Failed medical student who posed as schoolboy in bizarre plot to become a doctor in 1993 breaks into the bedroom of the professor he still blames and threatens to kill him

Detailed summary

The man who gained worldwide notoriety by returning to his old school as a pupil was last night behind bars after carrying out a terrifying death threat attack on his former university professor.

Published: 08:54 GMT, 15 November 2026 | Updated: 08:54 GMT, 15 November 2026

The man who gained worldwide notoriety by returning to his old school as a pupil 13 years after leaving was last night behind bars after carrying out a terrifying death threat attack on his former university professor.

Brian MacKinnon ambushed Professor Brian Whiting and his wife in their home and threatened to kill them, just hours after the academic made comments about him in a movie starring actor Alan Cumming, which had aired on the BBC.

MacKinnon originally made headlines around the world after pretending to be a 16-year-old Canadian boy named Brandon Lee and re-enrolling at his former school.

He carried out the bizarre ruse in 1993, with the 30-year-old even being taught by some of his old teachers.

He had originally left Bearsden Academy in 1980 to attend the University of Glasgow to follow his dream of becoming a doctor but he was asked to leave after twice failing his exams.

It was then that he hatched the astonishing plot to return to school as an adult, retake his Higher exams and win a place to study medicine at Dundee University.

Incredibly, his brazen deception paid off and he was able to start his medical degree – only for his scam to unravel in 1995 when his true identity was exposed, with Dundee University then expelling him.

But last week it emerged in court that MacKinnon, now 63, had harboured a decades-long grudge against Professor Brian Whiting, the former Dean of the University of Glasgow’s medical school and the man he believes first thwarted his chances of becoming a doctor.

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