IN a move more reminiscent of his namesake, former Motherwell and Scotland manager Craig Brown, it seems that Gordon Brown once tried to do his bit for his beloved Raith Rovers by re-signing Trinidad and Tobago international Marvin Andrews.

In a car park. In Kirkcaldy. At midnight. I don't know if it was a weekday, but the year was 2006 and Andrews did subsequently rejoin the club.

The bizarre episode is revealed in the recently published memoir by Brown's former spin doctor, Damian McBride. Sound too weird to be true? McBride thought so when he put the rumour to Brown after being contacted by a journalist, though judging by the then-Chancellor's response - "Do they have pictures?" - he may soon have changed his mind.

Spend a pleasant half-hour on the telephone with actor Joseph Mawle, who stars in Sky Atlantic's upcoming remake of Swedish-Danish detective drama The Bridge (it's been renamed The Tunnel in this English-French version, the tunnel in question being the one which links les nous avec les autres, ie, those pesky Europeans).

As so often happens when I get chatting to celebrities, talk soon turns to our favourite DVD box sets. Mawle features in Game Of Thrones, the epic HBO series based on George RR Martin's bonkers fantasy novels, and I tell him I have seasons one and two stashed away for a rainy day, along with season one of Rome (also HBO, also bonkers) and more series of Battlestar Galactica than it's wise for a fortysomething father-of-two to admit to owning.

Now that I've shown him mine, he shows me his. "I've got Breaking Bad," he tells me. "I'm saving it for Christmas week."

Funnily enough, this weekend sees the final-ever episode of that series, which critics have recently taken to sprinkling with the same "greatest TV drama ever" confetti they used on Mad Men, The Wire, The Sopranos and (for all I know) Buffy The Vampire Slayer. If you've somehow missed Breaking Bad's five-year run (possible: it airs on something called Netflix in this country), then you won't have had the pleasure of meeting Walter White. His journey from mild-mannered chemistry teacher to maniacal crystal-meth dealer via a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer has made him one of the great fictional ogres of the age - and, of course, where they lead, moral philosophers tend to follow.

In this case it's Dr David Koepsell of Holland's Dutch University, who has penned a treatise with the subtitle Badder Living Through Chemistry. Available in all good bookshops, as they say.

There's a big blue cockerel on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth at the moment, though it's soon to be replaced by a different artwork (I use the term loosely). The shortlisted artists vying for the honour of filling it are named today and one of them is Glasgow-based joker David Shrigley, whose mooted sculpture is a massive thumbs-up sign with an elongated digit. It's a cheap(ish) way of making everybody feel better, he says.

Given the proximity of the House of Commons - just a short stroll down Whitehall, in Parliament Square - wouldn't a massive V-sign be more likely to put a smile on the nation's face?

I learn today that footballer Joey Barton has finally put his money where his book of Nietzschean aphorisms is and enrolled at university. The Queens Park Rangers midfielder, you may or may not know, fancies himself an intellectual and likes to leaven his tweets with quotations from the great philosophers.

Friedrich "Chuckles" Nietzsche is one of his favourites, though bon mots from George Orwell and former Smiths frontman Morrissey have been known to crop up from time to time, too.

Barton is now attending Roehampton University in London where he is studying philosophy. "Off to my first lecture this afternoon," he tweets this morning. "Eyes peeled, ears open, brain engaged." Expect a thesis on Breaking Bad before the year is out.

Today I spend a nervous morning waiting to find out which film soundtrack has been voted the nation's favourite in a BBC Radio 3 poll. Will it be David Arnold's score for Bond film Die Another Day? Trent Reznor's headache-inducing soundtrack to the (admittedly quite good) American remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo? Or my favourite, the Quincy Jones-penned It's Caper Time, from The Italian Job?

It turns out it's none of those. It's Star Wars by John Williams, leading the field by a great distance from Ennio Morricone's The Good, The Bad And The Ugly and Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. Weirdly, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood sneaks in at number 16 with his atonal and downright scary score for There Will Be Blood.

Did fans of the Oxford band mount a Facebook campaign?

It's Doors Open Day across Scotland so if you were inspired by Thursday's awarding of the Stirling Prize for Architecture to a Landmark Trust property - Astley Castle in Warwickshire - then you can visit a few more similar buildings.

Or, if you prefer, a bus station: Lothian Buses' atmospheric depot on Annandale Street in Edinburgh, built in 1922 as an exhibition hall, welcomes guests today. I'm torn between the Anatomy Museum and Lecture Theatre at Edinburgh University's Medical School - I do love a good death mask - and an architect-designed "hut" at the capital's poshest allotments, in India Place, where the judges, lawyers and fund managers of the New Town come to admire their nasturtiums and tug expectantly at their root vegetables.

I hope there's none of that going on when I visit, though.