THE FORMER chairman of Ukip in Scotland has plead guilty to making a string of vulgar phone calls to women.
Arthur Misty Thackeray, 55, admitted carrying out 10 sexual offences charges between October 2007 and December 2015 involving 10 different women.
All of the calls took place at his home in Glasgow’s east end, at 1 Colme Street, Edinburgh and “elsewhere”.
UKip Scotland leader and MEP David Coburn’s office is at the same address in the capital.
Phone records revealed Thackeray made a call to a taxi company arranging a lift from his former office to Haymarket train station on the same night some of the calls were made.
On Monday Thackeray plead guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court to nine charges of intentionally sending, or directing “sexual verbal communication” between December 1, 2010 an December 19, 2015.
One charge pre-dates the Sexual Offences Act brought in in 2009 and was a breach of the peace charge between October 2007 and February 2008.
The court heard none of the women know Thackeray or how he got their numbers, but it is believed he took some from posters advertising slimming classes and one from a sales advert in a shop window.
Procurator fiscal depute Mark Allan said a 25-year-old female received a text from Thackeray talking about meeting at a swinger’s club.
She called him and he apologised and said he had the wrong number, then sent a message saying “You sounded really nice on the phone, do you know what I would like to do to you?”
Her partner then pretended to Thackeray the woman was a 14-year-old girl to make the calls stop.
The new mum later told police she was “terrified”.
He phoned four of the women on December 18, 2015 including a 33-year-old he asked inappropriate sexual questions to.
Sheriff Martin Jones QC deferred sentence until next month and continued bail.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article