SCOTS crime author Ian Rankin, looking back on 25 years of his famous detective, Rebus, at the Edinburgh Book Festival this week, recalled his favourite pun, included in one book when Rebus was driving home to Fife, and remembering the days when smoke used to billow from the chimney tops.

The line? "It silenced him, the silence of the lums."

Called to the bar

IAN also recalled some of the errors he'd made in the books over the years, only noticed once they'd already gone to print, which included repeatedly talking about "trellis tables" rather than trestle tables and claiming that Marvin Gaye had sung I Can See Clearly Now, rather than Johnny Nash.

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