Naked truth

EDINBURGH is getting ready for the annual cultural onslaught known as the Fringe. In a coffee shop Fiona Forshaw overhears two ladies discussing what shows they would like to attend. “I see there’s one called The Naked Magicians – apparently they’re from Australia,” says one.

“They would be” replies her friend. “No-one in Edinburgh takes their cardigan off after 6pm”.

White House turns blue

DONALD Trump’s new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, has raised eyebrows with his foul-mouthed attacks on Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon. John Henderson hears rumours that Scaramucci’s language was so choice that even Malcolm Tucker has registered his disgust and embarrassment.

Rock and a hard place

LE mot juste. Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday morning carried a live report from east London, scene of a clash between people protesting the death of Rashan Charles, and riot police. Bottles and missiles had been hurled at police vans and a road blocked. Presenter Sarah Montague, introducing the piece, said in passing that the scene was only “a stone’s throw” from the programme’s studios.

Rise of the robots

WITHOUT comment we pass on the following report from an English broadsheet about sex robots being used to give company to elderly people in care homes and to help couples enjoy long-distance relationships. One academic expert was quoted as saying: “I can tell you that robots are certainly coming”.

For who the bell tolls

AN urgent email from Rev J Ainslie McIntyre in response to a tweet by JK Rowling. “Please please PLEASE tell me”, it begins, “that JK Rowling did not write "whom amongst us could forget . . ." It must have been an uncorrected typo.

“You and I and everyone else know that ‘whom’ is an accusative/objective, and that the nominative/subjective is ‘who’. If Rowling did write ‘whom’ she should be stripped of all her academic honours!”

Mum’s the word

JOHN P Parker, spotting recent items about the much-missed Flip clothing store, recalls going to the Queen Street store in Glasgow in 1983. He’d just turned 16, and, with £180 in hand, naturally planned to shop until he dropped.

Trouble is, he went with his mother.

Once in Flip, he says, despite the audible sighs of his mum, “I chose an appropriate overcoat and trouser combo from the best second-hand shop in toon.

“My mother grabbed the items and shouted across the shop, ‘You can't buy them. If they're that good secondhand, a man must have died in them!’”

The unfortunate John was dragged from Flip and ushered to Wrygges Man in Goldbergs, where his mother felt more comfortable.

Gray area

BRIAN Boyd remembers a chance meeting in Byres Road with the great Alasdair Gray. “My son, Chris, who was was with me, was studying Lanark as part of his Advanced Higher English. When Chris told Alasdair this, he conspiratorially took him aside and whispered, ‘Don't believe a word your teachers tell you about the book. I just wrote it for a laugh’, and he headed off, chuckling to himself.

“The meeting took place about 12 years ago. Chris is now 30 but he has never forgotten it”.