Our story about author Martin Kielty at martinkielty.com collecting dance hall stories reminds Glen Elliot in Elgin of being at Glasgow’s Dennistoun Palais more than 50 years ago where he told a girl he fancied: “If I see you home I’ll give you something you’ve never had before.”
At that point his dancing partner shouted to her pal: “Haw, Mary, this yin’s git leprosy!”
“I never did see her home,” says Glen.
Melting moments
WE move on from the volcanic ash disruption, but in passing reader Andy Bryson mentions that film-maker Richard Curtis is working on a new rom-com about people stuck in an airport who fall in love. The working title is Lava Actually.
Cold discomfort
AUTHOR James Robertson, appointed writer-in-residence at Napier University, recalled his first residency 17 years ago in poet Hugh MacDiarmid’s former home in South Lanarkshire. Says James: “It was a freezing cold cottage, infested with mice. Sometimes it was actually colder in the house than it was outside. That was when even the mice used to leave.”
The hole truth
OUR golf gags to mark the return of golfers reminds Bob Jarvie of the golfer asking the club pro for advice. “The pro asked him to hit a few balls before commenting. He then told him the best advice he could give him was to cut a foot off his clubs,” Bob tells us. ‘Will that help my game?’ asked the player. ‘No,’ said the pro. ‘But they’ll go in the bin easier’.”
Shelf life
JOHN Banks tells us: “I was driving past Motherwell Cross the other morning around ten to nine. There was a small crowd queuing outside the library. I thought to myself, ‘That’s a turn up for the books’.”
Tough job
OUR request for funny election stories reminds retired politician Dennis Canavan, whose autobiography Let the People Decide was recently published, of BBC Newsnight’s Mark Mardell interviewing him in Falkirk.
“A bunch of pupils from Graeme High School began to gesticulate in front of the camera. Mark tried to carry on, but pupils then started ‘helping’ me with the answers. Eventually Mark lost it completely, and snarled: ‘**** off!’
“Since then I have seen him reporting cooly from the world’s biggest trouble spots, but the BBC never sent him back to Falkirk. Maybe the Graeme High School bairns taught him a lesson.”
Champagne election day lunch at Glasgow’s Dining Room for the best election story.
Dough!
STUART Crawford notes on Page 47 of Henry McLeish’s frequently mis-spelled report on Scottish football that there is a “shortage of home bread players of any quality”. Yes, perhaps it’s because there’s not enough dough in the Scottish game.
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