Crossing the Nile

It started when I grabbed the Louis Vuitton bag and immediately a piercing alarm went off. I couldn’t run, my way was blocked. People just stood looking at me. “I only wanted to move it so I could get my bag in the overhead locker,” I said lamely to the other staring passengers waiting to take their seats on the flight. Fortunately, the owner of the bag, in a window seat opposite mine, came to the rescue and moved it to the locker behind mine.

It was a small plane, one with propellers, called a Dash or a Prancer or something vaguely dynamic and Christmassy, and I was in one of two front seats on one side of the gangway. The woman with the bag was opposite, across the narrow passage, beside a slim black man with dreadlocks, a floppy beret and what looked like a massive dog chain for the Hound of the Baskervilles entwined round his neck His face looked very familiar. But I told myself that it couldn’t possibly be Nile Rodgers, the most famous and successful record producer alive – with a second job with the group Chic – on a budget FlyBe flight from Nantes to Birmingham. But, just a handshake away, it was.

Ron McKay: The Flying Tailor who jumped off the Eiffel tower

I don’t do selfies or autographs, so I started to hum Let’s Dance, the record he made with David Bowie. Well, Like A Virgin seemed madly inappropriate and I don’t know the tune anyway. Nile didn’t react so I introduced myself and suggested we might do a little collaboration for the plane. He excused himself politely, saying his guitar was in the hold. I suggested we air guitared it, but he just smiled as you do at someone who might possibly be deranged and dangerous.

He was extremely nice, not as tall as you might think - well which rock star is? – but not pint Prince size. Chic had been playing the Vieilles Charrues festival in Carhaix (and he didn’t know any more than I did why they called it Old Plows) and they were on their way to Liverpool to headline a gig there. I have interviewed a few rock luminaries over the years, reluctantly, but not since two of the members of Fleetwood Mac, just before the remastered version of Rumours came out and I commented that everyone had the old version at the time but no one would admit it because it wasn’t cool. You can probably imagine the response. So I’ve made it a policy not to tangle with rock stars since.

I did, many years ago, interview an even more famous record producer, Arif Mardin, the essence of Atlantic Records, the orchestrator of the soundtrack of my youth, who was utterly beguiling with tales of Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick. Anyway, Nile and I exchanged inconsequential pleasantries on the short flight to a soundtrack of loud snoring from the seat behind from, I think, his bass player Jerry Barnes.

When we landed I thought it would be a nice gesture to hand Nile’s colleague her Vuitton bag. And, of course, the alarm went off again.

Ron McKay: Aliens in Falkirk, a moon feud and the annual Santa Claus Congress

Sock it to ‘em

I put a sock on inside out the other day, not an uncommon occurrence, but when I was about to correct it recalled a superstition that my old granny held to, that it was lucky, and was unlucky to right it, so I left it as it was. She also, whenever I had a sore throat, would wrap a stocking around my neck before I went to sleep – no, not that tightly – but because she swore it would cure the ache.

I thought that these were just her idiosyncrasies, but not so. Serena Williams wears the same pair of socks throughout a tournament, many footballers are obsessed about the order of putting on the socks, John Terry tied tape three times round his before every game, which is a more seemly superstition that that of former Argentine ‘keeper Sergio Goycochea who urinated on the pitch before every penalty shootout.

But you can take it too far. The coach of the Zimbabwean team Midland Portland Cement insisted the squad bathe in the Zambezi River to cleanse bad spirits before an important tie. The river has dangerous currents and is home to numerous hippos and crocodiles. Sixteen players went into the river, 15 came out.

Sporting life’s a beach

Just when one World Cup ends another begins. The women’s football competition has departed, as has the limited overs cricket nonsense, there’s the e-game Fortnite one in New York this weekend and, in just a few weeks, it will be the Beach Soccer World Cup. No surprise that Brazil are the reigning champions (and that Scotland aren’t taking part). However, I espy a glaring problem which may have escaped the notice of the organisers. It’s taking place in Paraguay, which my guide book tells me is home to large swathes of swampland and subtropical forest along with wildernesses comprising savanna and scrubland. But is, of course, entirely landlocked.

Pardon ma’am?

Surely the Queen has enough on her plate? What with repeatedly warning Philip to stop swearing at the flunkeys and urging Boris Johnson to go forth and procreate a government, she is now being urged to save a life by issuing a royal pardon. To a dug. Eva the bullmastiff which repeatedly attacked a puppy and then its owner way back in December 2016 and has been on death row since. Piers Morgan may even be planning a documentary!

The dog’s owner, Moira Hunter, has been banned from keeping animals for five years but, nonetheless, is appealing to Her Maj for clemency on behalf of the brute. The grounds are, apparently, forensic ones, that new evidence proves that the scale of the biting was not as assessed at the time. That’s surely like arguing that, m’lud, there weren’t 27 stab wounds on the victim but a mere 24! Writing this, it feels a bit like the first day of April but, honestly, it’s true. If ridiculous.

Raising Union Jack

Grateful to my old chum Alan Forbes for divining how the previously unknown Alister “Union” Jack was given the job as Secretary of State for Scotland in BoJo’s Night of the Blond Knife. His first name is an anagram of saltire.

It all clicks

The uber-toff Sir Nicholas Soames MP was wheeled out for the media during the week to repeatedly give the thumbs down to the new Prime Minister. Soames is famous for being the grandson of Winston Churchill and, oh, for making sexist comments about women MPs, documented in the 2005 book The New Suffragettes and in a documentary. As he knifed Boris on TV he recalled how, when his grandfather was appointed PM, he went home to his wife Clemmy, opened a bottle of champagne, and the toast was “to not buggering it up”. Bojo, Soames feared, would do just that.

Prince Charles is best buddies with Soames, who used to be monumentally fat, which chimed with his role as food minister in John Major’s government, but he has slimmed considerably since. His ex-wife, recalling the previous manifestation, said that sex with Nicholas was like having a very large wardrobe with a very small key falling on top of you. It was this which prompted women MPs in the Commons to pre-empt ribald comments from “Fatty” by muttering “click” whenever they came across him.