Happy down in the dumps

Above, Scott Neeson in Cambodia with one of the children he has helped

Unfortunately, as Meg Ryan waded through the stinking pit of a Cambodian garbage tip - rancid black gunge seeping between her pretty manicured toes and the noxious whiff of putrefying rubbish searing her throat and making her eyes water - it became glaringly obvious this was one role she'd seriously underestimated.

Confronted by the apocalyptic misery of the children for whom the sprawling Phnom Penh dump spells home, the beautiful American movie star had to ask herself what kind of hell on Earth her Edinburgh-born host Scott Neeson had brought her to.

Scott, a one-time Hollywood high-flier whose job saw him mingle with superstars and which had rewarded him with all the privileges and excesses of Los Angeles life, had pretty much the same astonished reaction the first time he clapped eyes on the misery of one of the most shocking places on Earth.

As a top boss with one of the world's biggest movie companies, the former Gracemount lad had a $3.5 million home with the ubiquitous LA swimming pool, a fleet of sporty cars in the driveway, a 36ft yacht, Harrison Ford for a friend and Cindy Crawford next door.

Here, though, in the grotesque filth of this Cambodian tip where children who'd been dumped like rubbish by parents unwilling or unable to care for them busily scrabbled for scraps of food and junk, the man who had it all became the man who threw it all away to live on a dump.

Within months he'd traded the lavish lifestyle and glitz of movie premieres for a shack in the shadow of the Phnom Penh dump. And from there he set about launching the Cambodian Children's Fund. Originally supporting around 50 youngsters, it now provides a vital crutch for 1000 destitute garbage-dwelling scavenging children and their families, giving them access to education, health care, cheap food and employment they previously could never have hoped for.

Now, eight years since he quit Hollywood for one of the most desolate places in the world, Scott is set to spread the charity's wings with a UK branch and a push for more support from his homeland. He even harbours hopes that he can one day bring some of the children from Phnom Penh's Stung Mean tip back to his childhood home, to sing and dance at the Edinburgh Festival.

But even the delights of the Festival are a long way from Hollywood - and further still from the diabolical sight of the Phnom Penh dump, as Meg Ryan would find out.

"Meg came out with these lovely white clothes," recalls Scott, who spent his early years in St Katharine's Crescent, Gracemount, before his family emigrated to Australia.

"The kids from the garbage dump were all climbing over her, they'd never seen anyone who looked like her.

"Another big Hollywood visitor was Hugh Jackson, a wonderful guy," adds Scott. "He came over three years ago with his wife, Deborah, and their kids. They wanted their kids to see the other side of life.

"They are growing up as Hugh Jackson's children, that could be a toxic environment for kids, you have to look out for them to make sure they understand how lucky they are.

"They were adamant that their kids saw something of real life and it doesn't get more real than this."

They, like Scott, who was on his first visit to the dump, were left reeling by the scenes of depravity. "I've always regarded myself as a Scot, coming from a good, old-fashioned working-class background," he says. "Then I came here and realised how well off that image of 'working class' was compared to how people live here."

His parents, Colin - who worked locally with British Aerospace - and Elizabeth, born and raised in the Royal Mile, decided to move to Australia when he and his brother, Norman, were still children.

"My mum was pure Edinburgh," he grins. "She was always the one sitting crying in the corner when the Edinburgh Tattoo came on television.

"I've always felt Edinburgh was where our family roots were - most of my relations live in Edinburgh. When we had the premiere of Braveheart at Stirling Castle, I arranged for my relations to come along - they loved it."

Scott had worked his way up to become marketing president of 20th Century Fox International, on first-name terms with A-list stars such as Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson. His job involved working alongside superstars like Harrison Ford, and on blockbuster films like Titanic, X-Men and Ice Age. "My pride and joy, though, was Braveheart," he smiles.

It was a $1m-a-year lifestyle that afforded him whatever luxury he craved. He witnessed first hand the abuses and waste that comes from high living. "There are actresses who won't do anything till they know the thread count of the sheets in their hotel room," he groans, remembering glitzy parties washed down with the finest champagne and private jets on 24-hour call.

"No-one ever said 'no' to anything, even extreme demands and lifestyle, it was always 'yes'."

He was waiting to start a new, even better, job with Sony Pictures in 2003 when he decided to take time out to travel in Asia. It took him by chance to Phnom Penh - and the horrific sight of the Stung Mean rubbish dump. "I found 2500 children living there. It made the worst slum you can imagine look glamorous by comparison," Scott, 52, recalls.

"There was danger from the garbage trucks themselves to disease. And the children were so young - I met this little kid who'd been left by his mother, she'd remarried and the new husband didn't want a child, so she just left him.

"Cambodia has some of the highest rates of child prostitution, child trafficking and infant mortality in the world, and some of the children at the very bottom of all of that were coming to live on the garbage dump.

"Even now, eight years later, there are things that send me reeling, so dreadful they're almost unspeakable."

Such as the four-year-old girl and her mother found horribly disfigured from acid in an attack orchestrated by her father's girlfriend, and the boys he witnessed dancing with glee after finding a dead dog on the dump which they planned to skin and eat.

For them, the Cambodian Children's Fund offers a chance to turn their heartbreaking situation around. It runs health and schooling programmes, provides access to work and helps in the fight against child prostitution and trafficking.

Making the switch from Hollywood to garbage dump couldn't have been more dramatic, agrees Scott. "I was sure I was doing the right thing, but people around me weren't. I remember my dad being very upset at the time.

"One of the perks of my old job was that he was regularly flown to LA to visit me. He wasn't very happy that I was ending it to go off to Cambodia.

"Now, he comes over here regularly, sits with the children and helps get them to school in the morning.

"And he's the proudest man in the world."

For further details, go to www.cambodianchildrensfund.org.

Breadth of vision

AMONG the Cambodian Children's Fund workers at the Phnom Penh dump is former NHS worker Patrick Mckinlay.

He quit his Edinburgh home in 2008 after stumbling across Scott's work online. Today he's the Cambodian Children's Fund donor relations manager based in Cambodia.

"It's never ever dull," he says. "I love the breadth of vision, the ambition CCF has for the children and the way it gives them a chance to shape their lives."

A former RAF serviceman who'd seen action in the first Gulf War, Patrick had been working with NHS Scotland delivering training programmes for staff and later assessment and appraisal schemes when he first learned about Scott's work.

He started by sponsoring a child but soon the urge to become more involved took over and he embarked on a two-year career break to visit. He ended up staying.

"I've been here almost three years now and probably for a good while to come too. Why's it important? I suppose it's about giving people a chance, no matter what their level or problems - a man's a man for a' that," he adds.

"If there's a better way of spending time than helping folk to get on their feet and have a chance of a decent life of their own and escape the utterly crushing horrors of life beneath just about everything, I don't know it."

The charity currently supports around 460 children - most from scavenger or grim family backgrounds - in four residential centres. It also operates satellite schools for around 300 other children and a maternal care programme that has slashed maternal and infant deaths.

It also operates what is understood to be Cambodia's only free medical centre and earlier this week opened a dental clinic using equipment gifted by UK dental charity Dentaid.

"There's a nutrition programme for kids who are simply malnourished which brings in about 150 or so of these wee souls each evening," says Patrick.