WHEN interviewing Knight Rider and Baywatch star David Hasselhoff a few years ago, the actor casually dropped into conversation that he once brought a boy out of a coma.
If you were to visualise my facial expression during the telling of this gem you can imagine it resembled something between your average Love Island contestant attempting to grapple with the basics of quantum mechanics and Edvard Munch's The Scream.
According to Hasselhoff, he recorded a tape and sent it to the youngster. "I said: 'This is David Hasselhoff, it is Michael Knight, wake up, wake up!'" he recalled. Lo and behold, when the message was played, the boy awoke in his hospital bed. Who'd have thunk it?
I was reminded of this anecdote when a schoolboy emerged from a three-week coma after smelling his favourite Lynx deodorant.
Kacper Krauze was rushed to hospital after being submerged for 25 minutes when he fell into the freezing waters of the River Eden in Cumbria. The 13-year-old's condition was so grave that paramedics had to restart his heart in the air ambulance.
In the days afterwards, family members and nurses had tried in vain to wake him up, but it wasn't until his mother Wioletta sprayed Lynx in the intensive care unit of the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle that the teenager opened his eyes.
It is a wonderful and uplifting tale yet the cynic in me wonders how long it will take before some marketing strategy is launched around it exulting the so-called "Lynx effect". In an office somewhere, an ad exec is probably already rubbing their hands together in glee at the prospect.
It also begs the question: what would it take to bring the rest of us out of a coma? The dulcet tones of The Hoff, a spritz of deodorant or permission from Sajid Javid?
Name your poison
IT'S been a week of bombshell revelations. And by bombshell, I mean vaguely interesting. That includes the pearl-clutching gasps when Tory leadership hopeful Rory Stewart admitted he smoked opium at a wedding in Iran a decade ago.
Gird your loins, peeps. There could yet be a few more skeletons to come tumbling out of the collective closets of the 12 candidates in the running to becoming the next prime minister.
Everyone has their dark secrets. Take financier and philanthropist Guy Hands who has revealed he underwent hypnosis to curb his roast potato addiction.
The former chairman of music company EMI confessed a habit for ambling into posh restaurants and ordering nothing but roast potatoes in gravy. "I'd eat 10 roast potatoes easily," he told the financial journal MarketWatch. "Forget the rest. Just give me roast potatoes and gravy."
To be honest, I am struggling to see the issue with this. It sounds exactly like something in the ballpark of "Well, one day, when I'm a rich billionaire …" territory. What better way to spend an afternoon than mainlining roast potatoes?
Hands, who is diabetic, said he feared the impact of eating every spud he liked was having on his health. "I found potatoes spiked my sugars more than any other thing out there," adding it was his aim "to get myself to decide I hated potatoes …" Which is sacrilege from where I'm standing.
If ever I am in a coma, rustle up a vat of roast potatoes doused in goose fat, a quick waft under my nostrils and my eyes will ping open faster than Labour expelled Alastair Campbell.
I have a friend who enjoys a similar affection for asparagus. She was jokingly asked by a boyfriend: "What do you love more: me or asparagus?" She replied honestly. Suffice to say they – her and the boyfriend – are no longer an item.
She has a new partner now. He's tall and thin with thick, wavy hair. If you squint your eyes, it would be fair to say he does look a bit like an asparagus spear.
Mind the ghost
GOLFER Paul Lawrie has sold his Aberdeen home for a reported £1.95million. The five-bedroom villa comes with a chipping green and fairway in the back garden. There's a gym, a games room with full-sized snooker table and a library. Oh, and it's very own ghost.
Lawrie claimed to have come face-to-face with a spooky apparition inside the Victorian-built house. Asked in a 2017 interview whether he was most scared of bees or ghosts, he replied: "Ghosts, 100 per cent – because I've seen one."
The former Ryder Cup vice-captain was lying in bed watching a film when the paranormal encounter occurred. "I just happened to look at the door and there was a face," he said. "It was one of those double-look moments. As I looked back, it drifted into the bathroom. Scariest thing ever."
Not quite as terrifying as suggestions that Lawrie, who won the Open at Carnoustie in 1999, had to take a £250,000 hit on the asking price as a result of revealing he believed the property to be haunted.
As far-fetched as that seems, there might be something in it. A study last year found that declaring resident spectres to prospective buyers can have a dispiriting effect on home values.
Statistician Dr Geoff Ellis examined 25 British "haunted houses" sold over the last half-century and found they lost an average of 17 per cent off their value compared with the sale prices of similar homes nearby.
His research suggested having a phantom in with the bricks could knock almost £40,000 off the average UK property price.
A separate survey of 2,000 Brits found nearly one in four believed their houses had a ghost, while 55 per cent said they would be put off buying a haunted house.
The moral of this ghoulish tale? Keep shtum about things that go bump in the night.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here