SO now we ken. Tony Blair's most embarrassing moment, as told to a
13-year-old interviewer on BBC's Newsround, came when he was visiting President Clinton in the White House. The Prime Minister looked down and realised ''with horror'' that his socks were hanging round his ankles. Golly gosh! I knew this guy was too good to be true. If this truly is his most excruciating moment, he has not lived too dangerously. Not like his friend at the White House, Buffalo Bill himself, who has been caught in the Oval Office with more than his socks around his ankles.
Surely Tone - as I call him when I speak to him regularly - has had more embarrassing moments than that? After all, he works with John Prescott. And when the Iron Laddie was publicly compared with Mrs Thatcher, was that not more cheek-reddening than having his socks round his daft wee ankles?
Almost all of my life so far has been embarrassing. It started when I was born. The doctor pronounced that I was the
ugliest baby he had ever seen. Not only that, he said to my mother, pointing at me: ''Know what I'd do with him?'' As he uttered these kindly words, he pulled down on an imaginary toilet chain. Gee, I do love that doctor's sense of humour!
Now, friends, let me tell you this: to be the ugliest baby in Cowdenbeath - even uglier than Dennis Canavan - is not the greatest start in life. So things started badly and fell away, as they say in Glasgow. One day, as a schoolboy, I saw a pal of mine in the distance. I decided to play a merry jape on him. I would steal up on him quietly, and suddenly jump on his back! It's actually quite hard to run 500 yards silently - try it now, if you please - but us Renaissance Men from Cowdenbeath can handle the pressure.
Anyway, my friend never knew what hit him till I landed on him. Gotcha!
There was only one problem. It wasn't my friend at all. It was a complete stranger. I was so traumatised that I remained perched on his shoulders. What does one say in such a situation? ''It's a bit drizzly today, isn't it?'' Or talk about the view? ''It's marvellous. You can even see the coal bings of Lochgelly from up here!'' The spell was broken when the innocent victim, his charmless face turned up towards this numpty on his back, asked bluntly and directly, ''Who the **** are you?'' (I've been wrestling with that existential question ever since. Kierkegaard had a lot to say about it. But that's another story altogether.)
As a journalist, I had lots of embarrassing moments. Surely, though, the sequence would change when I became a divinity student? After all, God was now on my side! I and another student were asked to take a service in Danderhall. Precisely what the good people of Danderhall had done to deserve us I cannot remember. Anyway, the service had a memorable beginning. There was a wee procession down the aisle, in which the Bible-bearing beadle was followed by my good self, followed by my friend. Unfortunately, I got too close to the beadle, and caught the heel of his shoe, which half came off. Then, in what must be a statistical freak, my pal caught my heel. What was intended as a dignified Presbyterian procession turned into a hobbling Monty Python farce. The congregation sobbed with laughter.
Onward and downward. When I was a meenister in Easterhouse, it was my turn to go to the General Assembly of the Kirk. Because it was also Christian Aid Week, I could only go through on the Wednesday, at about lunchtime. It was a glorious summer day, and I was totally knackered. (Doing relentless Good Works fair takes it oot ye.) As I emerged, blinking, from Waverley station, the Assembly was skailing. With all these people in black suits and dog collars, it looked like an undertakers' convention. It took me a nano-second to decide. I would spend the afternoon in Princes Street Gardens, like Jonah, asleep! The gardens were packed. I got the last deck chair, and went down to the front of the crowd.
What a disaster! I simply couldn't put the deck chair up. I tried it this way and that, and, getting more and more tense as the sniggers grew louder, I ended up with my crazed Fife heid sticking through the damned thing! The Calvinist God's revenge! What to do? Enter from left the omnipresent rescuing wee wifie. Glaring at the crowd, the compassionate woman set the deck chair right way up in one swift movement, and I sank into it, face like beetroot.
These are only a few of the printable embarrassing episodes. Why am I telling you all this stuff? First, because I've got a column to fill. Secondly, because I'm an unreconstructed Presbyterian masochist. Tone, I'll take your twee socks around the ankles any day. And when you're at it, pal, get a life.
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