5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Crook who wanted to sell Scottish tea to China is like Ealing comedy
Here's how the synopsis runs.
Act 1.
Cheeky, confident, former professional rugby player, army officer and acclaimed polymer scientist Tam O' Braan sets up home in a cosy Perthshire village where he establishes a tea-growing estate, The Wee Tea Plantation, on which his home-grown plants are encouraged to rise in defiance of the Scottish climate by a special biodegradable polymer and controlled UV light.
This pioneer of our very own tea empire, who once worked for Barack Obama's US government on a major maize project, then produces a very special Scottish tea, a fragrance which hints at Bannockburn, Oor Wullie and indeed the spirit of Muriel Spark. O'Braan then proceeds to sell his home-grown plants onto many other hopeful growers, whom he convinces that the world will embrace their Scottish tea in the way it has whisky, Billy Connolly, and anything with a Tunnock's label attached.
But O'Braan doesn't simply sell plants. He takes examples of his heather and thistle infused blends – with names such as Scottish Antlers Tea and Highland Green, and sells the leaf tea to a huge range of upmarket clients such as the Balmoral Hotel and The Dorchester in London, while describing his tasty cuppa as 'the Queen's favourite'.
And he makes an absolute packet.
The tea man doesn't stop there. The hob kettle that is his publicity machine almost boils over; BBC Scotland offer coverage; John Swinney views his product. More and more hopeful growers buy up his plants. The story has all the hallmarks of Passport to Pimlico independence and defiance. It's as cleverly organised as whisky capture in Whisky Galore. O' Braan's enterprise suggests the precision and wonder of the string quartet who took over Mrs Wilberforce's home in The Ladykillers. He even announces plans to sell his tea to China.
Act 2.
O'Braan becomes a celebrity, and sales rocketed. Between 2015 and 2018 he supplied 22,000 plants to growers in Scotland at £12.50 each. His loose tea was gulped down by the rich and famous. Tam O'Braan was brewing up to becoming Scotland's first tea millionaire since Thomas Lipton. This was the stuff of Ealing movies indeed, with themes such as community, dreams and ordinary people having the option to create extraordinary lives.
However, Ealing stories never, ever turn out how as expected, the initial cosiness often turning dark as a winter's night on Lewis. The new community of tea growers discovered that Scotland isn't the easiest place to keep his plants alive; after battling for seven years, one Perthshire family managed to harvest less than 4oz of finished tea. This was now a Kind Hearts and Coronets tale. Dreams were being murdered one by one.
Suspicions arose. A wily Food Standards detective – a Mrs Wilberforce figure (but without the Victorian frock coat and the flat hat with flowers attached) – began to investigate the tale. A tea expert was brought in, who confirmed that tea plants deprived of UV light would in fact die like orchids in a desert.
The Ealing Comedy classic The Ladykillers (Image: free) And when the Scottish Mrs Wilberforce attempted to ascertain the provenance of the original plants – and indeed O'Braan himself – he claimed certificates were lost in a flood of near biblical proportions which washed away part of his cottage.
Eventually, the 55-year-old did admit the original plants (bought for £3 each) may have originated from Italy. But they became Scottish he argued, as the roots had been sunk into Scottish soil. It was argument not even the most desperate failed asylum seeker has ever made.
With their plants wilting like an end-of-season football team in the final seconds of injury time, angry purchasers demanded the Wee Tea plants be tested. Incredibly, O'Braan sold a story to the local press saying thousands of plants had been stolen. (A series of tea leaves with a fleet of tractors perhaps?) And his digital records were destroyed when his IT advisor mistakenly switched off his account.
When Mrs Wilberforce investigated further, he discovered that the special polymer conversion kit was little more than a black bin liner. Going into overdrive, the agency detective discovered that O'Braan was a 'stage name'. was in fact Thomas Robinson who sometimes called himself Tom O'Brien or Thomas James. And he wasn't Irish at all but was born in Greenwich, England. Robinson had in fact imported the tea plants from Italy, before showing them on to the likes of buyers for Fortnum and Mason of London.
Read more
Meanwhile he sold more than a tonne of his loose tea, bought from Malawi and China for 100 times more than cost. And didn't Ealing comedies always satirise greed?
But in a way, the Wee Tea company tale reminds us we need stories such as this to spring from the ground. They are a fantastic warning that we can all so easily be conned. It's a story that confirms we shouldn't be sold on Scottishness alone. On hope.
Yet, while we felt an element of sympathy for most of the Ealing villains, (even murderer Denis Price in Kind Hearts and Coronets) what of Robinson, the charismatic fantasist, the pathological liar and conman who received a lengthy custodial sentence? Not at all. He hurt the Scottish tea industry and propagated nothing more than wrecked dreams.
'I wanted to leave something that would stand in the history of tea,' he said in the dock. And he has. The history of tea in Scotland now has an Ealing of a story. And I fancy Alan Cumming for the lead role.
