King of Scotland Dies
Among his other peculiarities, the late Idi Amin was obsessed with Scotland. The BBC's Brian Barron interviewed the ex-dictator during his cushy, Saudi-sponsored exile, and found him listening to bagpipe music at full volume; Amin also introduced two of his sons, named for Caledonian clans.
According to Giles Foden, author of a novel exploring Amin's Scotland fixation, it all goes back to his childhood. (Of course). The future tyrant grew up near the King's African Rifles' army barracks, where his mum was a hanger-on (dad had vanished), and was taken under the wing of Scottish army officers, who praised his tenacity, pluck and strength, if not his intelligence. They also liked to hit him on the head with a hammer to get him fired up before rugby matches. Later, British diplomats assessed him as "tough and fearless...a splendid type and a good [rugby] player...but virtually bone from the neck up." Whitehall decided he'd make a good alternative to Marxist autocrat Milton Obote.
Amin's confused relationship to Scotland, Britain and empire seems to have played a role in his antics during the 1970s, when he behaved like an overgrown, murderous child, alternately clowning and acting up (read: torturing and killing people) and going all-out nuts after the great colonial Parent decided he was an embarrassment and stopped sending him arms.
I'm not sure if it's for real (I keep seeing it prefaced with the words "true story," usually a sign of a hoax), but this widely-circulated transcript of a speech by Amin reads like a Mad Lib.
There's probably some cautionary tale here for the neo-imperialists, but I'll let someone else do the honors.
3:30:51 PM 
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