A man mistaken by staff at a five-star hotel for the Olympic cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy was accused of fraudulently obtaining room and board worth hundreds of pounds.
Gary Towsey was wearing full Highland dress that had previously been stolen from a local hire shop when he walked into the upmarket Bonham Hotel in Edinburgh in September 2023.
Towsey, 43, was “misidentified” as the star by a hotel receptionist and was alleged to have gone on to obtain board and lodging worth about £600 without paying. It is believed Sir Chris and his wife were due to attend at the city centre hotel for a function that evening.
Towsey was later arrested and charged by police with the hotel fraud and to resetting the kilt, jacket and shoes he was wearing at the time. But when the case called for trial at Edinburgh sheriff court on Wednesday, prosecutors accepted his not guilty plea to the fraud charge and a plea of guilty to 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.”
Finnon told the court the Highland regalia had been stolen from the Davison dress hire outlet in the city’s Bruntsfield area, adding: “There is no suggestion [Towsey] stole the items but he had found them on the park bench.”
The court heard that the kilt, jacket and shoes, worth a combined £610, had been recovered.
Towsey was wearing clothes previously stolen from Davison Kilt Hire
ALEXANDER LAWRIE
Catriona Logan, Towsey’s defence agent, said her client was a father of six and had made “a foolish drunken mistake” after finding the bag with the kilt, jacket and shoes on the bench.
Logan said: “He waited around for a while to see if anyone came back, but when they didn’t he’d had a considerable amount to drink and made the foolish mistake to put [the Highland outfit] on. There was full recovery of that and at the time [he] was suffering with a battle with alcoholism.”
The lawyer said Towsey, from Liverpool, had abstained from alcohol for the past six months and was now employed as a kitchen porter with a sports events company.
Sheriff Frank Gill said: “Having heard the circumstances of this offence and everything said on your behalf, I am prepared to deal with matters by way of a financial penalty.”
Towsey was ordered to pay a total amount of £280 to mark the offence. He pled guilty to resetting a kilt, jacket and shoes that had previously been stolen on September 17, 2023. He had a not guilty plea accepted by the Crown to obtaining board and lodging to the value of £600 without paying and intending not to pay at the Bonham on the same date.