TOILETS ARE GOING DOWN THE PAN

In the realm of pointless challenges – like bagging Munros and boasting about it, or visiting every railway station in the country – I am founding the Great British Toilet Challenge, the winner of which will have to visit all 780 public ones in the UK, proof of visitation being that he or she will have written an identifiable graffito on the cludgie wall (in washable ink obviously). The prize will be announced when I find a suitable sponsor, preferably one which specialises in cleaning fluids.

This isn’t just toilet humour, or latrinalia as us poseurs call it, there is a serious point. Access to public toilets is crucial for many, from the elderly and infirm, the incontinent (personally I find the interactive British toilet map invaluable) to the disabled, and being near to one can be both a reassurance and a comfort (break). Austerity, council cuts coupled, perhaps, with the unsavoury practice of cottaging, has meant that over the decades the standalone public toilet has all but disappeared and the ones that are accessible tend to be in civic buildings like art galleries or libraries, in shopping malls, or in stations, where you have to spend much more than a penny.

I have not been able to confirm that the first public toilets in Scotland were set up by Lascar sailors around the Glasgow docks, funded by subscription, because their religious beliefs didn’t allow them to go into pubs to relieve themselves, but it is persuasive. Lascars were sailors (and soldiers) from the Indian sub-continent, usually Muslim, and were hired by shipowners because they were cheaper and not subject to the same regulations at Brits. Not much has changed there.

Toilets have featured in jokes, in plays and farces, in the novel Clochmerle (there was even a 1970s BBC series) and the pissoir, properly called the vespasienne, was an architectural feature of Paris, but as far as I can see there is just the one left, in the Boulevard Arago. The proper name comes from the Emperor Vespasian who allegedly taxed urine, although how he did that is a mystery, but not a wheeze missed by Network Rail.

In the past I’ve written about the community-managed toilets on Cumbrae, cleaned by Suki McGregor, but the crown jewel in the sanitarian’s crown is surely the resplendent Victorian male ones a few steps from the boat on Rothesay pier, although you do have to pay to enjoy the splendour, and be the correct sex.

You can find the exhaustive list of cludgies on the interactive Great British Public Toilet Map, available at www.toiletmap.org.uk. You may need it.

THE UPS AND DOWNS OF LIFE

I am grateful to my pal Kevin McKenna for, well, not very much really, but he did make me aware of the ups and downs of Slade singer Noddy Holder. Thousands and thousands of them. Noddy became the voice – or the screech – of the lift at Walsall’s New Art Gallery in 2000, and updated his recording a couple of years ago. “Are you waiting for the lottery to arrive? Get your bum in there’s room to spare inside.” Or something like that. The gallery is one Walsall’s (few?) tourist attractions, near to the Leather Museum, which may be an unmissable one for fetishists.

It’s such a great idea, why aren’t we doing it? They’d be queuing up to got into the Mitchell library if Billy Connolly, Frankie Boyle or Kevin Bridges was the elevating voice. “Fifth flair, Glasgow Life, pure s***e, naw?” The V&A in Dundee would need Brian Cox, “Second floor fur a meat peh and an ingin’ wan an aw”. And for Sean Connery, arriving at the ground floor cafe at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre: “You’ll have had your tea.”

PUNCTUATION ALERT

You don’t need to be a member of the Apostrophe Regulation Society to spot the flaw in the claim in this online advert that it can provide you with the perfect CV.

A POX ON THE CHILDREN

If you deliberately expose your children to chickenpox because you don’t want them to have the vaccine which would protect them are you expressing individual freedom, arrant stupidity or, indeed, should you be prosecuted for child abuse? A man called Matt Bevin did that in the States, taking his nine children (he clearly didn’t believe in birth control either!) to visit a neighbour who had it, they caught it and thus built immunity in the kids who “were miserable for a few days”. Hopefully they will sue when they are older.

You might think that no one would be foolish enough to follow the example of this zealous nutter (chickenpox, after all, can scar for life and even be fatal) and apparent nonentity. But Bevin is actually the Governor of Kentucky - I don’t. how that happened either, but it must have involved an amount of skulduggery surely? No prizes for guessing that he’s a Republican and Trump supporter who harbours hopes of eventually taking the big prize. Late last year he blamed zombie TV programmes for the outbreak of mass shootings in schools and argued that gun control was not the answer. Less than two weeks ago he signed off on a bill removing the requirement to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Zombies beware, the rest of us just duck.

IN THE LOOP

John Hickenlooper. Crazy name, crazy ambition. To be President of the United States. He may be a rank outsider, but so was Trump, and companies he owned haven’t gone bankrupt six times. And as far as I know he hasn’t made his children deliberately ill. Hickenlooper is the former mayor, of Denver and until January this year, the Governor of Colorado, where he had an impressive record on revivifying the economy, introducing environmental measures and standing up to the National Rifle Association. He has an impressive bootstrap story, being made unemployed as a geologist, out of work for two years before starting a brewpub in a derelict part of Denver, which grew into a chain. His campaign launched last week and among his policy platforms are nationwide gun controls and suspending the death penalty, so he may not have much of a chance. He’s also a rich, white male Democrat in a party which is increasingly diverse, which will probably rule him out of the party’s nomination. But he is going to have a big influence in the debate in the run-up to next year’s election.

GETTING IN STEPPE

There is lots of room in Kazakhstan. It’s the ninth largest country by area in the world with one of the lowest population densities, at just six to the square mile. But it does have lots of horses and, indeed, ancient Kazakhs were the first people in the world to domesticate and ride them. Which may go part way to explaining why they so comprehensively horsed Scotland on Thursday.

COPPING A JUDGMENT

When Donald Trump was forced to visit Canada for the G8 meeting last year motorcycle cops provided the escort. And possibly a comment on his fitness for the job in the way they arranged themselves when they accompanied him. If it’s not immediately apparent just trace a pen around this drone shot.