About these shoes, Daniel ...

SO, farewell then, Daniel Day-Lewis. The Oscar-laden actor has taken many people aback by announcing his retirement at age of just 60.

Reports yesterday spoke of his distinguished acting career, his painstaking preparation for film roles, his personal life, and even the fact that, in the late 1990s, he apprenticed as a shoemaker under a master cobbler.

Fans, commenting online on news websites, sought to praise Daniel’s acting prowess, though one person focused on a narrower point of view: “Finally. Maybe now he’ll get around to finishing that pair of shoes I ordered from him in 1998”.

One day, Charles. One day

STILL online (something of an occupational hazard when you’re doing the Diary), we followed the reactions on Twitter to the Queen’s Speech yesterday.

Kudos to the people who posted a photograph of the Queen reading from the speech as she sat next to Prince Charles, above the caption: “Bring Your Child to Work Day”.

All change

DIARY reader John Mulholland alerts us to what he describes as one of the best on-board ScotRail announcements he says he has ever heard.

“The ticket collector, Craig, announced, ‘You might notice as I walk through the train that I’m not wearing Scotrail uniform. This is because Scotrail is supporting the Motor Neurone Disease charity and they’ve allowed staff who made a donation to have a ‘dress-down day.’

“’I wouldn’t like any passengers to think that I’d just turned up for work straight after a night out!’”

Well, it brightened my day, adds John, “and here’s hoping the charity buckets at main stations are filled with cash”.

Burning ambition

NEWS of Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming film, Dunkirk, sent us scurrying back to the Glasgow Herald’s files from 1940 to see how the paper covered the evacuation.

And there we spotted a great example of British military sang-froid.

The paper interviewed a Scottish soldier who had not long returned from Dunkirk. He spoke of the bombing and strafing there, of the dangers and discomforts, and the terrible sights.

And then he was asked, “Now, how do you feel about going back to all that?”

His reply: “By God I’m going back. You get 20 Players for sixpence!”

Janey v Angry Skeleton

SOMEWHERE out there are people rash or brave enough to heckle stand-up comedians.

Glasgow’s Janey Godley reports that she was interrupted last week by a woman who shouted at her and then yelled that Janey was fat.

To which Janey, in her customary take-no-prisoners style, responded, “Yep, but ah’m getting banged harder than a troll’s keyboard”.

The woman, finding no solace from her friends, stormed out of the venue. Remarkably, she later took to Facebook to continue her harangue.

But the last word inevitably goes to Janey - who, recounting the entire episode in a series of tweets, concludes with understandable glee: “A woman who resembled angry skeleton in Michael Kors flappy trousers in what can only be described as strappy surgical shoes told me am fat”.

Godley 1, Heckler 0, we think.