frenzy in Scotland which lasted several weeks. The University of Dundee then withdrew its offer of re-admission to its medical degree course on the basis of his deception.
Senior academic staff at the University of Glasgow Medical School disputed the account he gave to the media of his leaving their institution in the 1980s, commenting that in their opinion he was unfit to become a doctor due to the lack of integrity he had displayed in returning to Bearsden Academy and applying to Dundee Medical School under a false identity. In a 1997 interview he said he was going to go back to medical school, even if he has to become someone else again. The same year, he published his autobiography, 'Margin Walker' on the internet. A print publication had been negotiated, but had to be abandoned as it contained libellous allegations about the two medical schools and some of the pupils he had attended Bearsden Academy with under his assumed identity in 1993 and 1994. It has since been removed from the internet too. A film of the affair was also to be made entitled 'Younger than Springtime' after one of the songs he had sung in the school production of South Pacific. He withdrew his support for the project when he discovered the production company wanted Alan Cumming, a comedy actor, to play him.
He took a case against the University of Glasgow, accusing it of mistreatment for 'pre-emptorily excluding' him from his studies, to the European Courts in 2001. Since the European Courts were not in existence at the time of his original grievance, they could not do anything to help him. In 2002, he again approached the Scottish media to report that he had been reduced to a state of poverty since his exposure and often had to sleep rough in his car at various locations around Glasgow.
