It's after dawn when the question of the leadership is finally laid to rest. For most of the bleary-eyed denizens of Whitehall, this means that tomorrow smoothly becomes today with no real pause. Anyone who lives close enough has nipped off for a shower and a change of clothes and maybe, god willing, a nap before they have to gear up for the new day again; a bold few have quietly fucked off to bed, banking on their superiors being too zonked to notice or care if they show face or not.

Jamie is one of a handful of people still haunting the press office as the misty grey light of pre-dawn shifts and strengthens into pale early morning gold. His place is too far out for stopping by home to be remotely worth it. It's cheaper further out, almost cheap enough to border on what he might grudgingly consider reasonable, and in any case the more upmarket areas set his teeth on edge. It's worth the extra commute, even if it is occasionally a royal pain in the bollocks.

That's not the reason he's still here though. Not the real one. The past couple of hours have involved a lot of... well. A lot of what anyone other than him might refer to as soul-searching.

Eventually, though-- eventually he comes to the only decision that was ever really open to him. The dimly-lit quiet of the press office is broken by the scratchy drone of the printer. The first short and sweet printed sheet he appends a semi-explanatory post-it note to before folding it into an envelope and leaving it on Sam's desk. The second one he reads over one last time before squaring his shoulders like a man preparing for battle and stalking off into Malcolm's office.

"Alright, there you fucking go," he says without preamble, tossing the letter down onto the desk. Laid down in black and white like that it's an uncomfortable stamp of reality on the events of the last day: a meticulously correct, malevolently civil resignation letter, signed James A MacDonald at the bottom with a defiant flourish.

Name: Jamie MacDonald
Age: 45
Height: 170cm // 5'7"
Weight: 78kg // 173lb
Build: Compact and solidly built, with a decent amount of muscle.

General appearance/style of dress: Usually impeccably dressed in suit and tie (see icons) yet despite this he still manages to radiate an air of scruffiness. The exact state of disarray his clothing is in generally corresponds to the magnitude of the most recent political fuckup he's had to handle, the volume of caffeine he's consumed in the last 24 hours, and how long it's been since he last slept.

Skills: Spin, "media relations", general bullshit artistry, threatening journalists in obscene and creative ways, and causing weak-willed politicians to wet themselves with a mere glare.

Family:
Lorna Maxwell - Mother (61)
Robert Maxwell - Step-father (deceased)
Peter MacDonald - Brother (42)
Ewan Maxwell - Brother (33)
Fiona Maxwell - Sister (26)
Jean Craig - Ex-wife (44)
Katherine MacDonald - Daughter (25)
Eleanor MacDonald - Daughter (23)

Backstory: Jamie grew up in Motherwell, Scotland. The eldest of four children, he's closer in age to his mother than to his youngest sibling. (Everyone down south seems to find this extremely strange. Jamie takes this as further confirmation that London may as well be a different planet.)

Raised on that peculiarly Glaswegian blend of catholicism, alcoholism, petty crime and sectarian violence, he dropped out of high school and trained as a priest (no, really) before discovering sex, and with it the fact that he really wasn't cut out for celibacy. Back in the more conventional educational system, he scraped through a few highers at Motherwell College before going on to study journalism at the Glasgow Caledonian University^[1].

While studying he made ends meet working as a bouncer at a club in town. Money was particularly tight as his girlfriend at the time, Jean, had got pregnant, leading to a hasty marriage and shortly thereafter a baby daughter^[2].

After graduating he worked for the Glasgow Herald for a few years before, in the run-up to the 1997 general election, being recruited by an old friend acquaintance ???? semi-combative drinking partner^[3] to work in the press dept of the then-rising New Labour. The job offer in London was the final push it took for a rapidly crumbling marriage to collapse entirely. He and Jean divorced; by mutual agreement, Kate and Ellie stayed in Glasgow with their mother.

He spent ten good years as the even-madder right hand man of the most terrifying Director of Communications her majesty's government has ever known. Unfortunately, with the resignation of the Prime Minister in 2007 came a short but extremely ugly leadership struggle: one which Jamie and Malcolm ended up on opposite sides of. Jamie resigned immediately afterward (in typically Jamieish fashion, during which he called Malcolm a cunt no fewer than 47 times, broke a door, and would have been physically thrown out if any of the security present had had the balls to lay a hand on him).

Shortly thereafter he went to work for the SNP (not to be confused with the BNP^[4]), looking after the interests of the Scottish Parliament down south. At the present time he's still in politics, still in London, and greatly looking forward to getting the fuck out of London should the Yes vote pass in 2014.

[1] Malcolm still takes the piss out of him for being a Caley boy. Malcolm can go fuck himself.
[2] If he could offer one piece of life advice, it would be this: do not allow an unexpected baby to panic you into getting married. Just have the bastard and be happy. No matter how many catholic great aunties are glowering at you. It's never a good idea in the long run.
[3] Malcolm again.
[4] Seriously, do not confuse them with the BNP. Jamie would respond slightly less violently to them being compared to the Nazi party.


Personality: The most fundamental aspect of Jamie's character is that, given a purpose, he will devote himself to it completely. When he feels useful and valued he is loyal to a fault. He doesn't hold back. When he has an aim he feels worthy of his time, he will give himself to it completely. Of course every trait has good and bad sides, and the bad side in this case is that he has no scruples about stooping to just about any depths to achieve said aims.

In his role as Malcolm's attack dog, the Pitbull of Westminster, he was regarded with abject terror by most of the british government and the entire press corps. Despite this apparently boundless rage and capacity to terrorise the incompetent or uncooperative, he is unfailingly polite and respectful toward "civilians" - defined here as anyone outwith the political and journalistic sphere. He is perfectly amiable toward anyone whose potential incompetence and/or stubbornness he is not responsible for compensating for.

Although he was generally regarded as more of a blunt instrument than an actual person in his own right during the days of his role as Malcolm's psychopathic sidekick, he's not stupid. Impulsive and short-tempered, yes, and loyal to his own convictions where wiser men might have ceded ground in the name of expediency. But he has good political instincts, and he's brighter than the foul mouth and schemie accent might lead some to believe.

He's very intuitive, preferring instinct to logic. His experiences in the course of his career have led him to be deeply mistrustful of the sort of circular logic and plausible yet meaningless bullshit politics is rife with. No matter how compelling an argument may be made to sound, he prefers to trust his instincts. If it feels like it's probably bullshit, he'll go with his gut, even if he probably couldn't articulate why it feels like bullshit.

Obviously when fleshing out a minor character (and for all that he's fairly popular in the fandom, Jamie gets very little screentime) you have to extrapolate and fill in the gaps yourself. This is particularly tricky in The Thick of It, given that we see almost nothing of even major characters' home lives. With Malcolm - the other terrifying, shouty scotsman on the show - we get to see the other side: we get to see him at home, and given that he's essentially the main character, obviously he gets the most development. Jamie, on the other hand, appears in all of three episodes and doesn't take a starring role in any of them. We only ever see him on the job, usually in crisis mode.

In fact he's seen in anything other than crisis mode precisely once, and that's at the start of the episode in which he's introduced. And the Jamie we see there is a very different man to the one Malcolm dispatches to terrorise journalists and politicians in his absence. He seems to be on a fairly even keel, seriously discusses the incipient MoD scandal with Malcolm, and is even perfectly amiable toward Ollie when they're first introduced. It's only when things start going wrong that we really meet The Angriest Man In Scotland.

Psychotic rage and general emotional terrorism is the primary tool of the TTOI press office. It's how they get things done. For their brand of spin to work, they need pretty much everyone they associate with to be absolutely terrified of them. Jamie's temper is a tool, and he does have a handle on it.

My basis for saying this is literally a single moment, but it's an important one: even in full-on crisis mode - under incredible professional and personal stress, when his attempt to back Cliff Lawton as a rival candidate has collapsed and he's very probably about to lose his job - the second he's interacting with a "real person" (as Malcolm puts it), his manners are absolutely impeccable. He literally goes straight from balling out DoSAC's finest to immediately being all apologies when he bumps into a cleaning lady. And given that this is even though he's literally surrounded by people who it's to his advantage for them to believe he's absolutely psychotic, that's really telling.

So fans of The Thick of It may note that my Jamie is perhaps not quite the Jamie they're used to seeing. Worry not, when interacting with MPs, hacks, and other fellow soldiers on the political battlefield, he'll be every part the mad wee bastard we've come to know and love. But when threading with civilians - as will be the case in most cross-canon CR - I have to go off of what little we've seen of that.



[Note: The backstory I've got for him comes from a combination of reading too much into throwaway comments in the show, things Paul Higgins has said in interviews, the fact that he wears a wedding ring in S2, personal experience from growing up in and around Glasgow, and the entire fandom on AO3 being absolutely convinced that Jamie has daughters (I have no idea why, but I like it so I kept it). Your forbearance is appreciated since, as noted, wow do we get no background on fucking anyone]