Having once tried to get through the discreetly-policed front door of Edinburgh-based computer games behemoth Rockstar North - for journalistic purposes - I've had a taste of the firm's secrecy.

So I feel a sense of satisfaction at the news that one online retailer was so prompt in sending out pre-ordered copies of Grand Theft Auto V, the latest instalment of the company's gazillion-selling computer game, that it beat the global embargo by more than 100 playing hours.

My Other Half confided that she once played Grand Theft Auto so long into the small hours she set off in her car on the wrong side of the road the next day. We now spend our evenings playing Beethoven.

Tonight, and the premiere of Sunshine on Leith, the film based on the musical based on the songs of Craig and Charlie Reid, ie, The Proclaimers. As my footballing loyalties lie in the west of the capital, my favourite bit is the scene in the pub when the characters stop singing Let's Get Married so they can watch a Hibs player miss a sitter in a televised game against Hearts. I do like my rom with a side order of com.

I SPEAK to Charlie Reid, and as well as telling me how heartened he is by the film's reception, he is also able to answer a question that has been troubling me. "Where," I ask, "did they shoot that scene where they get into the taxi and ask to go to Morningside?" "Glasgow," he laughs. It must have been a hell of a fare.

the Daily Mail is known for its espousal of family values, so I'm astonished to see a columnist promoting a divorce.

Simon Heffer seeks to drive a Range Rover and horsebox through the union between England and Scotland. His reasoning can be illustrated in one quote: "English money is propping up the most welfare, drink and drug-addicted nation in Europe."

Oddly, Mr Heffer's column didn't feature in the Scottish edition of the Daily Mail. Still, if the makers of Rockstar North would put his street into the next edition of Grand Theft Auto, I promise to drive down it with the windows open and The Proclaimers blaring out of the car stereo.

Apparently, we Britons have upwards of 50 words for the TV remote. And here was me thinking it was only in our house that logic went down the back of the sofa where naming the thing was concerned.

Chez nous, we have both The Grey Stick, and Not The Grey Stick (though it, too, is grey and, yes, a stick). There is also a third one, called The Wee Black One, but it is so long since anyone's seen it I don't think we'd know what it did if we found it. The Betamax, perhaps?

Ahead of the publication of his new novel, a sequel to The Shining, Stephen King said in an interview this week that it isn't really possible to scare grown-ups any more.

He'd rethink that remark if he'd seen what happened to the chocolate cake at my son's birthday tea.