New practice

recently found guilty of professional misconduct by the Law Society of

Scotland discipline tribunal. Mr Scagell issued a fee note for #3900

which mislead a bank into releasing funds to his client. He kept a #600

cheque for work done from another client for his own use.

He was found to have ignored letters and telephone calls from clients,

to have been inefficient in administering three wills, and to have

failed to answer investigatory letters from the Law Society.

For these offences, Mr Scagell has suffered the condign punishment of

a #2000 fine and being allowed to carry on working but only under the

supervision of a practitioner approved by the Law Society. This he has

managed to do.

Readers of the People on the Move column in this very paper might feel

that Mr Scagell, this black sheep of the Ayrshire bar, has landed on his

feet. For do we not read a notice saying that ''Jim Gibson, sole partner

of Messrs Gibsons, Solicitors, Troon, is delighted to announce . . .

that he has amalgamated his practice with that of Martin Scagell,

Solicitor, Prestwick, hitherto senior partner of the former firm of . .

.

''The very considerable experience of both partners in family and

business law will enable the new practice to continue the provision of

their full range of legal services.''

In the news

KENNETH Roy recalls in his autobiography that he was once interviewed

as a murder suspect. There was no basis to the suspicions, of course,

but that did not prevent Oor Ken going through a particularly nasty

grilling by an inspector from the London polis who turned up at the BBC

in Glasgow all unexpected. The inspector who called said that a photofit

of the perpetrator had been issued and a member of the public had phoned

in to say it looked very like Kenneth Roy.

We have to say we are not surprised. Mr Roy's wee book (The Closing

Headlines, #11.95) contains a photograph of the author (below) which

looks like any photofit picture you have ever seen in your life of a man

guilty as charged. Fortunately for all of us he has matured into an awfy

handsome cove, a lovely man, and a fine writer.

Putting the boot in

ONE of the greatest newspaper columnists of all time was Myles na

Gopaleen of the Irish Times and one of the treats of his column was the

Catechism of Cliche. John Dougan of Newmains pines for the na Gopaleen

catechetical days and suggests that the great man would have found

fertile territory in the football coverage to be heard on our airwaves.

He has come up with a few examples:

What do we have, and where, when a team pulls back to only 2-1 down

with 15 minutes to play?

A game; on our hands.

When returning to the ground of his former employers, how many does a

player wish to put over on his old mates?

One.

What is concealed in the left boot of certain peculiarly gifted

footballers?

A peg.

We fear there may be more extracts from the football catechism out

there.

A hitch in time

THE normally sensible wee resort of Dunoon is the latest victim of the

plague that is jazz. This weekend the place was overrun with half of

Glasgow as Dunoon held its second jazz festival.

Jazz is all about improvisation, which explains why the festival's

press officer (who doubled as drum removal man) had as his HQ a phone

box on the promenade. Continuing this theme, we had an appearance by

Lech Walesa-lookalike Janusz Carmello described as ''the man who stands

unchallenged as Europe's finest pocket trumpet player''. This does not

mean he plays the trumpet in his pooch but simply that he has only got a

small one. The whole thing was a bit like Twin Peaks meets Tutti Frutti,

especially in the Queen's Hall where the candles were stuck in yule logs

because someone had forgotten to get in bottles.

The jazz festival faced a minor technical hitch on Saturday morning

when the drum removal man was refused entry to the Queen's Hall where he

was supposed to be collecting a set of urgently required drums. The

problem was that a convention of lady quilters were also in town and

didn't want their slide show disrupted. The purchase of several raffle

tickets from the rather irate lady organising the quilting event did the

trick.