Warning: Explicit language and disturbing scenes

This is the moment two thugs launched a shameful racist attack upon a street busker, caught on camera by a BBC documentary crew.

Angolan-born singer Melo, who is homeless, was talking to a cameraman in Glasgow city centre for BBC Scotland film The Street when he was approached by a former nightclub bouncer who branded him a ‘black b******’.

Francis Muir was filmed racially abusing the busker, claiming he is ‘milking our country for thousands’, while he himself pays ‘hundreds of pounds [in taxes] to keep you in the f****** country’.


As Muir, originally from Kirkcaldy, continues his tirade, a companion in a blue shirt – who cannot be named for legal reasons – tries to attack Melo, who manages to resist before passers-by and later the police intervene.



Muir was convicted of racially-aggravated assault over the incident, which took place in Sauchiehall St in 2012, and jailed for a total of ten months after also being found guilty of a separate incident involving abuse of an Asian police officer while out on bail.

MSP Graeme Pearson, Labour’s shadow justice secretary, told the Daily Record the incident was ‘symptomatic of a culture we need to tackle, in terms of racism and sectarianism – although at least those responsible in this instance were arrested’.

‘We need to come to terms with what is happening on our streets and change it,’ he added.