A bizarre stunt involving swastika flags outside council buildings saw a Fife theatre owner end up in police cells.
Bill Fletcher, owner of the Alhambra Theatre in Dunfermline, was quizzed by police following an incident involving four of his staff on Wednesday.
The theatre workers were detained by police after posing for a photograph with Nazi flags outside the city chambers. Mr Fletcher said the intention was to use the image in the theatre’s adult panto night, to poke fun at the council.
The businessman, who was in Edinburgh when his staff were taken to Dunfermline Police Station for questioning, said he was told to return to Fife and handcuffed at the theatre around 11am.
All five were questioned then later released without charge.
Mr Fletcher told The Courier he spent a ”humiliating” 2 hours in a cell.
”It is a great pity that our attempt to have a joke at the expense of Fife Council, in retaliation for years of bullying suffered at their hands, has turned out to have serious consequences for our staff,” he said.
”The council views us as competition to places like Carnegie Hall and the Lochgelly Centre. We are unsupported by the council and are one of only two theatres in Scotland to receive no council support.
”The council can’t take a joke and hard-working people have been locked up.”
It is not the first time Mr Fletcher has hit out at the council. Last month, he accused the local authority of being heavy handed when it removed a table and chairs from the pavement outside the theatre’s Green Room restaurant.
Mr Fletcher said: ”We at the Alhambra, over the last six years, have had nothing but harassment from Fife Council. We’ve brought a theatre to the town and they do everything in their power to cause us grief.”
Police rushed to the scene after spotting the pranksters on CCTV.
”We did it in the morning when the town was quiet,” said Mr Fletcher. ”The whole incident to take the photo lasted 30 seconds. No complaint was made by the public.
”It was probably not the ideal thing to do, but it got over how we felt.”
He said he was searched by police and put in an observation cell.
”It was horrendous. It was freezing cold. The whole process is designed to humiliate you.”
A spokesman for Fife Constabulary said: ”We attended an incident and a number of people were interviewed in relation to it. It was established that no crime had been committed.”
Fife Council made no statement in relation to the swastika incident.
Ian Jones, of its roads network management team, said of the earlier tables and chairs incident: ”No applications or permissions had been sought or granted so, after giving the owners advice on various occasions, we had to take enforcement action.”