On Fire and Folly

On the 12th of November, 2004, an awards ceremony hosted by the Scottish Labour Party at Edinburgh's Prestonfield House Hotel was rather spoiled by an act of wilful fire-raising. At approximately two a.m. an alarm was raised that curtains in the hotel's reception area had been set alight. As staff members extinguished the flames, they were alerted to an identical offence in a lounge known as the Yellow Room. Fortunately, this  was also dealt with before it blossomed into an inferno. The arsonist, however, made good his escape, stepping into the chill of the Edinburgh evening amidst the  throng of departing guests.

The next day, the front pages of Scottish newspapers were dominated by a ghostly image captured by the hotel's internal security cameras. The kilted man responsible for the fire-raising appeared in a succession of pictures. In the first, crouching at the foot of the curtains, in the second, walking quickly away from the nascent conflagration and in the third (and perhaps most sinister) returning moments later to check on its progress. As the picture quality was poor and male guests were almost uniformly clad in formal Highland attire, it was impossible to positively identify the figure. One improbable suspect, however, was already the subject of dark speculation by staff and fellow guests.

As he came to on the morning of November the 13th, one can only surmise as to how much Michael Watson, or, to give him his full title, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, recalled of the previous night. By all accounts, he had behaved churlishly from the evening's outset, his escalating belligerence finally causing bar staff to refuse to serve him any more alcohol. I've seen my brother subjected to a similar snub on more occasions that I care to mention. The difference between Lord Watson and Spencer, it goes without saying, is that my brother is accustomed to being the cause of irritation and disappointment. Their response to rejection in this case, I suspect, was similar: a chaotic succession of emotions encompassing embarrassment, indignation and excruciating shame. The last of these was in all likelihood pre-dominant as Watson, chastened and hungover, struggled to reconstruct fragments of recollection into a coherent whole. "I'm sure there was something else," he might have muttered to himself, cringing from the insinuating shadows clustered around the periphery of his consciousness, still oblivious to the full horror that awaited him on the front page of his newspaper.

"A moment of madness" is often cited in instances of inconceivable folly. In Michael Watson's case, this seems completely inadequate. His years of public service instantaneously forgotten, he was reborn in the public consciousness as a skulking, nebulous figure, casting a backward glance toward his potentially murderous handiwork. For months he protested his innocence until, overwhelmed by the evidence against him, he changed his plea midway through his trial in order to negotiate a reduced sentence of sixteen months, of which he served eight. He has subsequently returned to the House of Lords,but his contributions have, understandably, been minimal.

 

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