THE DIARY WEDNESDAY JUNE 24, 2009
THE DIARY'S long memory recalls new Westminster Speaker John Bercow, then a professional tennis instructor, standing as Conservative candidate in Motherwell South in the late 1980s. There wasn't much tennis played in Motherwell then: if you said you were going to the courts, you'd probably be wearing a shirt and tie rather than tennis whites.
Plucky John had his picture taken at the steelworks for his election leaflet, in which he declared: "Conservatives recognise the crucial importance of the Scottish steel industry. Ravenscraig is now profitable and there is no question of it being closed."
Hit the net there then, John.
It's got a good beat
THE Order of Service at Paisley Abbey on Sunday included the choral piece "Blessed are the Pacemakers". We fear a misprint - unless the choir really was acknowledging the age of the average worshipper.
Right to the point
AFTER our story about women imbibing before the Take That concerts in Glasgow, Annie McQuiston tells us she was sitting in the beer garden of one of Cathcart Road's drinking establishments pre-concert when she overheard two ladies from the islands approach a police officer and ask: "Will we get knifed if we go into that pub? We're not from Glasgow, you see."
"Take That", as a Glaswegian may or may not have said to them.
Mobile moan
"DID you see what the authorities did in Iran?" said the excitable chap in the pub the other night. "They were closing down the internet and mobile phone services. People were getting busy signals and told there was no service, so they couldn't send out pictures of the protests."
"So," said his mate. "Just like having your average Vodafone contract, then?"
Wheel of misfortune
DIRECTIONS continued. Ewen Ellen was working in a petrol station in the Highland town of Beauly one summer when a car-load of young chaps stopped and asked for directions to the motor museum.
He was baffled until a local broke the bad news that the Beaulieu Motor Museum was about 600 miles away in the New Forest in southern England.
The farce be with you
SCOTTISH costume designer Trisha Biggar spoke at the Edinburgh International Film Festival this week about working on Star Wars, and finding a vintage brown wool fabric from the 1940s which she thought would be perfect for Ewan McGregor's famous Jedi cloak (pictured below). However, when filming started, she received a panicked phone call telling her to rush to the set - where Ewan, filming in the rain, was trying to play Obi-Wan Kenobi in a cloak that had shrunk by ten inches.
"He went through half of his costumes in one take, and they couldn't shoot below his knees," says Trisha.
- "How is it one careless match can start a forest fire?" asks a Guide leader just back from a weekend camp, "but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?"
In deep trouble
STUART McHardy, author of the just-published Tales of Loch Ness, tells us that the Loch Ness Monster was first mentioned in the sixth century when Saint Columba admonished her for threatening to eat one of his monks. Making the sign of the cross, Columba yelled: "Stop, touch not the man, foul beast. Turn and go back where you belong and come not forth again for many years."
Says Stuart: "To everyone's astonishment the creature sank beneath the waves. Such was the power of this command that it was over a thousand years before poor Nessie was seen again.You can hardly blame her for being shy after that."
