GOOD to see a Scot at London's Trafalgar Square who is not diving into the fountains before an England v Scotland football match.

This is James Keir Hardie, a really remarkable man, born into poverty, forced to work down the mines at the age of 10, self taught, yet rose to found the Labour Party.

Here he is in 1913, two years before his death, addressing a large crowd, including suffragettes, at a rally on votes for women. It is hard to believe now, but property-owning women over the age of 30 were not given the vote until 1918, and it was another 10 years before the vote was extended to all women over the age of 21.

Hardie was the illegitimate son of a Lanarkshire domestic servant. His mother's poverty forced him out to work as a message boy at the age of eight and then in the mines at 10, operating the ventilation doors underground. As he once stated: "For several years as a child I rarely saw daylight during the winter months. Down the pit by six in the morning and not leaving it again until half past five meant not seeing the sun."

He eventually became a trade union leader for miners at Cumnock in Ayrshire, where he became disillusioned with the Liberal Party and helped form the Independent Labour Party, and was elected to Westminster for a London seat in 1892. Even his arrival in a cloth cap rather than a top hat caused consternation at the Houses of Parliament.

He didn't make many friends there - perhaps because of comments such as: "More and more the House of Commons tends to become a putrid mass of corruption, a quagmire of sordid madness, a conglomeration of mercenary spiritless hacks dead alike to honour and self-respect." That's telling them Jimmy.

In 1906 29 Labour MPs were elected, the parliamentary Labour Party was formed, and Keir Hardie became its first leader. However his health was poor and he resigned as leader in 1908 but continued to campaign for women's rights, as he is doing here, still roaring beside the lions in Trafalgar Square.

Gathering a crowd of a different kind are these entertainers at the Royal Variety Show in 1956. Can you name them? On the left is actor and entertainer Teddy Knox who rose to fame as part of The Crazy Gang - a British troupe which also included Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen.

Next is the singer Gracie Fields, crooner of the well-known Sally, and the rather clumsily titled It's the Biggest Aspidistra in the World.

Take a second to work out the next chap. He is of course Scots comic Chic Murray, although without his usual tammy you might have missed that. And finally singer Dickie Valentine, very popular in the fifties, but usually in dinner suit so again, difficult to spot. Well done if you got all four.

And finally entertaining themselves are these girls at Adelphi School in Gorbals, Glasgow in 1976. Hula hoops became popular in the late fifties when an American manufacturer worked out how to produce them cheaply. They had gone out of fashion by the late seventies so presumably this was some kind of well-meaning keep-fit class. Girl on the right has got the hang of it, but one or two are struggling.