Vacuumed knickers, Salmond's reshuffle: one way or another, it's all about sucking up

Writer

Sunday 9 September 2012

THE Home Secretary, who is otherwise discernment incarnate, will not hear a bad word said about Bruce Willis.

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Alan Taylor’s Diary

When I say that if she must swoon over a bloke in a semmit why can it not be Rab C, she gives one of those looks that could turn Desperate Dan to jelly. But I digress.

Mr Willis, it has been reported, has let it be known that he may sue Apple because it would not allow him to bequeath the music on his countless iPods to his children. And much hoo-ha it caused, mostly to do with the dastardliness or otherwise of Apple. What no-one, not even devotees of Die Hard and its countless sequels, seems to have realised is that there is no chance of Mr Willis expiring. Like plutonium and plastic, he is indestructible, even if his music collection isn't.NOW that the weans are back at borstal, there has been much chuntering on the subject of uniforms, some pro, some anti. A former headmistress says she's pro, because in her day the lassies would compete for the laddies by wearing short skirts, low-cut tops, lipstick and "large circular earrings that looked like parrot perches". In my day, we laddies were lucky if on our first appearance at secondary we got to wear longs instead of shorts. For reasons that have still to be resolved, pater insisted I wear shorts, which made me look like Jimmy Clitheroe or one of the Krankies. Psychopaths in the sixth form were keen to initiate newcomers into the school's ethos, which invariably consisted in one having one's head thrust down a toilet, whereupon the flush was activated. If nothing else, it was perfect practice for those with ambitions to be hairdressers. MY dear amigo, Alexei Salmonella, has been shuffling his pack of werewolves. I am sad to see another dear chum go: Bruce Crawford, a gentleman, who is not only named after a nationalist hero (no, not Bruce Forsyth!) but also after a renowned maker of shortbread. Conscious readers of this throbbing organ will recall that when last Mr Crawford and I met he invited me to stroke his "beaver", ie his sporran, which I was happy to do. May I add for the record that Mrs Crawford was a witness to this happening. Anent – ahem! – the reshuffle, much ado has been made of Nicola Sturgeon's departure from Health. Laybore is upset, apparently because only Ms Sturgeon knows what dosage of methadone to administer to the druggies. Her successor, Alex Neil, is more likely to dish out bromide. Ms Sturgeon, meanwhile, is going to "spearhead" the referendum campaign, to which, say the punderati, she will bring an air of authority and reassurance, especially on matters economic. All of which, I dare say, may well be the case. But what everyone appears to have ignored is that Ms Sturgeon is a woman and, if the opinion polls are to be believed, the Jean Armours, Ma Broons and Lulus of Auld Scotia are yet to be convinced that independence is A Good Thing. That's the real challenge facing Ms Nicola.WITHOUT a doubt, the story of the week concerns a man from Croydon whose partner discovered he was having an affair when she took their vacuum cleaner to be repaired, whereupon a pair of French knickers was pulled from the dust bag. Rarely have I read a more tragic tale. Picture the scene: the domesticated bloke spots the knickers under the bed. Eager to avoid embarrassment, he whips out the cleaner and starts to hoover as if his life depends on it while his partner wonders whether he suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder. It would be interesting (but not vital) to know whether he tried to explain how the French knickers got into the dust bag. He might, for instance, have suggested that he bought them for his partner but let them slip out the bag while simultaneously doing the hoovering. Another possibility is that the knickers were his and he'd been hiding the fact from his partner, who prefers her men to wear Y-fronts. The story is in The Times which, oddly, has put on it the headline: "Moonies founder dies".IN my role as United Nations' ambassador for Eastern Teuchterland, I am often asked if Musselberg is a multi-cultural community. Once I've stopped choking, I point out to the ignorami that of course it is, that I know personally a few individuals who have moved here from Prestonpans and Port Seton, who have been embraced by natives if not with open arms then at least with grudging acceptance. Never, for example, will you hear anyone speak ill of folk from these hamlets, especially in their presence. Nor, indeed, have I ever heard anyone suggest that they should go back to where they came from because they're occupying jobs real Musselbergers want. On the contrary, real Musselbergers are delighted that others are prepared to do jobs they do not want, such as making sandwiches in Submarine. The latest stranger in our midst is a musician who plays Peruvian pipes outside Happit. It is quite possible he himself is Peruvian, used to live in Machu Picchu and is directly descended from the Inca leader whose name momentarily escapes me. Alternatively, he may hail from Haddington. I doubt, though, that the Incas played Highland Cathedral and Amazing Grace on their pipes. For a day or two the locals seemed happy with such an exotic in their midst but increasingly the tide is turning, firstly because Mr Picchu tends to play tunes of a mournful nature and, secondly, around noon, Christmas carols. My gut feeling is that if he doesn't learn The Muckin' O' Geordie's Byre soon his contract will be cancelled. BOBBY Dylan's latest album has a 14-minute song about the Titanic, which one American tube in the LA Times has criticised because "everybody already knows how it ends". How he must have loved the movie.MARS, which makes bars, has told a Stonehaven chippy to stop using its name to advertise the deep-fried delicacy it invented because it is keen to promote a healthy lifestyle. Honest.

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Vacuumed knickers, Salmond's reshuffle: one way or another, it's all about sucking up

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