YESTERDAY'S BBC2 schedule had such offerings as Great British Garden Revival, Great British Railway Journeys, The Great British Bake Off, Great British Menu, The Great British Sewing Bee, The Battle for Britain's Breakfast and Border Country:
The Story of Britain's Lost Middleland. Reader Eileen Stables asks: "This is the BBC being impartial?"
However, the Diary spent the entire day fantasising about the possible contents of such programmes as The Great Scottish Menu, The Great Scottish Bake Off and The Battle for Scotland's Breakfast. Any ideas?
Engaging interview
LIFE isn't always easy for rock and pop music writers.
Our esteemed colleague Jonathan Geddes set up a telephone interview with a member of a well-known 1970s rock band. He did his homework, researching the group's history, before ringing the hotel in Miami where the rock star could be contacted.
Unfortunately, the interview never happened. The musician failed to realise that he'd left his phone off the hook, which meant that all Jonathan got for his transatlantic efforts was the engaged signal.
Date's in the Diary
MANCUNIAN popsters Elbow played the Hydro the other night, and singer Guy Garvey enquired if there were any first dates in the audience. He got a few responses, including one couple who appeared cheering on the big screen. But when Guy later sought an update on their evening, a camera shot showed they had left the building. Hopefully, Guy quipped, this meant the date had gone better than anticipated.
Or maybe they just had an early train to catch …
Conversation killer
INTERVIEWS, continued. Paul Serafini recalls Jimmy Howie, a brilliant lecturer at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in the 1960s, being quizzed on TV by an inadequate interviewer, who asked him: "Tell me, what do you hope to get out of life?" Replied Jimmy: "A comfortable death."
The force is strong
CLEARLY, it was the use of the dramatic phrase "forces of darkness" in Lord Robertson's headline-grabbing independence referendum intervention yesterday that fired the imagination of some Twitter users. One of them, Gregor Addison, responded sardonically: "I saw Darth Vader busking on Sauchiehall Street."
Going for a song
MORE on Harry Selby, the Woodside barber-turned-Govan MP, mentioned here yesterday by Dennis Canavan.
Stewart MacLennan says Harry once led a small Trotskyist sect that was dedicated to the pursuit of "entryism" within the Labour Party. When Harry lost the 1973 Govan by-election to Margo MacDonald, rival Trotskyists sang the following, to the tune "Streets of Laredo":
"O shame on ye workers and peasants of Govan/ The way that you voted is really a sin/ Shed a tear for the Trotskyist barber of Woodside/ Thirty years entering and still not got in."
Cumbernauld calling
AND finally ... Drew Fleming wonders whether he was alone in spotting the name of the BBC Scotland TV reporter who did a recent item about a vulture which had escaped to Islay, but had been captured and brought back to its home in Cumbernauld. The reporter's name? Julie Peacock.
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