Rumour has it
“ADELE’S partner did the most adorable thing for their anniversary,” runs a post on Clyde 1’s Facebook page. One particularly cynical listener responds, “Broke up with her, so she can write a new album?”
Typecast again
ACCORDING to John Mulholland, the producers of a well-known BBC Radio Scotland topical comedy panel show have emailed their writers to request that they use Calibri font size 12.
Which just goes to show that nowadays, being a font of all knowledge is not as important as having a knowledge of all fonts.
Knockin’ on Dylan’s door
BOB Dylan still hasn’t responded to the Swedish Academy’s gesture in awarding him the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. Reports even suggest that the Academy has given up trying to contact him.
US political analyst David Axelrod sums it up nicely. “I guess Bob Dylan has no sense of Nobel oblige!” he tweets.
Cops on message
SPEAKING of Twitter, a number of breezy little messages have made Dumfries and Galloway Police an entertaining presence on the site.
Two samples from earlier this month: “Court holiday on Monday! Get arrested & kept in custody at oor 5 star retreat & it will be Tuesday before your back oot” and “Just spoke to guy sitting alone in park. Claimed he was just out to ‘enjoy the stars.’ Lack of stars & smell of cannabis suggests otherwise.”
They were at it again yesterday, with this: “Driver caught at 103mph on #A75 yesterday. Already on 9 points. Let’s hope his boots are made for walking #DGRoads.”
Reply at your convenience
YESTERDAY’S story recalled by Neil Dunn reminds Robin Gilmour of another 1970’s tale of a certain Neilly Dunn who had left Dublin to seek his fortune in London.
His young cousin came in search of him: all he knew for certain was that he was living somewhere in WC1.
The cousin emerged from the Tube station at Leicester Square and there, right across the road was a sign saying ‘ WC ‘.
He went down the steps only to be confronted by a row of closed doors. He politely knocked on several of them asking, “Are you Neilly Dunn?”
All the replies were in the negative. At the fifth door, however, his question was answered with, “Aye, I’m nearly done. Why are you askin’?”
“’Cos your mammy wants you to phone home, Neilly,” the cousin says.
Welcome to Edinburgh
THE prospect of 50,000 Glaswegians descending on Edinburgh with unruly intent - and no, this was not during the Festival - is one that would understandably worry the City Fathers.
Alan Taylor, author of Glasgow: An Autobiography, regaled a Kelvin Hall audience with this very tale last night at a National Library of Scotland event. Quoting Henry Cockburn, one-time Solicitor-General for Scotland, Alan told how a rumoured invasion by Glasgow weavers during the Radical War occasioned alarm.
The rumours came to naught, but Cockburn did encounter “at least 400 or 500 grown gentlemen, pacing about, dressed coarsely, as if for work, according to taste or convenience, with bludgeons, fowling pieces, dirks, cane-swords, or other implements. A zealous banker laboured under two small swivels set on stocks, one under each arm.”
Good to know that Edinburgh’s attitude to Glaswegians has thawed since then. Slightly.
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