Seeking Manilow

IN a long and eventful career as a reporter I’ve had plenty of bizarre meetings and interviews. But perhaps none as downright weird as my (close) encounter with Barry Manilow, the chanter with the prominent proboscis, although driving more than 1,000 miles across Australia with a comedian called Steady Eddy who suffers from cerebral palsy comes close.

It was in 1994 in Plymouth, at the Theatre Royal, where Manilow, for reasons known only to himself, had decided to premiere his musical Copacabana. There was clearly a lot of money spent on pre-publicity – and around $3 million on the show apparently – so I was flown down by the PR people to write a piece. It was only when I got there that the ground rules were spelled out. I could ask anything I wanted, on any subject, just not to Baz. Talking to Barry was totally barred. Eh? Why? Was he not well? Tonsilitis? “You just can’t,” was the reply, “definitively.”

Now, at this point, Barry wasn’t an off-stage presence, he was wandering about the place, so I really don’t know to this day why the omerta. I tried shouting to him, but he scuttled away flanked by minders, so I had to make do with talking to the lead actor Gary Wilmot. I asked him why Baz wouldn’t speak, but he just shook his head, trembling. He may even have cried.

I mention this because I’ve just spotted a newspaper ad announcing that Manilow is coming to Glasgow next year. And, no, I won’t be there and if you ring Barry, I’m hanging up.

Doggone it

National and social media – until the General Election result came through – was full of pictures of dogs outside polling stations for some reason. On Thursday. at my local one. there was a small, reddish-brown dog of indeterminate breed chained to a railing outside. It was probably waiting for its democratic right to exercise.

Paws for thought

And talking of dogs the other day I wandered past a shop in Kilmarnock which described itself as a canine spa and boutique – called, what else, Scrub-a-dug-dug.

Duncan disorderly

There surely aren’t any managers in the English Premier League who have four convictions for assault (including a shameful jailing for an onfield head-butt) – one for a stushie in a Fife bar while wearing sunglasses, a flower behind the ear, a clip-on earring and a silk glove up to the elbow – and who hospitalised two groups of foolish burglars who broke into his house. (Don’t the criminal fraternity post avoidance warnings on their social media? Or chalk marks on the gate?).

He is, of course, Duncan Ferguson, Duncan Disorderly, the temporary manager of Everton FC, although this could become permanent, because who on Earth is going to tell 6ft 4in Big Dunc he can’t have the joab?

Ferguson’s transfer from Dundee United to Rangers broke the British transfer record but that’s not the only thing broken – there was the big toe fractured in a fight in the Rock Bar in Dundee, in 1993 and not set, which the big man claimed on Everton club TV caused his career to be injury-plagued.

Although the man who nutted him on the night and left sharpish with Dunc’s blood all down his shirt denies it and believes the injury came when the player kicked a door in frustration at the Ascot Bar in the town later in the evening. As far as I know there are no plaques commemorating the events in either place, although there may still be a dented door at the Ascot. But it must have been some evening.

Duncan was given nine red cards in his career, eight in the Premier League – a record. And as everyone knows he did go to jail for head-butting the Raith Rovers player Jock McStay.

But who knew the Finnish composer Osmo Tapio Räihälä wrote a symphonic poem about him called Barlinnie Nine, a reference to the prison and the number on his shirt, or, more likely, the number of people he’s incapacitated? None of this is to be approved of, obviously.

A Ugandan affair

There’s a chap in Uganda called Joe Rwamirama who claims that his flatulence can kill mosquitos at six metres and who says he has been paid millions by a company to synthesise his farts as an insect repellent. Smells a bit off to me.

One of my role models is Joseph Pujol, Le Pétomane, a French vaudevillian who could play O Sole Mio on an ocarina through a rubber tube in his anus, but as far as I know was hopeless with mozzies.

I retain a healthy scepticism about Joe Blow and his “talent” and I throw down a challenge to him to test his beastie killer against Scottish midges on a damp August day in Achiltibuie.

Rsing about

I’m so old I can remember when Michael Gove was a young journalist on strike at the Press & Journal in Aberdeen. I always thought him punctilious with the written word so I was a trifle gobsmacked when his election campaign leaflet came my way.

Gove, the Tory candidate for Surrey Heath, described himself in a headline as a “stong local voice”. In nearby Braintree,James Cleverly flatteringly called himself “staight talking”. Well, I guess they can’t be criticised for making an Rs of it.

The sound of silence

It’s more than 1,000 days since the collapse of the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly, well exceeding the previous record, claimed by Belgium, for the longest period without a government. Come January 26, if there’s no return, it will be the third anniversary. Meanwhile, the assembly members continue on half wages of around £35k, bringing the total bill for their leisure to more than £13 million.

This farrago has been brilliantly marked musically by The Ulster Fry with their recording The Sound of Stormont, a note-perfect pastiche of the Simon and Garfunkel song. “Hello Stormont my old friend/When are you opening again?”

They sing so convincingly you might think it was the original duo. The video is great too. I don’t know who they are but they’re terrific. I’m grateful to my wee chum Fra Hughes for alerting me. To watch it, just go to YouTube and search “Sound of Stormont”.