Donald Trump pays a flying visit to his mother's birthplace in Tong, on the island of Lewis, Scotland.
Donald Trump may have the world's most famous comb-over, but it wasn't built for the stiff Hebridean wind that bowled down the runway at Stornoway airport today.
As the US tycoon stepped off his personalised Boeing 727 and onto the tarmac on the isle of Lewis, a playful gust undid his artfully contrived hairdo, blowing long wisps of his trademark ducktail skywards.
It briefly hung in the air like an impromptu halo, and was the only misstep in a minutely choreographed homecoming for the world's most famous property developer. His mother's modest birthplace - a pebble-dashed croft house in the straggling township of Tong - sits just across the bay.
Trump was travelling from an Elton John concert in Boston to the oil-rich city of Aberdeen, where he will give evidence tomorrow at a public inquiry into his plans to spend £1bn on creating the "greatest golf course anywhere in the world". This was a day when a rich slice of New York bling landed in the Western Isles.
From the 727 - the block capitals "TRUMP" gleaming in gold on its black fuselage - assistants unloaded several boxes of his own autographed homilies to wealth-creation as gifts for the first and second cousins, who had assembled for a brief audience in the airport's nearby air traffic control building.
Cases stamped "Trump: How to get rich" and "Never give up" were carefully loaded into the boot of the island's only Porsche Cayenne 4x4 - a gleaming black vehicle requisitioned for the day from a local millionaire by the Trump Organisation.
Ever since he first unveiled his proposals in 2006 to create his exclusive golf resort, complete with an eight-storey five-star hotel, 950 timeshare apartments and a Trump Boulevard at the Menie estate, north of Aberdeen, Trump has boasted repeatedly of his Scottish roots.
His mother Mary Anne - who left Tong in 1930 aged 18 for a holiday in New York, met a local builder named Trump and stayed - was his inspiration, he said today. She was a "wonderful" and "beautiful" woman, he said. "I think this land is special, I think Scotland is special, and I wanted to do something special for my mother," he told a press conference in Stornoway.
Yet this homecoming has been a long time in the making. His older sister Maryanne Trump Barry has visited 24 times; he has done so only once, when he was aged in his "threes or fours". He explained: "I haven't been back since because I was busy having some fun in New York, let's put it that way."
The timing of Trump's visit has been met by wry amusement on Lewis - one of the UK's poorest economies. After ignoring several previous requests from the local council to help restore the ailing wreck of Lews castle in Stornoway, the man rated by Forbes magazine as worth $3bn agreed today to consider funding their £10m restoration plans.
He protested that there was "zero" truth to the suggestion his visit was motivated by a cheap quest for publicity. Sensing the drift of questions about his motives, his sister, a federal appeal court judge in New York, leapt smartly to his defence.
"My mother would be so proud to see Donald here today. She would be so proud to see what he's done, all the good he's done and the TV star that he is," she said. "But I'm here, not because of these things, but because he's my brother, I love him. He's never forgotten where he comes from and he comes from here. This is a man I revere. He's a nice guy and he's funny too."
But while his sister delighted their relatives with a few rusty phrases in Gaelic, Trump spoke of his fame and success as a property magnate with 73 projects worldwide and as host of the US version of the ratings topper The Apprentice. "If you get ratings, you're king, like me, I'm a king. If you don't get ratings, you're thrown off air like a dog," he explained.
"They all want Trump because I do the highest level of work, and I'm known for that. People know that our level of work is the best and when a project is finished, it's going to be the best, and that's why government's call me. They've a piece of land in a certain country, they call me."
His cousins the Murrays, several of whom still live in his mother's croft and two neighbouring bungalows, were amused and slightly cynical about their relative's motives. "Donald is just Donald," said one with a smile.
That cynicism is widespread on Lewis, but he protested there was no connection between his visit to Stornoway and his struggle to build his resort. "We were flying in. I said this was the right time to come... we could control the time a lot better."
And, he said, he would be back again later this year. "I like it. I feel very comfortable here. It's interesting when your mother, who was such a terrific woman, comes from a specific location, you tend to like that location. I think I do feel Scottish."
Even so, this was the briefest of stopovers. He spent 97 seconds inside his mother's birthplace, a croft called 5 Tong, and his stay on Lewis lasted a little over 180 minutes. Shortly after lunch, his jet hit the runway at Aberdeen, to oversee a month-long quest to secure the "finest" golf course in the world
Fr: the Guardian
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