Posted on 12/05/2003 7:11:23 PM PST by pbear8
Dramatic entrances are the stock in trade of the opera singer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, but the flap caused by her arrival at a city centre hotel must have surprised even her.
The Maori soprano unwittingly spread consternation among staff at the Holiday Inn Theatreland in Glasgow when she asked to be directed to the hotel's "gun store". This, she declared, was where she would like to store her firearms during her stay.
Even if Glasgow was recently identified as the "murder capital" of Britain, its hotels are not normally asked by guests to store guns.
The manager told Dame Kiri, 59, that he would have to contact the police to let them know there were firearms on the premises, and two officers arrived quickly.
They found that the singer and her male companion had two shotguns with them, which they planned to use on a short shooting holiday in the Scottish countryside.
In other parts of the world, a guest who asks for the gun store would not be treated as having made a strange request. But Dame Kiri was told that very few urban hotels in Britain offered such a service. The police checked her firearms licence, and when they found that everything was in order they asked her to accompany them to the nearby Stewart Street police station, which has been used in the past to hold terrorists.
She deposited the shotguns there for safe keeping and, after breakfast at the hotel on Wednesday, she returned to the station to pick them up. Dame Kiri's agent said she was now enjoying a shooting break in the Scottish hills.
An enthusiastic country sportswoman, and an expert clay pigeon shooter, she has frequented the Gleneagles Shooting School at Gleneagles Hotel in the past. A member of staff yesterday described her as "very good shot".
A spokesman for the Holiday Inn said the affair had been resolved amicably and the hotel had parted with its guest on the best of terms.
She added: "I don't think any guest had ever asked us to store guns. It was unusual to say the least.
"When she arrived she asked for the duty manager and said she was in Scotland on a hunting holiday and had her own guns with her, and wanted to know if we had a gun store. It was a highly unusual request for a city centre hotel.
"The hotel followed procedures and contacted the police about guns being declared. They were taken into store and after breakfast we parted on good terms. She has stayed with us on a number of occasions but this was the first time she had brought her guns."
A spokesman for Strathclyde Police said "advice and assistance" was given after a call from the hotel. "It caused quite a flap, but all necessary documentation for the firearms was provided and we stored them for security purposes until they were uplifted."
Dame Kiri, who is also a keen golfer and angler, said in a recent interview that she shot "clay pigeons and bunnies, that sort of thing".
She added that she loved wildlife, but not vermin, and tried to keep down "the bush rats and the possums".
Her shooting partners in the past have included Prince Philip, the Prince of Wales and Jackie Stewart, the former racing driver. She performed at the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1981, and was made a Dame of the British Empire a year later.
Nick Grace, Dame Kiri's agent, said she could not be contacted yesterday. She was, he explained, "out shooting".
Maybe we can have them ring her room and we can ask why she chose the HI. But that would end the suspense.
You have spent way too much time reading British tabloid headlines. You are just too accurate for plain luck.
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