Projections of Nuttiness and a Fear of Dogs

Keith Maclean, who knew Kevin Chesham as well as anyone can, is pictured in the photograph above on a beach very close to my retreat. Keith is a friend I have known long before I met Chesham.

"Seán does not and has never to my knowledge owned an actual dog. For one thing he is scared of them." — Kevin Chesham (posted from Dubai, UAE, on his hate blog, February 2013) 

I have always had an affinity with animals and when I lived at Newstead Abbey Park where my maternal grandparents resided we kept alsations which animals I was close to. Indeed, I frequently took walks with one of them. I certainly have no fear of dogs, but I remember how Chesham lived in constant terror of dogs when he ran on Hampstead Heath in the 1970s. He wore a chain around his waist which he took off and swung in circles like a propellor to ward off any roaming dogs. He is projecting his own state of mind onto me, just as he has projected much else. This transference process includes his ideology which he now publicly denies despite the overwhelming evidence.

Chesham's past contains secrets to which I am not privy. Years ago I was told that he had a troubled childhood. I know nothing about this, but his correspondence to me this century was very angry and dwelt on him being reduced to menial work at local government establishments, eg pool attendant jobs. This is more or less the sort of employment he was in when I first met him. Perhaps he felt life had not treated him particularly well and resented the fact that he had not improved his lot?

Within a couple of years before his final visit, Chesham shared the news that he had been sacked from his local council job at a leisure pool establishment. No details were forthcoming, but employment in local government was secure back then, and to be summarily dismissed must have entailed a very serious offence. He was especially sullen from this period onward. A mutual friend much later remarked: "A twisted turncoat without any humour. Has he ever laughed properly? I can't see that. Where is his pleasure?" His pleasure, it would transpire, would evince itself in the form of trying to cause harm to me and mine; a perverse ambition he shares with crazed diabolists.

I was introduced to Keith Maclean (the bearded gentleman in the photograph, which also features Kevin Chesham and Beverley Mason in the background) by his then girlfriend in the summer of 1969. We have remained good friends ever since, and, unlike Chesham whom I met some years later, we remain in regular contact. Kevin Chesham is someone I became acquainted with through circumstances unforseen, ie accidental contact. He remained in touch on and off (more off) thereafter, but it would be a considerable stretch to describe us as good friends as we had so very little in common. It was clear to most people who encountered him that he was unstable.

Not so Keith Maclean with whom I have much in common. He is a kind person whose spirituality, love of music and literature makes him stimulating company. He also has a good sense of humour, something totally lacking in Chesham whose idea of humour is to poke fun at people behind their backs. Had we had more contact over the decades than we did I daresay I would have not remained acquainted with him. Here was someone who had no social skills and was unable to make friends with people. That is probably why I befriended him and allowed him to attend reunion dinners.

The defamatory nonsense about Keith posted by Chesham and his wife on their blog is malicious and untrue. Once again, as with their personal attacks on me, these unpleasantries are born of resentment.

Chesham begins his tirade with this salvo:

"‘Br’ Keith  is a strange individual. I do not know if his vacant demeanour is the result of brain damage, learning difficulties,  his years of drug abuse, his cult indoctrination at the hands of Bonky or just not being very bright. Maybe it is a combination of all or some of these explanations. Or maybe just the need to change his toothpaste to Macleans, and choose instead of staring blindly with the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind to adopt a much more convincing rhetoric by giving us all a dazzling smile (when he is allowed to open his mouth that is.) One things certain tho – the boy ain’t right."

Keith Maclean, who went to teachers' training college and is well informed in many academic subjects, is, unlike Chesham, exceptionally bright and well read. Needless to say, Keith belongs to no cult and is not indoctrinated; nor does he take drugs; nor does he smoke or drink alcohol to excess.

Chesham continues:

"You see, as well as being, shall we say, somewhat backward, ‘Br’ Keith  is also a Jesus-Nutter."

Kevin Chesham falls foul of the recently introduced religious hatred legislation with that remark. Some of his ensuing commentary, however, is so sick and libellous that I shall obviously refrain from repeating it here. One of Chesham's less depraved lies involving Keith I shall nonetheless share:

"By this time I do remember that Sean had purchased a Hornby train set and was populating it with little men and trees etc which he was buying off Ebay. He had set it up on a table in a room upstairs. ‘Br’ Keith  spent many happy hours in Sean’s playroom (they are both in their 60s!) gazing gormlessly at the trainset. Sometimes if he had been a good boy Sean would even let him have a go, but this was rare, as Sean was notorious for hogging the ‘choo choo’, leaving ‘Br’ Keith  to watch him enviously. Maybe this was one of the reasons he liked to visit the Bunkerlow so much, always with the inspiration that he might get to play Thomas the Tank!"

I have owned a Hornby Dublo model railway since early childhood, but Chesham has only seen internet images of it after his betrayal of those who befriended him. I have never discussed model railways with Chesham because it is not something that would remotely interest him, and my own layout was not set up during the period when he visited. As a collector, I had always been meaning to restore and improve my original model railway and am very pleased I have now done so. See below:

My model railway might not be as vast as Sir Rod Stewart's, or self-manufactured like the record producer Pete Waterman's, but it is entirely diecast and tinplate without a trace of plastic anywhere. Some is pre-war, but mostly it hails from the 1950s. I also collect Hornby "0" gauge. See below:

Another falsehood by Chesham which is not so stomach-wrenching that it cannot be reproduced:

"Even [Keith's] birthday cake for example – which could be seen as a kind gesture – was intended to mock him and how his ‘friends’ Sean and Sarah see him. And the tragedy is that Keith was the only one there who just couldn’t see the joke."

We do throw our friends parties on special occasions. In this case it was Keith's sixtieth birthday and we made an occasion of it for him; something that would be memorable. He was delighted. There was no "joke" and the cake my wife made for him was considered by everyone to be a good likeness.

Being a portraiturist in the mediums of photography and oils, I tend to paint people I know. Chesham could not resist commenting in his familiarly insensitive and uncharitable manner about this:

"I was rather nauseated when at the same party Sean got ‘Br’ Keith to pose in front of a terribly executed portrait of him which he had painted ‘in his honour’. Like all of Sean’s paintings it resembled something which a young child would produce, but to puppy dog Keith it may as well have been a Michaelangelo commission.  Because the Commander had seen fit to commend his underling’s image to canvas."

In fact, I painted more than one portrait of Keith. He can be seen alongside one of them below where also included is one my paintings of St Francis of Assisi whom both Keith and I hold dear. I was consecrated on the feast of St Francis, 1991. Another portrait of Keith is seen being admired by a visiting friend, and below that is a portrait I made of Chesham about which he is peculiarly silent. It was executed before the full extent of his treachery was apparent. Yet it reveals him in essence.

Finally, I shall provide my old friend of many years - Keith Maclean - with the last word. He has seen what Chesham wrote about him and others. I received the following from Keith, attaching the beginning of his handwritten letter to identify for whom it was intended and the letter's date: