George Galloway alerted to squatter by ‘bottle of gin and gay video’
Newly re-elected Respect MP George Galloway had said he had to tighten security at his London home after a ‘gay video’ and a bottle of gin alerted him to the presence of a squatter.
The Herald reports that Mr Galloway, who does not drink, went to investigate the presence of the squatter, sword in hand.
The ‘gay video’, an empty gin bottle and the movement of all of his ties from an upstairs wardrobe alerted the Respect MP for Bradford West to the possibility that he had a squatter with very different recreational pursuits in his south London house.
Mr Galloway said: “I have a sword, given to me in Saudi Arabia or somewhere, so I unsheathed my sword, and went upstairs [to the top floor].
“There was no-one there, but there was a bottle of gin – which, of course, would never be in my house – and a gay video, which definitely would never be in my house. So the police came, and they said this person appears to have been living here in your house for some time.”
Mr Galloway’s squatter moved in in 2010 while the politician was in Egypt, with police saying the intruder had used a downstairs window to enter the property.
He warned future squatters: “No one can do it now because I’ve got CCTV and alarms and so on.”
Mr Galloway said recently that claims made in a New Statesman interview that he converted to Islam in a ceremony ten years ago were “categorically untrue”, but he did not deny being a Muslim, having stated in the past that his religion was a “personal matter”.
He said: “In fact, I was one of the very few people who voted against lowering the age of consent to 18. I voted for 16 and against 18 on the principle that I wasn’t going to vote for someone’s right to sit in the middle of the bus. Now that was the demand of gay activists at the time but very few people heeded it.”
He added: “The lesbian and gay centre in Glasgow that was not actually in my own constituency none the less, asked me to perform the official opening of it in recognition of that fact.”
