Flight of fancy
FURTHER cruel news with the death of Stevie Chalmers so soon after that of Billy McNeill. Stevie served his two years' National Service in the RAF before becoming a Celtic player, and was once given a lift home to Glasgow in a jet fighter from Suffolk. As he later memorably recalled: "Nervousness was affecting me so much that I was moved to ask the pilot via the microphone in my headset what would happen if my ejector button would not work. He responded that he would simply tip the plane on its side, ping open the Perspex hatch and tip me out. That only added to my misgivings and I vomited violently and copiously in the aircraft. It was the only flight I took in my two years of service."
Racing tip
WHEN Stevie's autobiography, The Winning Touch, was published, my colleague Russell Leadbetter wrote: "Interesting nugget in the book when he recalled Celtic playing the tie-breaker against the thuggish Racing Club of Argentina to decide who would be world champions in 1967. It was a violent game, and six players were sent off. Eventually, Celtic decided they could take no more and John "Yogi" Hughes collided with the Argentinian goalkeeper and – to quote Stevie – 'gave him a real dunt'. Afterwards, Yogi was asked why he'd done it. 'I didn't think anybody would notice,' he replied – forgetting for the moment that the game had been beamed around the world on live TV."
Chew on that
FORMER Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale is leaving the Scottish Parliament for a job at Glasgow University. She hopes to be taken seriously in her new role but many folk still remember her stint on I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in the Australian jungle. As someone remarked when she was on the show: "If Kezia can swallow the Better Together line, then a few kangaroo bollocks will be a doddle." But when she was voted off the show, stand-up Janey Godley remarked: "Imagine no even winning a worm-eating competition. Poor Kezia."
Ferry tale
OUR story about Scottish ferries reminded Tom Law in Dunoon: "I was waiting at the ferry terminal in Dunoon to pick up my wife from the Glasgow bus when a large American gentleman in a very expensive car asked me when the next car ferry was due. I had to inform him that although there was a CalMac car ferry due, it did not actually take cars, and that the car ferry, operated by Western Ferries, was a couple of miles along the road at Hunters Quay. I'm afraid he didn't laugh like the ferry users in Diary stories."
Doos and don'ts
TRULY Scotland looks fantastic when it is portrayed around the world in TV shows such as Outlander. But a harsher view is given in "Scheme Birds" a bleak film premiered this week at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York made by two Swedish film-makers about Motherwell seen through the eyes of one young girl. As one American reviewer put it: "It’s a world in which social status is punched out in malicious-looking children’s playgrounds over bottles of Buckfast. Gemma, with her tendency to hurl herself into any argument, hers or otherwise, is encouraged by her pigeon-fancying grandfather to channel her aggression in his boxing gym and to 'stay away from the dafties'.” We must admit that as advice goes, "stay away from the dafties" is pretty sound.
Shopped her
WE mentioned folk no longer having a plastic bag full of plastic bags stuffed in a kitchen cupboard. Says reader Andy Stevens: "We still have that. My wife has so many bags for life, she's immortal."
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