THE DIARY TUESDAY OCTOBER 21, 2008

LYNDA Bellingham, Patricia Hodge, Sian Phillips and Elaine C Smith head the cast of the stage hit Calendar Girls, the true story of a fiftysomething Women's Institute group from Yorkshire who bore all in the name of charity, currently touring England's regional theatres en route to a residency in London's West End.

Conducting PR duties via countless interviews with local newspapers, radio stations and TV channels, the seasoned troupers have opted to disarm potential critics by quoting less-than-flattering summaries of the original film that cinema-goers posted on the self-explanatory website Four-Word Film Review. These include Centreolds; Dorian Gray's Playboy calendar; Cronespotting, The Antique Broads Show and Twelve Months of Wither.

State of play
THE Diary's Stateside observer at the presidential election campaign assures us he heard the following shock announcement yesterday on the notoriously pro-Republican Fox TV news channel: "The 2008 US presidential poll has been abandoned, and Senator John McCain is hereby declared the next incumbent of the White House. Our exclusive information confirms that he's already cornered the highest percentage of the vote in all 61 US states - God bless President McCain!"

Vital spark
QUEUING in his local multi-plex, Philip McKenzie, of Coatbridge, found himself behind two care-worn women who were staring fixedly at a poster advertising the latest work from the maverick Coen Brothers, Burn After Reading. "My first marriage was to a guy fae Reading," one woman stated, "and I've always wished I'd had the courage to end it sooner wi' a can of petrol and a box o' matches."

Don't rock the boat
READERS Donald and Doris Grant recently journeyed from Southampton to New York aboard the Queen Mary 2. Donald was one of only two of the vessel's 600 passengers to adopt ceremonial kilted garb for the captain's nightly black-tie soiree, naturally attracting compliments from American voyagers. One such female admirer inquired whether Donald was retired.

Shaking his head, Donald's exact reply was lost amid the clamour of mid-Atlantic chat, champagne-swilling and airs played by the vessel's resident string quartet. He thus had to repeat himself, shouting into the woman's ear: "A masseur."

The woman took a step back, turned to her American husband and gasped: "He's a knight!" She then asked if she should curtsey. Being a Paisley man, Donald says he felt almost ashamed at not stopping her.

Colour of money
STYLE gurus enjoy delivering edicts which assert that some colour or other is the new black; that city-shorts are the new mini-skirts or that cargo pants have become the new jeans. Martin Morrison, of Lochinver, cites the Prime Minister as the source of the latest fashion tip: "Economic meltdown - it's the new brown."

Drive time
GLASGOW sou'-sider Ken Nicholson reckons he overheard one West End lady-who-lunches telling a friend that the skill set required for her bulky new four-wheel-drive motor was "not so much Lewis Hamilton, more Parks of Hamilton".

Into the Barga
RETIRED chip shop owner Mauro Cecchini has sparked controversy by gifting his ancestral home town, Barga, in Tuscany, the iconic 1920s British phone box which formerly adorned his Edinburgh back-garden. The red cast-iron structure, known to devotees as a K6, now stands on the bridge linking Barga Vecchia to Barga Giardino. According to expat website Barga News, its arrival has prompted multiple objections.

Scots-Italians dislike the fact that it bears the crown of an English monarch, George V. Anglo-Italians fear it heralds the arrival of vulgar cultural exports they fled Blighty to avoid, from prostitutes' calling cards in the box itself to burger vans in Barga's piazzas. Native Italo-Italians are taking a more pragmatic view, merely noting that the ancient structure is bound to fulfil the same practical function it probably sometimes did on Edinburgh's streets.

The phone box is located on the former site of a much-missed Barga amenity, the orinale, Italy's al fresco equivalent of the French pissoir.