Mel Gibson wore my police hat on the set of Braveheart

About this recording

Steve MacDonald recalls two unforgettable moments from his 30-year police career – being handcuffed to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi before the Lockerbie bombing suspect went on trial, and, on an altogether lighter note, the time Mel Gibson wore Steve’s police hat during the filming of Braveheart.

Steve’s “very surreal” encounter with Megrahi – which also involved strip-searching the Libyan prisoner – happened at Camp Zeist, a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands, in 2000. Steve was selected for duty because he was an authorised firearms officer.

Megrahi would later be convicted of murdering 270 people in the worst terrorist atrocity on UK soil after Pan Am 103 blew up over Lockerbie in December 1988.

“It was quite a daunting thought, being right beside this guy, having to strip-search him, wondering what on earth sort of a guy he was,” Steve says in the recording.

Steve had a 30-year police career from 1988 until 2018, serving in the CID in Inverness for a time and later as a Detective Sergeant based in Wick. He talks about a couple of major investigations he was involved in.

Steve recalls working from the old police station in Bridge Street and has fond memories of officers who had served in the former Caithness Constabulary. He tells of many a night spent outside Dominoes nightclub, having a snack from Oagie’s burger van and keeping an eye on the weekend crowds in the town centre.

The Mel Gibson encounter happened in 1994. Steve, who had been transferred to Fort Augustus the year before, had the job of stopping the traffic while some scenes for Braveheart (“an absolutely iconic Scottish film”) were being shot in Glen Nevis.

One day he was invited to have a look at the set. “We saw the man himself – there was Mel Gibson,” Steve says. “As I was walking past him, he saw me in the police uniform and he goes, ‘Hi, thanks for your help today.’ I went over to him and said not at all, it’s really interesting to see. And he said, ‘I love your hat, man. Can I have a shot?’

“And, without a word of a lie, I gave him a shot of my police hat. Unfortunately we didn’t have mobile phones, we didn’t have cameras on hand in those days, but Mel Gibson was standing there with my police hat on, dressed in the full regalia - minus the blue face, of course, because he didn’t have the blue face until the battle scenes which were filmed later on. But there he was, with the kilt, wearing my police hat.”

Steve had presented programmes on Moray Firth Radio before joining the police. Since retiring from the force, he has been working as community payback officer at the Wick Criminal Justice Office.

In 2020, Steve got back into radio after a 32-year break. He presents a weekly show on Caithness FM, playing music mainly from the 1980s and ’90s and interviewing local guests.

Gallery of photos: Steve with his wife Marlene, who had a spell as Caithness Inspector at the time he finished in the police force; as one of a group of police officers alongside the King (then still Prince Charles, Duke of Rothesay) outside the Castle of Mey; and at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014.