The Diary: Orange appeal

Diary Editor

Thursday 3 November 2011

FORMER Met detective Jock Murray, originally from Lewis, tells in his just-published autobiography, The Whaler of Scotland Yard, that more than 50 years ago he had sat a medical carried out by a wizened Harris doctor, Iain MacIntosh, in order to serve on whaling ships.

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When a fellow whaler, says Jock, went to Old Mac for advice on dealing with a cold, he was told by the doc: “Buy a bottle of rum, two oranges, and a glass.

“Place an orange on both the bottom bedposts. Keep sipping the rum until you see three oranges, and then you should be cured.” Have a heart?A KELVINSIDE reader tells us that when he flipped open his wallet in a west end cafe, his bright blue and red donor card was very prominent, and the chatty waitress asked if he was an organ donor.He is still puzzled by the fact that after he said yes, she asked: “Did it hurt?” Jurist’s dictionGLASGOW Sheriff Court is of course still one of the busiest courts in Europe. A Newlands reader who arrived for jury duty wondered how fair the jury was going to be when one of his fellow jurists confided: “When the letter arrived with the court address on the envelope, I thought it was a summons.”The gull fiend MUSICIAN Bruce MacGregor of the band Blazin’ Fiddles mentioned on Facebook that he had a couple of unsatisfactory meals on his last visit to Edinburgh.A fan replied that a local worthy in Edinburgh once found a dead seagull, went into his local takeaway, slammed it on the counter and said: “That’s the last one I supply till you’ve paid for the rest.”There was then a sudden exit by everyone waiting for food. Time to ponderA READER passing a Glasgow city centre cinema wondered about the Scottish education system when he heard a young girl looking at the posters detailing what films were showing that day, ask her pal: “Hey, 110 minutes. What’s that in hours?” Clock thisAIDAN McLaughlin from Glasgow ponders talk of a separate time zone in Scotland and asks: “Do we really want Scottish Mean Time?” Howzat again?OUR London sports contact phones to tell us: “The Pakistan cricket team have issued a statement expressing their shock at the involvement of three Pakistani players in match fixing.“They promised to clean up their act before the 2-1 series defeat to the West Indies next year.” Reading the mitre?OUR mention of the late Sir Jimmy Savile reminds Bernard Aspinwall: “Jimmy used to preside over St Bede’s Old Boys rugby club dances in Manchester, and on one occasion he appeared in a gold lamé suit -- unimaginable in 1950s Britain.“Bishop Beck of Salford, there in full episcopal rig-out said, ‘Jim, what an outlandish suit’. To which Jimmy replied, ‘To each his cloth, my lord’.”

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The Diary: Orange appeal

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