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By LETTICE BROMOVSKY, NEWS REPORTER
Published: | Updated:
A drunken dad who turned up at a luxury five-star hotel wearing a kilt he had found on a park bench was mistaken for Olympic legend Sir Chris Hoy and handed a free stay and food worth around £600, a court heard.
Gary Towsey, 43, arrived at the plush Bonham Hotel in Edinburgh dressed in full Highland regalia, including a kilt, jacket and shoes — after stumbling across the outfit abandoned in a city park.
Hotel staff allegedly believed the dad-of-six was Sir Chris, who was due to attend a function at a city centre hotel with his wife later that evening.
Towsey, from Liverpool, was later arrested and charged with fraud and with resetting the stolen clothing he was wearing during the incident in September 2023.
However, during his trial on Wednesday, prosecutors at Edinburgh sheriff court accepted his not-guilty pleas to both the fraud charge and an offence of reset.
Peter Finnon, the fiscal depute, told the court: ‘This matter came to the attention of the police after an incident at a hotel where [Towsey] was misidentified as an individual by hotel staff.
‘At that time he was wearing the kilt, the shoes and the jacket and he was spoken to by the police days later in relation to those items he said he had taken from a park bench in the Meadows.’
Gary Towsey, 43, arrived at the plush Bonham Hotel in Edinburgh dressed in full Highland regalia, including a kilt, jacket and shoes
A drunken dad who turned up at a luxury five-star hotel wearing a kilt he had found on a park bench was mistaken for Olympic legend Sir Chris Hoy
Hotel staff allegedly believed the dad-of-six was Sir Chris, who was due to attend a function at a city centre hotel with his wife later that evening
He added that the Highland outfit had been stolen from Davison dress hire store in the Bruntsfield area, but stressed there was ‘no suggestion’ the items had originally been taken by Towsey.
The court heard the kilt, jacket and shoes were worth a combined £610.
Defending, Catriona Logan said Towsey had made a ‘foolish drunken mistake’ after discovering the clothing left unattended on the bench.
She told the court he waited to see if anyone returned for the items before deciding to put them on.
‘There was full recovery of that and at the time [he] was suffering with a battle with alcoholism,’ the lawyer added.
The hearing was told Towsey has since been sober for six months and is now working as a kitchen porter at a sports events company.
Sheriff Frank Gill said he was prepared to ‘deal with the matters by way of a financial penalty’.
Towsey was ordered to pay a total of £280.
