How I took the mickey out of President Bush, and other Holyrood secrets, by Jack McConnell

Published on Wednesday 26 May 2010 23:15

AS PRESIDENTIAL mishaps go, it became known as the "Tartan Tumble" and was one of many gaffes attributed to George W Bush.

• Jack McConnell greets George and Laura Bush ahead of the US president's cycling mishap. Picture: Getty Images

Now, five years after the then US president mowed down a Scottish policeman with his mountain bike, former first minister Jack McConnell has revealed that the bruised and bandaged leader of the free world received the appropriate ribbing.

The incident occurred after Mr Bush went cycling in the hills around Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire, where the G8 summit was being held in 2005. He crashed into a policeman, who was knocked out and required hospital treatment.

Afterwards, Mr McConnell said to the president that he had managed in just two hours to do what for two days 2,000 demonstrators had been trying unsuccessfully to achieve: knock out a policeman.

The comic exchange was among the "special moments" the former first minister enjoyed during his six years in office and which he recalled in an interview for BBC Alba, Cuide ri Cathy, to be broadcast next week.

He also explained why he cried when he was happy, how he was turfed out of Bute House, the official residence of the First Minister, overnight following his defeat by the SNP, and how he was convinced by two Dublin smokers to pioneer the smoking ban in Scotland.

DUBYA'S BIKE CRASH

Speaking of the president's cycling mishap, Mr McConnell revealed that Mr Bush apologised to him. He said: "Because I was First Minister, I had to stand at the bottom of the steps for the planes as the leaders came in and then take them along the red carpet and put them on a helicopter. The last one to arrive was George Bush. So we're walking along the red carpet and he said, 'I've got my mountain bike with me and I'm going to go up in the hills at the back of Gleneagles Hotel if the weather's good'.

"That night I asked him, 'How did the mountain biking go?' He said, 'I'm all bandaged up', and he showed me his back and he had a big red mark. I said, 'What's happened?' and he said, 'We were up in the hills, me with two of my security men, three of us on bikes coming down the hill at great speed and we turned a corner and this policeman was standing in the middle of the path and I've gone right into him, over the top of my handlebars and he got knocked out and he's in hospital in Perth'.

"So I said, 'Mr President, I've had two days of 2,000 anarchists in Edinburgh trying to knock out a Scottish policeman and they never managed it, and you were here for two hours and you did it'. He said, 'I'm really sorry'. One of the things about being First Minister was, there were a lot of special moments with people that I would never have had a chance to meet normally. That was just one of them."

THE SMOKING BAN

Mr McConnell also tells interviewer Cathy MacDonald that he has a habit of crying in public and how he decided to implement the smoking ban in Scotland after consulting two old drinkers in a Dublin pub.

Mr McConnell, a former smoker himself, said he was initially against banning smoking in public places and feared the prospect of police arresting those who flouted it. He only changed his mind after a secret tour of pubs in the Irish capital, where a ban was in place.

He said: "I went in to this pub and these two old guys were sitting and they both said that they had been heavy smokers, had been against the ban and had been really angry about the ban, but now believed that it was the right thing to have done and that they had gone from 20 a day down to five or six.

"And at that point, I thought 'Nah, this is the right thing to do, we've just got to do this. We've got to be brave and get on with it'. The thing about smoking was that the peer pressure to start smoking, which ultimately is ultra-addictive, in public spaces, when socialising, was massive.

"And the peer pressure to have one when you were trying to stop was massive, too. So I think you'll find less and less young people starting and more people giving up, and over a decade or so we will see really quite dramatic change."

He added: "I wasn't really in favour of the smoking ban before I made the decision. I thought it was going too far to have a complete ban."

TEARS IN PUBLIC

Talking of his tears in public, the former Motherwell and Wishaw MSP also said: "I tend to get emotional at happy things rather than sad things. It runs in the family, I think. It's very embarrassing."

&#149 Cuide ri Cathy with Jack McConnell will be broadcast on BBC Alba on Monday at 10pm.