THE movie of the moment is Fifty Shades of Grey, which, to universal mystification, was ignored by the Baffies and has not been mentioned in dispatches anent - oh well!

- the Oscars. I doubt I shall see Fifty Shades and I cannot say I am sorry. One pundit describes at as "an out-and-out spankfest", as if it were Tom Brown's Schooldays, while another says the hochmagandy in it is "vanilla". However, I am surprised that gong-givers did not reward its costume designer, who had to supply the participants with exotic accoutrements such as furry handcuffs, whips and masks. One imagines that in certain circumstances the last-mentioned could come in useful. Eneuch! When I mentioned the movie t'other day to a dear friend who is badly in need of having his ears syringed, he said: "Is that Alasdair Gray you're talking about?" Refusing to pander to his ignorance I said it was and told him of my dear friend Mr G's novel, Something Leather, a copy of which I just happen to have to hand. Its blurb, I see, boasts: "This is the first British fiction since the Canterbury Tales to show such a wide social range in such embarrassing sexual detail, yet no characters are real, not even the Glasgow comedian." Sounds to me like a good idea for a fillum.

DAVID Tennant's father tried to stop him from becoming an actor. Tennant père is a former moderator of the kirk and thus one of the most talented thespians of our age. Of course, the kirk has a long history of antipathy toward theatrical types and believed that anyone who mingled with them was destined to sup post-mortem with Beelzebub and his band of degenerates. In my own backwater, we fondly remember Alexander "Jupiter" Carlyle, meenister at Inveresk, who in a bygone era was censured by religious worthies for daring to attend a play. If memory serves me right, he also romped naked across the links on which now stands Musselburgh Racecourse. How dull are today's clerics by comparison.

TO the dentist where two teeth give less resistance to pulling than did France in 1940. How many this leaves standing I know not and care less. As the years march by I am looking more and more like Albert Steptoe, or a sabre-toothed tiger. Whoever said that as we grow older our mouths come to resemble half-empty cemeteries knew what he was talking about. By spooky coincidence, I am reading an essay by Atul Gawande, who it could be said knows too much about teeth. According to Mr Gawande, the hardest substance in our bodies is the white enamel of the teeth. But eventually, even it goes the way of all flesh. Experts, says Mr G, can gauge a person's age to within five years from the examination of a single tooth. Moreover, by the age of 60, Americans - and doubtless us too - have lost on average a third of their teeth. And if they reach 85, almost 40 per cent have no teeth at all. Why am I telling you this? Simply to scare the living daylights out of you. Why should I bear all the brunt?

THE Home Secretary, who is something of a historian, sees the timer on the cooker and pronounces: "1348 - the start of the Black Death. Had it been half an hour earlier it would have been the Battle of Bannockburn." As every wean knows, 1314 was the date of the BoB, not, as the HS would have it, 1318. This wee howler, however, may be excused on the basis of dodgy arithmetic rather than historical inexactitude. Be that as it may, I have noticed that when it comes to reeling off dates and their associated events the HS is much happier in the medieval period. I have not heard her say, for instance, when the cooker is at 19.45, "Aha, the end of the Second World War", or, at 18.12: "Thus began the Second American War of Independence." Nevertheless I reckon this could be a useful method to teach les enfants about the past.

SIR David Garrard, who has more money than sense, says he is prepared to donate 10s of thousands of pounds to help Jim Moiphy save Laybore from the Gnats. There is no word from Creepy Jim on this matter but I would advise him to give Sir David a body swerve. "If I can't help him, who is going to help him?" says the multi-millionaire, who not so long ago was caught up in a money-for-gongs hoohah. Back then, Sir David was to have become a Laybore peer, and one does not mean in the micturating sense, but withdrew from the farce when eyebrows were raised. Last year he was accused by his former son-in-law of attempting to take £2.5 million from his bank account. In my mind's eye, I see him at an ATM waiting for the dosh to squeeze out. Oh, to have been ahint him in the queue.

BARCLAYS bank is to launch an apprenticeship scheme for the over-50s in the belief that, having more "life experience", they will be able to empathise with wizened customers. It's especially interested in recruiting maths teachers who are perhaps fed up chucking dusters at miscreants and want to do something different with their lives before they take up bungee-jumping. This makes sense to me though I see no need for the new recruits to be numerate. On my most recent trips to the bank I have been served by a young woman who hadn't a clue how to work out percentages and an even younger man who, in order to make a simple subtraction, delegated the job to his computer. Last year, says Barclays, of 2,000 16-24 year-olds who started a standard banking course, 500 graduated and some are already business banking managers, advising clients on investments, Greece's national debt, etc. How can this be?

QUOTE of the week: "The managing director of the IMF [International Monetary Fund] does not take a photo in his office with a prostitute. It's unthinkable." Dominique Strauss-Kahn bolsters his reputation as the sleaze-ball's sleaze-ball.