Dirty Diary

One scene in particular has caught the public imagination and it has had a deleterious affect on both the Quintana's quality of life and their driveway. In it, lead character Walter White has an argument with his wife at the door of his house while holding a pizza. Walking away after she closes the door on him, he throws the pizza onto the roof of the garage, where it sticks.

The scene has became known as “the Pizza of Destiny” after actor Bryan Cranston nailed it on the first take. Clearly the crew were ready for a long day of pizza-tossing before the “pie” stuck to the roof of the garage and didn't just slide onto the ground. So what die-hard Breaking Bad fans like to do now is wander up to the house and – you guessed it – chuck pizzas onto the roof, presumably as an accomplice films the whole thing for uploading to some YouTube channel nobody talks about a dinner parties, whether they be attended by smart people or not.

Unsurprisingly, the Quintanas are a little fed up with all this. “Crabby old woman told me to go across the street to take pictures,” wrote one visitor in an online blog post. “Screw you lady. She sits in her garage and complains if you get too close. You live in a house that is famous … I hope someone throws a pizza on your roof very soon.”

The chances are, someone will. However that might start to become more difficult than previously because, faced with this ongoing, disc-shaped deluge of pepperoni, mozzarella, pineapple and mushrooms, the Quintanas have decided to build what Vice News describes as “a big-ass wall”. Not as big-ass as the one Donald Trump wants along the border with Mexico, but much more likely to actually exist in the real world. And certainly adequate to the job of guarding a garage from tossers.

BEIJING'S VIEW OF BOOZY YOUTHS

WE Edinburghers are used to being disrespected by our friends along the M8 in Glasgow, by our bus drivers, and by our councillors (how else do explain the tram fiasco and the incredible shrinking bin collections?). That's all fine. But we do take exception to trash-talking from further afield. China, for example.

Here's what the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post had to say recently about our nation's capital, in an article which purports to be a guide to the city. Calton Hill, it said, was “a hangout for street sleepers and boozy youths. Muggings are not unknown in the area”, while visitors to Canongate Kirkyard needed to be prepared for “aggressive pan-handlers seeking donations for their beverage fund”. Meanwhile an encounter with our much-loved street entertainers was described like this – “a bag-piping busker in a kilt keeps playing until passers-by donate enough money to make him stop” – and our normally blue skies were called “cement-coloured”. The city lying under these selfsame skies was so “dark” and “soot-stained” that tourists “often leave the city with a series of gloomy, underexposed photos”.

Outrageous slander, every little bit of it. Did the writer actually visit Edinburgh or just watch Trainspotting while perusing a book on Victorian snappers Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill? Even the bit about the Scottish Parliament was wrong: a visit there was described as “edifying”. Edifying? I nearly choked on my protein shake.

OUR LAND OF GIANTS

TALKING of protein shakes – see what I did there? – perhaps they should become compulsory north of the border. How else are we going to turn the tables on our own ill-firing DNA, the cellular stuff that makes us genetically predisposed to endlessly throw away three points in World Cup qualifying matches?

As you well know, we have yet again blown it on the footballing front, a fact which our (now former) national manager Gordon Strachan blames on our DNA. Sort of, anyway. “Genetically, we're behind,” he said last week. “Genetically, we have to work at things”. His solution? “Get big women and men together, and see what we can do”. No mention of protein shakes, but I'm sure they'll figure somewhere in the SFA planning as they try to make the nation's footballers harder, better, faster, stronger. Maybe they can use that Daft Punk song to inspire them.

But whatever it takes, can someone put in a grant application and get on with doing it, please? Next time the man from the South China Morning Post visits Scotland, I want him to go away crowing about his time in a land of giants – a land where unboozy youths with no predilection to pan-handling practise Messi-like dribbling skills in the streets, and where the skies, though still cement-coloured, are brightened considerably by the dazzling ker-ching! gleam coming off the World Cup trophy as it's paraded through the streets by an Amazonian First Minister and her buff and ripped parliamentary colleagues.

PUTIN'S BIRTHDAY BAM-BOTS

IT was Vladimir Putin's birthday last weekend and, he-man that he is, I imagine he extinguished all 65 candles in a single puff of whichever set of presidential cheeks were facing the cake at the time. He didn't have Marilyn Monroe on hand to perform a breathy “Happy birthday, Mr President” in the language he speaks (Russian) or in any of the ones spoken in countries he'd soon like to conquer (take your pick from Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian and Georgian). But he did have the well-wishes of millions of his Russian subjects – sorry, citizens – ringing in his ears.

Or if not in his ears, then flashing up on his smartphone at least. A Russian hashtag which translates as “Happy Birthday President” began trending early in the day. One of the most re-tweeted social media posts came with the caption “High five!” and showed a Russian bear holding its paw aloft. I don't know what animals you'd choose to represent Nicola Sturgeon or Theresa May but it's hard to see the UK's meme generators and social media users taking time out from their busy lives to create something similar when those two politicians' birthdays roll around (July 19 and October 1, since you ask).

Hang on though, say a growing number of cyber cynics and internet sceptics. Is this outpouring of love for El Prez actually real – or could it be the work of pro-Putin Russian “bots”? People who know a lot more about it than me say it's the second, based on analysis of the social media accounts from which the memes seem to have originated. A “bot”, by the way, is a … well I'm not quite sure, to be honest. But let's just say they come in mighty useful when there's a bampot with a birthday coming up and a gargantuan ego that needs stroking.