Lunch with my godson? I haven’t even heard from him
IT is the most unlikely of pairings – a Hollywood superstar and an eccentric Highland campaigner.
Despite sounding like the stuff of a movie script, Oscar winner Leonardo Di Caprio’s godfather is Robbie the Pict, an activist who lives on Skye.
But Robbie, the self-styled leader of the Pictish Free State, has disclosed that despite DiCaprio making his first visit to Scotland, he has not contacted him and the pair have no plans to meet.
Following in the footsteps of George Clooney last year, DiCaprio will visit Edinburgh to support homeless charity sandwich shop Social Bite on Thursday.
The 42-year-old actor will also speak at the Scottish Business Awards.
But his godfather Robbie - formerly known as Brian Robertson – has said the pair have no plans to meet when DiCaprio makes the ,000-mile trip.
Robbie, 69, said: ‘I’ve not had any contact. I’ve not heard from him. He’s get plenty going on in his life without a godfather his father created.’
The strange link was forged in the 1970s when Robbie met the star’s comic book writer father George DiCaprio while working in California for a publisher.
Earlier this year he said: ‘I would regale him with tales of Picts and Scots. We got on well. We had a similar sense of humour.’
Mr DiCaprio, 72, has previously described the activist as a ‘colourful character’. But Robbie said he has never been reunited with DiCaprio over the many years they have shared the connection. He admitted: ‘Last time I saw him he was about a couple of months old – he was in the palm of my hand.’
Robbie legally changed his name to promote awareness of the Picts – the tribes that roamed the north and east of Scotland in the Iron and Middle Ages. In 1977, he also founded his own ‘micronation’ on Skye – the Pictish Free State – which promotes their culture.
Robbie has declared himself the Pictish High Commissioner of the state – which began as just one acre of Skye, but has reportedly grown to 1,000 acres thanks to donations.
In the past he has clashed with the UK Government over his insistence on using diplomatic number plates for the nation.
Over the years Robbie has campaigned for a number of causes, notably contributing to the successful campaign to abolish the toll on the bridge to Skye.
He has also campaigned against speed and traffic light cameras and unsuccessfully ran for the Scottish parliament in 1999.