DECEMBER 2012/JANUARY 2013
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Scottish farmer who to Trump is Scotsman
EDINBURGH - The salty Scottish fisherman who told Donald Tramp to take his money and shove it has been anointed "Scot of the Year" by his proud countrymen.
Michael Forbes (60) told Trump to take a walk when the mogul tried to buy his family's land for a massive golf resort.
His town's David vs. Goliath fight was chronicled in the 2011 film You've Been Trumped.
Forbes shot to fame five years ago as the subject of the documentary about The Donald's plan to jam a billion-dollar golf resort onto a pristine chunk of eastern Scotland.
Trump offered Forbes nearly a million dollars for his weather-beaten, 23-acre spread, but Forbes told the mogul to take his puffy pelt and perma-tan back across the pond.
The bald, burly farmer was named "Top Scot" at the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland awards, beating out Olympic gold medal cyclist Chris Hoy and tennis star Andy Murray.
"I can't believe it really, I was amazed when I heard I'd been put forward for the award," Forbes told The Scotsman newspaper, which helps judge the awards.
Forbes recalled his first encounter with
MICHAEL FORBES, who opposed Donald Trump's plan to build a luxury golf course on his family's land, was honoured as his country's Top Scot.'
Trump some eight years ago, when the real estate tycoon first arrived in Aberdeenshire with warm tales about how his mother was born in Scotland.
"He was being all nicey nicey, and talking about how successful he was and how much money he had," Forbes said. "That was it for me. I took an instant dislike to him."
Trump declared war on Forbes and his holdout neighbors, branding the some-
stood up of the Year
times quarry worker an "idiot" who lived like a pig.
In the award-winning film, director Anthony Baxter showed the residents having their electricity and water cut off and waking up to fleets of tractors ripping up their yards.
Despite the opposition and fierce protest from environmental groups, the project went ahead. The resort opened in July.
Forbes hasn't budged, though, but said he's still under siege by Trump and his cronies. "He called me a village idiot and accused me of living in a pigsty but I think everyone knows by now that he's the clown of New York," he said.
"I'm still (farming) but have had to stop salmon fishing as I don't have direct access to the beach anymore, but there's no way I'll ever sell up to Trump."
On December 4, Trump goaded his motherland's pick on Twitter. "How could Michael Forbes get Scot of the Year when he lost - badly - to me and Andy Murray, a true Scot, who won the U.S. Open & Olympic gold?" he tweeted.
In October, Trump went on a similar Twitter tirade after BBC said it would air the film, calling Forbes and filmmaker Anthony Baxter "morons."
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