HOW distressing to read about the suicide of a man who couldn’t get a song out of his head. Ma heid’s full of songs by wispy Norwegian singer Aurora at the moment, but that’s no bad thing. They give me hope, which alert readers will know is a concept that I have trouble grasping.

Sir Paul McCartney, who played bass guitar in the Beatles incidentally, once said that he knew he had a hit on this hands when he heard the window-cleaner whistling it.

The song lodges in the grey, pulsating brain like an invading cultural force. Thought about too deeply, these “ear-worms” could be considered disturbing.

One of many disturbing aspects of last week’s vexatious column was my list of favourite bands’ music that I’d keep when throwing away all my other possessions, perhaps in future when “death cleaning” in preparation for my demise or perhaps, a fate worse than death, deciding to spend the rest of my life in a camper van.

Of course, as soon as the list was set down in pixels of stone, I thought of many favourite bands that I’d omitted, most notably The Beatles. Perhaps they were just too obvious, though it seemed afterwards particularly and typically dim of me since once, on a local BBC Radio music show, I had named Revolver as my favourite album of all time.

Not only that but I have a Sergeant Pepper wind-up clock in my kitchen and also, just the other day, was delighted to re-discover, among my many Beatles books, a signed memoir (written with Ian Forsyth) of the great Johnny Gentle, recalling his 1960 tour of dance halls in north-east Scotland when he was backed by … The Beatles!

I’d the privilege of meeting Johnny at a Beatles Convention in Liverpool, which I’d been ordered to attend in the line of duty and which was one of those rare occasions when I thought: ‘You know, sometimes I could almost enjoy my job.’

Again, I don’t want to sound controversial but one thing I firmly believe about The Beatles: they wrote some quite good songs.

Returning to the brain for the moment, more troublesome for me than songs are lines from comedy that tend to stick in the bonce and beg for an opportunity to be used in reality-style life. Thus:

Female friend: “Gosh, that actor looks well hung.”

Your hero (peevishly, after Basil Fawlty): “Yes, he should be.”

At the start of lockdown, I binge-watched weird and wonderful BBC Scottish comedy series Burnistoun, and now keep having to avoid adding the word “anyway” in churlish tones at the end of sentences, in the manner of the nutty younger brother in the ice cream van.

Supermarket queuer: “I say, you’re standing a bit close, aren’t you?”

Controversial columnist: “What’s it got to do with you, enny-way?”

Worse still, though such things never happen to me nowadays, I imagine having an important meeting with top executives, which goes well … until the end.

We all get up to leave and, inspired by Burnistoun, I start shouting: “Up eh road! Up eh road!” I keep thinking this at the end of encounters with friends or when taking my leave after talking to neighbours.

One day, I fear, it’s going to come blurting out, and people will avoid me even more than they do already.

Unsafe space

HUMAN lunacy continues to threaten the peace and quiet of ooter space.

Dr Paul Daniels is arguably an expert on the subject, being president of the Federation of Astronomical Societies and a vice-president of the Royal Astronomical Society.

It’s his view that the proliferation of satellites bunged up yonder by Dumbo sapiens could ruin the night sky for both professional and amateur stargazers.

Various organisations, such as OneWeb, in which the UK is investing considerably, SpaceX, Amazon and Facebook’s Athena project, are between them planning to launch nearly 200,000 satellites into the big, black yonder.

Already, there are around 5,000 satellites in orbit, 3,050 of which are just floating junk.

You can imagine that, among those protesting at the new proliferation will be decent ratepaying aliens, unable to pilot their UFOs through all the satellites.

In related news, meanwhile, a former US military intelligence adviser has argued that alien craft are on a “reconnaissance mission”, prompting influential science journal The Daily Star to claim they are creating “a Google Map-style chart of the universe”.

Christopher Mellon says in a forthcoming Sky History documentary: “I don’t think these things are ours.”

This chimes in with the fears of a US intelligence chief who wants details released of mysterious aircraft sightings. Senator Marco Rubio said: “There are things flying over United States military bases and you don’t know what they are ’cause they’re not yours …”

He added that he’d prefer them to be alien rather than Russian or Chinese. Meanwhile, SpaceX boss Elon Musk has claimed the pyramids weren’t built by Egyptians but by aliens.

Egyptians archaeologists have hit back, saying the claim was “complete hallucination”.

Ooter space: there’s never a quiet moment. Indeed, it’s all hotting up cosmos-side. Mark my words: the truth is oot there. Let’s hope it stays there.

With this pie I thee wed

FOLK are so fat now that they’re having to get wedding aisles in churches widened. At least they are in a Dorset village, where people of girth are having trouble squeezing through the narrow Victorian pews.

As a result, St Andrew’s Church, in Okeford Fitzpaine, has put the 150-year-old pews up for sale and plans to replace them with modern chairs that can be moved to facilitate commodious waddling.

The church authorities said the old pews were unsuited to the “human form of today”. O tempora, o tubbies!

The controversial decision has prompted outrage from slim and otherwise peculiar parishioners, with one protest featuring a banner saying: “Save the pews from the devil within.”

This sort of thing is a growing problem in modern society. Many tubby people are fond of soccer but cannot get through the narrow turnstiles and have to have special Gates of Shame opened for them.

At St Andrew’s Church, meanwhile, perhaps a compromise would be to keep the pews and to lift the obese bride and/or groom to the altar by means of a winch. The winch could be decorated with flowers to enhance the dignity of the occasion.

Time recycled

ONE thing we can all agree on is that the tempora and the mores are not as interesting as they once were. And thank goodness for that.

A kind Edinburgh reader, Kate from Edinburgh, has sent me a wonderful tome about Glasgow in celebration of her 80th birthday. Belatedly, may I say: many happy returns, young lass!

They Belonged to Glasgow: A Social History of Glasgow from the Bottom Up, by Rudolph Kenna and Ian Sutherland, contains jaw-dropping historical nuggets from life on the city’s streets.

What folk did for entertainment is particularly intriguing, not least in the Saracen’s Head Inn gawping – in 1780 – at the 8ft tall “Surprising Irish Giant” or, at Mr Brown’s Auction Rooms, Saltmarket, in 1785, perusing an equally “Surprising Dwarf” and a “Young Lady from Newfoundland, born without arms”.

But some things never change. In 1897, the city saw a “cycling craze”, with GR Husband, Renfield Street, selling men’s “cycling knickers”, while Pettigrew & Stephens, Sauchiehall Street, offered “pretty coloured crepons … specially adapted to lady devotees of the wheel.”

As with today’s Lycra, decent citizens must have had fits of the vapours on seeing such disgraceful costumery.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.