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SCMP Reporter

When Mad Dogs pub owner Laura McAllister bought her first pair of cowboy boots, the Texan sales assistant serving her reeled off a string of exotic skins.

 'Do you have anything synthetic?' asked the Scot, who has a passion for animals.

 The look of horror on the sales assistant's face persuaded Ms McAllister to settle for plain old cow hide: 'OK, I'll just take two dead cows then.'  That was Ms McAllister's first taste of life in what is now her second home, San Antonio, Texas.

 Last year she married Texan oil and property tycoon Belton Kleberg Johnson, a former 'great white hunter' whose family owns the biggest ranch in the world. It was on this property in Texas that oil was discovered in the 1950s.

 It hardly seemed a match made in heaven.

 Not only has Ms McAllister eschewed meat for the past 20 years, but she is renowned in Hong Kong for her forthright views on animal rights.

 At her Mad Dogs emporium, she sells T-shirts emblazoned with such messages as 'Save a whale, harpoon a Norwegian' and 'Feeling sexy, don't screw a rhino'.

 At her former office in the Wan Chai headquarters of Mad Dogs International - adorned with furry animals until she relinquished the post of managing director to become chairman last year - Ms McAllister is radiant. Her Texan-sized, gold-and-diamond wedding ring sparkles. So, too, do her piercing blue eyes - perhaps from having achieved the professional success and personal happiness others can only dream of.

 Dressed in a black trouser suit with a fake leopard print scarf, the 46-year-old owner of four bars has come a long way since arriving in Hong Kong in 1977. With her then husband, a graphic designer-turned policeman called Andy Nielson, she set up a graphic design company here. Wanting her own business, however, in 1984 she opened her first Mad Dogs, in Wyndham Street, Central.

 Her business grew to include Joe Bananas in Wan Chai - the jewel in her crown of watering holes and infamous among expatriates for its happy-hour cocktail nights and wet T-shirt competitions; another Mad Dogs pub in Nathan Road and two relocations for the original outlet, which now stands beneath Lan Kwai Fong in D'Aguilar Street.

 And in Texas, there is a Mad Dogs that has done so well it is now expanding to twice its original size.

 Though her pubs remain a primary concern, the focus of her life has changed.

 'Two and a half years ago I met a Texan,' she says simply. When her soon-to-be second husband - whom she calls 'B' - wandered into Mad Dogs in Nathan Road, Ms McAllister's life somersaulted.

 Thinking the British pub might go down well in San Antonio's Riverwalk, a famous restaurant location in Texas, Mr Johnson and Ms McAllister struck a deal for her first venture outside Hong Kong.

 But business wasn't the sole reason they crossed the Atlantic 12 times in 15 months.

 'The excuse was it was all Mad Dogs but it was really a blossoming romance,' she recalls.

 They married in November last year and Ms McAllister now divides her time between Hong Kong and Texas.

 'My husband wouldn't have it any other way,' she said.

 'I was given an ultimatum. I don't regret it one bit. I am really happy in the States.'  Although she admits her life 'revolves around his board meetings' - in New York or Los Angeles where Ms McAllister is known as Mrs Johnson - she is far from idle.

 Not only does she keep a close eye on the San Antonio outlet, which in 18 months became one of the Riverwalk's top restaurants, Ms McAllister has also taken up the animal-welfare crusade in Texas.

 In the frontier town of San Antonio, where cowboy boots and stetsons are more at home than suits and ties, hunting is a traditional pastime.

 When it comes to compassion for animals, Texas lags far behind Hong Kong, where acts of cruelty are often committed in ignorance, she says.

 By contrast Texans kill wild animals for fun, she claims, adding that proud parents even send Christmas cards showing their sons' first kill.

 'I didn't expect Texas to be like that,' said Ms McAllister, who had not visited the state before she met Mr Johnson.

 He husband's hunting credentials add to the irony.

 'He was a 'big white hunter' in Africa in the 1960s. He still shoots quail, twice a year, and he eats the quail he kills,' she pointed out.

 'I said to my husband: 'God's either got a mission for me or he has a hell of a sense of humour. I am not sure which it is.' '  But Ms McAllister was never one to give up easily.

 She and her husband have just bought a 'recreational' 1,400-hectare hunting preserve.

 'Talk about an oxymoron - now it is just a preserve,' she says. 'It is amazing how the animals are coming back.'  Deer, armadillo, turkey, coyote, rattlesnakes and quail are recolonising the ranch, which is managed by probably the only warden in Texas tasked with conserving wildlife.

 Ms McAllister's own horse was saved from neighbouring Mexico's bullfighting ring. And she plans to rescue other ranch horses destined for the slaughter house and retire them to roam the ranch. Her next project, though, is to establish Dr Dog in San Antonio, a pet-therapy programme for the sick and elderly, based on the Hong Kong scheme pioneered by the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

 What do her new neighbours think of her?  As far as they are concerned, 'I am from Mars', she said.

 She has raised a few eyebrows, too, by banning customers from wearing fur coats in Mad Dogs, and pointing out to the strongly Christian community in Texas that 'Thou shall not kill' applies to animals as well.

 And, she says, 'the staff thought it was because I am Scottish and mean' that office paper had to be not only recycled but used on both sides.

 Nevertheless, she says, they are unfailingly kind and can't get enough of her Scottish accent, which is still broad even though she left home 20 years ago for Hong Kong.

 Ms McAllister betrays her working-class origins by speaking disparagingly of 'pate de foie' (gras) - the luxury delicacy made from livers of force-fed geese, so beloved by gourmets and reviled by animal rights activists.

 But she has never sought to hide her upbringing in Scotland's Paisley, where her parents' highest expectation of their daughter was that she would be a copy typist.

 Her activism is not completely surprising though. Even as a child, she says she never liked meat. Aged 13 she was distraught to discover that veal is produced by fattening calves in tiny crates throughout their short lives. She demanded her mother never force her to eat it.

 Her mother's response was brief. 'Laura, will you calm down, don't worry we have never been able to afford it.'  Now a self-confessed 'Aman junkie' (referring to the exclusive holiday resorts that pepper Asia's idyllic beaches) she can afford just about anything money can buy.

 Still, she is determined to continue working. This month, she flew to Beijing to discuss setting up a Mad Dogs or Joe Bananas branch in the city.

 Ms McAllister says that though she no longer has the time to take part in prolonged animal welfare campaigns - such as the anti-fur campaign she helped launch in Hong Kong in 1991 - she is still eager to assist organisations promoting such causes.

 She also makes clear her company will maintain its environmentally friendly ethos.

 Not only will Mad Dogs' menus continue to be 40 per cent vegetarian, it will keep on recycling paper and sourcing sustainable materials.

 Life's not a series of business conferences and green projects, however.

 Ms McAllister and her husband plan to spend a traditional Scottish new year at Gleneagles.

 She has no desire to move back to Scotland, though. 'I used to think in my old age I would retire to a big rambling house there with all my animals,' she said. 'Now I think I would like to do that in Texas.'  But it's clear Hong Kong, too, has won her heart.

 'I could never not come back to Hong Kong,' she said, 'because this is my home.' 



Laura and the great white hunter