My Old School
2022 - 12 - 30
My Old School: The incredible story of how a 32-year-old man fooled ... (The Independent)
Documentary airing on BBC Two tells the story of Brian MacKinnon, AKA Brandon Lee.
The truth was that he was still living with his mother but referred to her as his “grandmother”, a lie that she went along with. “I simply kept my head down, looked shy and boyish and that’s all I could do – and it presented no problems at all.” Arguably, the documentary’s most shocking revelation is real-life footage of MacKinnon in the school’s production of South Pacific, in which he sang “Younger Than Springtime” and kissed the 16-year-old girl playing his love interest. In late 1995, BBC Scotland broke the news of his deception, igniting a media storm that resulted in him losing his place at Dundee. “Do something that is just so out there that no one is even going to dream you would think of doing that.” MacKinnon achieved the unimaginable in 1993 when he called Bearsden Academy posing as his father, for whom he had fabricated a professorship in Zoology. If Mackinnon wanted to be a doctor, he would have to go back to school another way. When he fell ill in his first year, he failed his exams and was forced to drop out. He told his peers that his mother had been a world-touring opera singer before she died in a car crash. Despite failing to provide a birth certificate as is the typical requirement, he was admitted to the school after providing two references. He was, to all intents and purposes, a bright young pupil with straight As and a starring role in the school musical. “If you really want to prevail, do the unimaginable,” MacKinnon, now 59, advises in the documentary. MacKinnon agreed to be interviewed for the documentary but did not want to appear on camera; Cumming lip-syncs his speech. In 1993, Brandon Lee enrolled as a student in Bearsden Academy, a secondary school within an affluent Glasgow suburb.
My Old School: The true story of Brandon Lee at Bearsden Academy (Metro)
The story of Brandon Lee, real name Brian McKinnon, is explored in My Old School, a documentary film about Scotland's greatest hoax.
He was getting straight As in his coursework and seemed on the path to becoming a doctor. It was generally accepted that, while his behaviour was weird and disconcerting, it wasn’t illegal – Brian was simply a figure of curiosity. ‘He stood in front of us, clearly a man in his thirties, and convinced us he was a 16 year old boy,’ he tells Metro.co.uk. Well, the man himself puts it down to his unique and special abilities. With the help of his mother, Brian made it into the highly prestigious Glasgow University medical school. He struck up a friendship with the quiet and meek Stefen Haddon, who had been victim to a string of racist bullying. Brian knew it was a huge risk, particularly as some of the teachers had taught him in their lessons in his original run at the school. He even held house parties for his new pals, with kids from across Bearsden Academy piling down to Brandon’s grandmother’s house for a knees-up. In a bid to adopt the fresh-faced and artless look of a teenager, he lost three stone in weight, giving him a tall, rakish appearance. In English Literature class, he leaned into the critical readings of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, talking about salesman Willy Loman’s delusions of his thirty-something son still being in high school. After she was suddenly killed in a tragic car accident, Brandon ws sent by his dad to live with his grandmother in her council house in Bearsden, a well-to-do suburb just outside of Glasgow. Brandon started to climb the slippery social ladder of school, establishing himself as the class brainbox.
My Old School: The incredible story of how a 32-year-old man fooled ... (The Independent)
In 1993, Brandon Lee enrolled as a student in Bearsden Academy, a secondary school within an affluent Glasgow suburb. He was, to all intents and purposes, ...
The truth was that he was still living with his mother but referred to her as his “grandmother”, a lie that she went along with. “I simply kept my head down, looked shy and boyish and that’s all I could do – and it presented no problems at all.” Arguably, the documentary’s most shocking revelation is real-life footage of MacKinnon in the school’s production of South Pacific, in which he sang “Younger Than Springtime” and kissed the 16-year-old girl playing his love interest. In late 1995, BBC Scotland broke the news of his deception, igniting a media storm that resulted in him losing his place at Dundee. “Do something that is just so out there that no one is even going to dream you would think of doing that.” MacKinnon achieved the unimaginable in 1993 when he called Bearsden Academy posing as his father, for whom he had fabricated a professorship in Zoology. If Mackinnon wanted to be a doctor, he would have to go back to school another way. When he fell ill in his first year, he failed his exams and was forced to drop out. He told his peers that his mother had been a world-touring opera singer before she died in a car crash. Despite failing to provide a birth certificate as is the typical requirement, he was admitted to the school after providing two references. He was, to all intents and purposes, a bright young pupil with straight As and a starring role in the school musical. “If you really want to prevail, do the unimaginable,” MacKinnon, now 59, advises in the documentary. MacKinnon agreed to be interviewed for the documentary but did not want to appear on camera; Cumming lip-syncs his speech. In 1993, Brandon Lee enrolled as a student in Bearsden Academy, a secondary school within an affluent Glasgow suburb.
Brian MacKinnon was 31 when he pretended to be a pupil to fool his ... (MSN UK)
After the curtain closed and the thunderous applause of parents had petered out, Bearsden Academy headmaster, Mr McLeod, singled Brandon out especially for his ...
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