|
Galloway was born in Dundee. He went to the Harris Academy, and on leaving school worked for a garden centre and then for Michelin tyres. In 1977 he was appointed as a Labour Party organiser, and became well known in Scottish Labour politics for his firebrand speeches. He was elected to the Scottish Executive and in 1980 became Chairman of the Scottish Labour Party at the age of 26, one of the youngest in history.
Within the Scottish Labour Party Galloway acquired a reputation, which he has retained, for vanity and liking expensive clothes. He was nicknamed Gorgeous George. He was married from 1979 to 1999 to Elaine Fyffe, with whom he has a daughter.
His first wife divorced him after Galloways comments to the War on Want expenses probe . Galloway was asked about a conference on Mykonos, Greece and replied: "I travelled to and spent lots of time with people in Greece, many of whom were women, some of whom were known carnally to me. I actually had sexual intercourse with some of the people in Greece."
In 1990 A year a mysterious advert appeared in the Labour movement magazine Tribune headed "Lost: MP who answers to the name of George", "balding and has been nicknamed gorgeous", claiming that the lost MP had been seen in Romania but had not been to a constituency meeting for a year. A telephone number was given which turned out to be for the Groucho Club in London, from which Galloway had been blackballed. Galloway threatened legal action and pointed out he had been to five whole constituency meetings.
In 2000 he married Dr Amireh Abu-Zayyad, a Palestinian academic and the neice of Yasser Araffat. She began divorce proceedings of May 2005 citing infidelity.
|
