Interview: Gavin Bain, rap imposter and writer

• Photograph by Graham Jepson

Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd probably persuaded themselves that the fib they chose to tell was the kind of white lie that would harm no one, least of all themselves.

But it was to break up their friendship, alienate countless other friends, humiliate the British music industry and drive one of them to the brink of suicide.

Bain and Boyd were two normal lads from Dundee who met at college in 1999 and quickly bonded over, among other things, their love of music, rap in particular. Before long they were holding impromptu rap battles in the college canteen, so when they saw an ad placed by Polydor for open auditions in London asking, "Are YOU the next Eminem?" they promptly hopped on a bus down to the Big Smoke.

However, their dream of performing in front of record industry executives was not the success they had hoped for. They were laughed at, and told that with their Scottish accents they sounded like a rap version of The Proclaimers (this was long before the Reid twins had assumed National Treasure status).

Bain and Boyd were humiliated. And so they set in motion an intricate plan that consumed them for the next few years, as they conned their way into the upper echelons of the music business.

Now 27-year-old Gavin Bain has penned a book about the duo's experiences – California Schemin' – which has already been optioned for a movie, with Irvine Welsh hired to write the screenplay. Boyd, a married father-of-one, wants nothing to do with the book or with Bain, who is still living in London and pursuing a career in music.

I meet Bain on a wet London afternoon in a soulless bar, an excruciatingly bad soundtrack of Eighties soft rock playing in the background. It's a significant place, though. It's the venue where Bain revealed to the world (or, at least, to the small assembled crowd) that he was not, as he had led the music industry to believe, Brains McLoud, an ostentatious rapper from the sunny shores of California, but Gavin Bain, a quiet musician from the rainy streets of Dundee.

He's a fairly cheery chap, but his tone throughout is one of deep regret. "After that audition we were just heartbroken and let down by the industry," he says with a sigh. "It was that stupid pride that was ticking in my head all the time, that f*** you I'm going to prove you wrong. So it was a case of; rethink things and do something different, or go out and prove a massive point." Just a pair of scruffy 18-year-old boys at the time, they opted for the latter path. Britain, they reasoned, is dazzled by America, and by Americans. As Scots, they were laughed out of their audition. As Americans, they decided, they would be invited into the boardrooms of the biggest record companies in the world. They had the talent; it was their nationality that was holding them back.

And so the pair became Americans. It took them three years to fully implement their plan, but it was so carefully thought out that it seemed foolproof. They spent two solid months rehearsing the accent and watching classic con movies. They were meticulous, studying American actors, copying their mannerisms and mimicking the intonations of their voices. They created new personas, new background stories and gave their act a name: Silibil 'n' Brains. As Scots they were too modest, too meek. Instead they modelled themselves on such outspoken US comics as Chris Tucker and Jim Carrey.

New characters perfected, and in their early twenties by now, they began their campaign to woo the record companies. And this time it was different. The execs were charmed by the American accents and confidence, and impressed by the pair's talent, which was no longer obscured by their Scottish accents. Within weeks they signed a record deal with Sony BMG worth nearly 200,000. Within months they were enjoying all the trappings of being the British music industry's Next Big Thing: clothing endorsements, groupies, parties with Madonna, studio access and ready cash.

Everyone bought it, everyone was fooled, perhaps because there's no lie more difficult to detect than the one you want to believe. "People are very gullible," says Bain. "They buy into stories. To be a great liar you need to be a fantastic listener. You have to understand what your objective is behind the lie, what you're protecting. If you're lying for some small thing you're not really going to lie that well, but if you're lying because you need to, you'll do it better. Fear is an unbelievable component. I believe that you can do anything if you've got the right ingredients: desire, ambition and a hell of a lot of fear.

"And once you've been lying for so long you become like a lie detector. You can read all the signals. They're magnified. You're sitting among a bunch of people who are just selling you bulls***. You can see the lies on their faces. It's so apparent and you think, 'I'm being lied to every single day here'.

"And that just made me want to lie more, to just spin more lies. I wanted to bring the industry down."

• Bain, left, and Boyd in a publicity shot

That may have been the initial goal, and indeed it may have remained a goal, but just as they were keen to humiliate the industry that had once humiliated them, Bain and Boyd were also keen to make the most of the perks it offered while they could. Only somehow they couldn't enjoy their new life to the full. Living the lie was exhausting, and they were beginning to forget where they ended and their characters began.

"I ended up getting to do everything I wanted to do, but not really as me," says Bain, picking at some invisible speck on the table.

"As soon as I believed that I was playing that character, nothing else really mattered. But that's where I went a bit crazy because a big part of telling a great lie is believing what you're doing and becoming that character. And the hardest thing for me was coming out of that character. If anything, being Gavin Bain was causing more problems for me than anything else. That's what my insecurities were telling me at the time.

"But as this character everything was just going right. It was a winner. A couple of weeks of being him and you've got a record deal, a publishing deal, endorsements. I fell so in love with that character."

And for nearly five years, it was that character who went on MTV, who met Bain's idol Eminem, who freestyled backstage with Alicia Keyes and hobnobbed with Madonna. It was Brains McLoud who drank the champagne, romanced the groupies and squandered the money on drink and drugs.

And it was Brains who had the gall to pull it all off. Bain was merely the Jekyll to his Hyde. When the duo's management rep called to say that he'd landed them a gig supporting D12 – the biggest rap group in the world at the time – on the UK leg of their tour, Bain's heart sank. It should have been a dream come true, but Brains had once boasted that Silibil 'n' Brains and D12 "go way back".

When they first met D12, in front of their entire management, at a soundcheck at Brixton Academy, Bain's heart was in his mouth. This was it. This was the moment that their cover would be blown. But then Brains kicked in. He swaggered up to the band, embracing them like old friends, convincing even them that they'd partied together some dark, drunken night in the past.

"We were f***ing magicians at times," he laughs, as he recalls the incident. "When it came to sink or swim time, we were Olympian swimmers."

"By now," he writes in California Schemin', "I wanted to remain Brains McLoud for the rest of my life. No longer was he just a caricature through whom I could become famous, but rather he was the person I felt myself truly to be. He had everything I didn't: the gift of the gab, the skyscraping confidence. He had (US rapper] Proof's cell-phone number. He wrote better songs, and certainly performed them with more conviction. He was better-looking, more popular with girls. He was good on the drink, not maudlin. He loved a ruck, and could handle himself. His wit was quick, his creativity boundless. He was invulnerable, and now he was on the brink of superstardom. Nothing could touch him."

The lie was exhilarating, but ultimately all-consuming. They were stuck in a Catch 22. They were chasing stardom, but knew that with exposure would come the unravelling of their lies as half of Dundee got on the blower to the tabloids. They never released a record, but spent a heady few years enjoying everything that comes with being "almost famous".

They wanted to "keep the party going" but they were also afraid. To reveal the truth could be to ruin their careers. And when they combed their record contracts, which they had signed without reading, Bain and Boyd found a clause which said they could be held liable if they were found to have concealed information about themselves that could reduce their commercial value.

They were officially in over their heads. But for Bain in particular, he was caught between hating the lie and loving his new life and the person he'd become. Raised in South Africa, he enjoyed an idyllic early childhood. His Scottish parents were well off, but when his businessman father lost everything they moved to Motherwell when Bain was ten. He was bullied at school. He suffered from insomnia and night terrors.

And, like a number of conmen before him, including famous US trickster Frank Abagnale, he watched as his once powerful father, the provider, lost everything and became helpless. His confidence was non-existent.

"This whole story is about confidence," he says. "I've only been confident in this character because I know that he doesn't have the failings that I have. And I've been able to come away from that and be at ease with all my problems. While I killed off that character I was able to carry on with his confidence. I left the negative things of him behind and mixed the good things with the real me, creating this new character – the person I am now. My years of being someone else mean that I've realised exactly who I am. It's such a letdown to know that you can just put a cloak of confidence on and people will look at you differently. It's a very f***ing shallow world."

Incredibly, no one ever uncovered the lie. People came close, but Silibil 'n' Brains became so adept at fibbing that they were able to smoothly take control of the situation if they were on the brink of being caught out. When someone was asking one of them too many questions the other would jump in, or cause a scene by knocking over a glass of water in a meeting. They'd lead conversations, making sure that they were the ones asking the questions. Initially, getting caught out had been a constant fear, but what they hadn't bargained for was that the real difficulties would come when they started getting away with it.

Eventually, on the brink of releasing their first single, Silibil 'n' Brains imploded. "It all ended with me and Bill," Bain explains.

"Lying 24/7, we began to hate each other and hate the characters we were playing. And it became a competition to see whose character was coolest, who had the most groupies. All those things that we were parodying, we became. All the s*** we would talk in Dundee every night about the people we hated, the next thing you know we were partying with them."

One monumental argument between the pair was the end. Boyd's girlfriend was pregnant and he was fed up with living a lie. He packed his bags and went back to Dundee. It was the last Bain saw of him.

Left behind to explain to the record executives that Silibil 'n' Brains were no more, there was no need for him to unveil the lie – the dream had died all by itself.

But he did reveal it, in the back room of this dark pub.

Following the pair's split, Bain went into a spiral of depression, becoming increasingly reliant on drugs and alcohol, and even attempting suicide. Heavily in debt, he found himself working as an escort before he managed to pull his life back together. He now plays with a punk rock band, Hopeless Heroic, and it was during one of their gigs that he made the announcement, setting free at last the character of Brains McLoud.

So what's he got to show for it all? The money has gone. The dream is over. There are a lot of regrets. Did Bain and Boyd really need to tell the lie in the first place? Could they have revealed the truth earlier and gotten away with it? Had they done things differently, might they now be sitting in a hot tub with a bevy of babes lighting cigars with 100 bills?

Who knows. But what's left behind is a heck of a story to tell the grandchildren; about the time two pasty lads from Dundee pulled off the ultimate con, lived like rock royalty and made a fool out of the music industry, proving that not only can you bulls*** the ultimate bullsh***ers, but that it can sometimes pay off to tell a little grey lie on your CV.

California Schemin' is published by Simon and Schuster, priced 12.99.

This article was first published in The Scotsman on April 03, 2010