No Cannes do PRIOR to last night's Scottish Screen party on the Croisette, actorGary Lewis, pictured, had been the only Scot at the Cannes Film Festival. Gary was promoting Merry Christmas, the true tale of the impromptu Yuletide peace treaty which emerged between German and British troops in the First World War trenches. Less harmoniously, Gary's luggage went astray en route to Cannes, leading him to contemplate attending his movie's premiere in a borrowed sloppy joe and swimming trunks.

Heading home, Gary was then stranded for hours in Amsterdam.

As he lamented by phone: "I'll have to go and sit on the river bank and read a script - I don't smoke dope so that rules out most possibilities."

Barca mad ONLY in Edinburgh? We hear of a city-wide five-a-side football tournament at Gracemount Leisure Centre where one bunch of young men had chosen a capital team name for themselves:

Barearsealona.

A real steal ONE of Glasgow's less glamorous inner-city suburbs, Possil, has been inspiring fashion accessory designers. Rummaging through the purses on sale at old-school Glasgow department store Watt Bros, a style-conscious reader spotted that theirmost expensive leather ones - at pounds-14.99 and pounds-9.99 - bear a "Possil Creations" logo.

Our fashionista gushes: "The purses are minimalist black, with subtle detailing in shades of camel and burgundy."However, she surely goes too far in stereotyping Possil's natives by adding: "Loads of room for freshly-laundered drugs money and as many credit cards as you could everwish to steal from other folk." Tut, tut.

Shameful.

Lasting appeal ASPIRING Scottish LibDem leaderNicol Stephen, pictured, is heading to London to tout for support among MPs.

This news prompted a supporter of one of Nicol's opponents to mutter: "Och well, I suppose that means he'll be down there longer than when he was Kincardine and Deeside's MP in the winter of 1991."The LibDems?

Bitchy contests? No, never.

Dishing it out AH, THE gauzy wit of the latterday football supporter. A ChelseaNorwich City game has provided a contender for the English Premiership's chant of the season. The match took place shortly after the East Anglian club's chairwoman, Delia Smith, had made her slurred half-time appeal to the home terraces: "Lesh be 'avin' you!"

Chelsea fans thus chanted: "We've got Abramovich, you've got a drunken bitch."Norwich City devotees responded with: "We've got a wonder cook, you've got a Russian crook."

Policy on the hoof OUR story about the church service for animals strikes a chord with Bill Waddell of Cumbernauld. He once attended mass in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, where the priest announced that on the following Saturday, the feast of St Francis of Assisi, there would be a service for pets. "Bring your pets along for a blessing, " the priest said, before wagging an admonitory finger and continuing, "but NO racehorses."

That's life, Rabbie LOU Reed, pictured, headlines this year's Burns An' a'That festival on Friday, with the erstwhile king of New York's

punk-rock underground performing Burnsian verse to an audience of thousands amid the scenic splendour of Culzean Castle's grounds. One the same night, the Craigie Inn, near Kilmarnock, stages Burn It Up, billed as "A disco and cheekie Rabbie limerick contest".

OrganiserMartin Treacher has solicited an entry from a celebrity chum, Esther Rantzen. With a dogged insistence that Rabbie might have appreciated, Estherwrites:

Yon Burns would be shocked if he saw that The lasses have brought in a law that Means they can drink booze Smoke cigs and wear trews But a woman's a woman for a' that.

Truth about Kirk THE annual General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is nigh, and so Annie Cooke recalls a young minister chum of hers attending his first such gathering.

As he apprehensively neared the Assembly Hall, he noted two careworn locals loitering in a doorway, idly observing the numerous dog-collarwearers.

Pointing at the hall, one chap inquired: "Whit's goin' on in there?"His pal replied: "Ach, it's where the Church of Scotland go every year and talk complete shite."

Annie claims her friend was impressed on two counts: a) that the chap knew it was the Church of Scotland, and b) that he'd seen that year's agenda.