The Herald Diary

by Ken Smith

  “Phemie told him, ‘Ah’m no’ carin’ whoa ye are, yer no’ gettin in tae spaik tae the lassies an’ disturb their work!’ At that point, management arrived and apologised to the Rolling Stones, who were in the village to meet founding member Ian Stewart’s aunt Helen and had agreed to visit the factory. I don’t think Phemie ever appreciated how famous these long-haired Nellies would become, nor that she spoke so forcibly to Charlie Watts, Keith Richards, Ian Stewart and the late Brian Jones.”

  GOOD to see the Chic Murray play at Òran Mór this week, A Funny Place for a Window, getting a five-star review by Herald critic Mary Brennan. Chic is played by Dave Anderson, who actually lived a few doors away from Chic in the West End. Dave once told me he was standing outside his house one night when Chic walked past, obviously heading to the pub for a quick one before they closed.

  Chic, though, caught Dave’s eye and told him: “Just out walking the dog.” The thing was, Chic didn’t have a dog. But to enhance his tale, every few yards he would stop and whistle on his imaginary mutt to catch up with him.

  OUR story yesterday, about when the great Scots comedian Chic Murray lived in Glasgow’s West End and couldn’t stop making jokes when he bumped into people, reminded a reader of actor Finlay Welsh once saying that he bumped into Chic on Byres Road and they stopped for a chat.

  At the end Chic asked: “Oh, by the way, Finlay, when we met just now, was I coming down Byres Road or was I going up?”

  “Well, as I’m on my way up to the BBC to do a voiceover, you must have been coming down,” replied Finlay.

  “Oh, that’s good,” said Chic, “I’ll have had my lunch then.”

  IT can happen to the best, it seems. Harry Potter writer JK Rowling told her fans on social media yesterday: “The great thing about editing is how you get to look back on the triumphant moment after your 19th readthough when you you were sure yuo’d caugth all the the typoes, and hat yourself for beng such a stupid, smug barstard.”

  AND while folk were not bothered about the royal baby, the idea of folk camping outside the hospital where the baby was born surprised one or two people. As the social-media site of Irish bookmakers Paddy Power put it: “Some folk have been waiting outside a hospital for 15 days for a baby they have no connection with. I can’t be bothered waiting three minutes for my microwave meal to cook properly. Two minutes will do; lukewarm is fine.”

  OUR toilet tales cannot pass without at least one mention of these complicated train toilets.

  As broadcaster Gyles Brandreth once related after a visit to Yorkshire: “I was outside the WC, pressed the button, the door opened and a poor sod inside turned frantically towards me, unable to staunch his flow. As he waved his arms in alarm, his spray went everywhere. ‘Shut the door!’ he cried as his trousers fell to his ankles. Then I pressed the button on the outside just as he pressed the button on the inside, so the closing door reopened – that’s when he slipped.”

  OUR mention of the book being launched about sixties Glasgow group The Beatstalkers reminds a reader of when the band was booked to play at the Dennistoun Palais but couldn’t appear as they had gone to a London recording studio to make a record. Instead, cardboard cut-outs of the band were put on the stage. After the support act The Bo-Weevils had performed, a phone on the stage rang and the Palais manager went over and answered it, and it was The Beatstalkers phoning from London. The crowd was screaming with delight.

  Our old chum Eddie Tobin, then manager of The Bo-Weevils, later said: “I presume they were paid an enormous fee for not appearing and we did all the work and got buttons.”

  NEVER knew so many readers had bumped into the legendary Chic Murray. Says musical Roy Gullane: “An erstwhile band member had met Chic and jokingly invited him to his stag night. The great man very graciously accepted the invitation. We spotted him waiting at the bar and our groom-to-be approached him with a hearty, ‘Chic. Chic. We’re over here.’ The great man turned towards us and without batting an eye began to shout through the crowded bar, ‘Where were you with the fast car? I was standing there like an idiot with the money!’”

  CLYDEBANK stand-up Kevin Bridges has passed his driving test – 12 years after taking his first lesson. To be fair, his career got busy so he left driving for a bit. It reminds us of The Herald reader in America who told us: “When I moved to New Orleans in 1980, I drove to the test centre with my UK licence. Being August, it was 98 degrees Fahrenheit with 98 per cent humidity. The tester, being at least 25 stone, suggested I go out to my car, back it out of the parking space and drive it into the one next to it while she looked out the window of the air-conditioned office. And so I passed.”

  ACTRESS Julie Walters has been spotted at the Silverburn shopping centre filming for her role as the mother of a Scottish country and western star. We well remember when Julie spoke at a Herald book event and explained that she originally trained as a nurse before acting but never felt entirely comfortable in the job.

  This was brought home to her on night duty on a coronary ward when a heart monitor emitted a piercing note. Before she could react, a medical student started pummelling the heart of the patient – a large Irish chap who sat up with a start and abruptly punched the medical student’s lights out. It was then they discovered that the lead attached to him had accidentally come adrift.

  TALKING of Alexa, a Glasgow reader swears he asked, while hosting a Boxing Day party that was going on too long: “Alexa, send everyone home.” He claims the electronic device then played a Sydney Devine recording.

  AMONG the movies out for Christmas is a remake of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. John Henderson recalls an interview with Richard Goodwin, producer of the 1974 original, and many say better, version of the film in which he said the only problem he could recall dealing with so many stars in the one film was Vanessa Redgrave, then a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party, trying to convert the canteen workers and making political speeches at lunchtime. Eventually, he said, the canteen staff marched on management to demand that Vanessa was sent to talk to someone else.

  OUR story about comedian Ken Dodd turning 90 reminds David Miller of Ken’s gig at the Glasgow Pavilion this summer. Says David: “He told the audience how he woke up one morning with an attractive lady lying beside him. ‘Have you been there all night?’ he asked. ‘Go back to sleep and finish your dream,’ she replied.”

  RADIO 1 is 50 years old tomorrow. Scottish boxing legend Ken Buchanan recalled in his autobiography flying back to Edinburgh after retaining his world title in America. Hundreds of well-wishers in tartan were waiting to welcome home the hero.

  The pilot announced passengers were to disembark quickly as there were important people on board who were to leave last. After the plane emptied Buchanan looked round and saw Radio 1 DJ Ed “Stewpot” Stewart still sitting there. Ed looked out the window and said: “My first visit to Edinburgh and look at the reception!” The pilot came back and explained who the actual VIP was.

  A READER wonders if the statue of Nelson Mandela proposed for Glasgow will get the ultimate Glasgow accolade of a traffic cone on top of it. The strangest story we ever heard about the Duke of Wellington statue in Glasgow with the traffic cone was when Princess Diana’s “love rat”, to give him his tabloid sobriquet, James Hewitt was appearing in a BBC Scotland chat show with disgraced PR boss Max Clifford. Both men went for a drink afterwards and Hewitt suddenly clambered up the Wellington statue, knocked off the traffic cone and shouted down: “I won’t see a national hero vilified.” A strange cove indeed.

  MEMORABLE audience reaction, continued. Says Sue Forsyth in Bearsden: “Gerard Kelly, the late, much-loved silly boy of panto, was the star of Iain Heggie’s serious one-hander King of Scotland at the Citizens, where the language was coarse to say the least, but entirely in context. An elderly couple in front of us had obviously never seen Gerard out of panto mode, and they constantly tutted loudly until the lady eventually said out loud, ‘Aw son – there’s nae need fur that kinda l
anguage.’

  “They appeared pleased when the Citizens staff asked them to leave.”

  BUMPED into playwright Peter McDougall at Òran Mór’s annual Whisky Awards, where he tells me that he is writing a play about his hospital visits after a stroke, entitled Vampire Clinic – it’s to do with all the blood samples they take – which is being staged as part of the venue’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint series. Says Peter: “I remember talking to Willie McIlvanney once about his stroke and the side effects of taking Warfarin. Willie, being the great wordsmith that he was, described it as ‘the physical manifestation of boils’. I’m no’ the wordsmith Willie was as I just describe it as a rash.”

  Incidentally, Peter, looking very well, was not partaking of whisky at the awards night. As he put it: “I know people swear by whisky for a convivial discourse with friends, but I’m from Greenock – whisky tends to affect folk from there differently.”

  YES, congratulations to the royal couple of course. But as Simon Holland put it: “Wife shouts through, ‘Kate had her baby!’ I reply, ‘That’s cool. Tell her I said congrats.’ And then I sit there thinking that I didn’t know we knew anyone called Kate.” Many people were happy with the news, others not so much. As a reader emails us: “Do you know, it’s been quite nice to watch the news and be irritated by something other than Donald Trump or Brexit for a few hours. A change really is as good as a rest.”

  CHANCE meetings with famous folk, continued. Says David Knight: “Forty odd years ago my pal’s dad, a member of the R&A, was entering the Clubhouse at St Andrews.

  “He observed the uniformed club porter stiffly address a plus-fours-attired American and overheard the immortal sentence, ‘Ah dinnae care if yer name’s Bing Crosby, ye cannae come in the clubhoose!’

  “Anxious to demonstrate Scottish hospitality, our man signed said crooner in and bought him a pint.”

  FULL marks to reader Jim Scott, though, who has managed to combine the royal wedding and our recent stories about comedian Chic Murray. Says Jim: “The news that Harry has been bestowed the title Earl of Dumbarton reminds me of the Chic Murray comment, ‘A man said to me if you sit here you can see Dumbarton Rock. I sat there all day and it never moved an inch.’”

  WE asked for your tales of meeting famous folk, and retired Daily Record journalist Jim Davis recalls that he was once sent to a charity golf event at Renfrew to interview volatile racing driver James Hunt. Says Jim: “The Record had got phone calls from readers complaining about Hunt wearing grubby jeans and a T-shirt, with one describing him as, ‘lookin’ as if he’s jist fell oot a midden. The weans ur getting a right bad example set here, so they urr.’

  “Hunt was in the bar beside an immaculate Sean Connery, Henry Cooper and Dickie Henderson. I got out, ‘Mr Hunt, our Daily Record readers are complaining that your appearance is downright scruffy. And they say you’re setting a bad example to the kids. What’s your response?’ His memorable reply in a cut-glass accent was, ‘You can tell your readers that they are confusing me with someone who actually gives a ****.’”

  SINGER Mica Paris is to star in a new production of the musical Fame at Glasgow’s King’s Theatre at the end of July. We remember when Mica had her first hit “My One Temptation” and was appearing at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre. She later said: “I was 18 and just starting out. The Glasgow audiences were kind to me, though. One guy, a big, burly, macho Scotsman, came backstage at the end of that Tron show in tears, he’d been so moved by the music. Drying his eyes, he politely asked for an autograph, but made me promise not to mention to anyone that he’d been ‘greetin’ like a big wean’.”

  BBC reporter Tina Daheley went all sniffy about popular culture by declaring on social media: “A reminder that more people applied for the TV programme Love Island this year than Oxford/Cambridge University.”

  Someone promptly replied: “A reminder that it doesn’t cost 28 grand to go on Love Island.”

  WE asked about telling folk what you do for a living, and writer and actor Stuart Hepburn tells us: “I was once approached by a rather well-oiled guest at a family wedding who enquired, ‘So what do you do?’ I answered, ‘I am an actor,’ and he said, ‘Yes, but what do you do for a living?’”

  TODAY’S piece of daftness comes from a reader who asks: “How many Countdown contestants does it take to change a BLIHBULGT?”

  7

  Will Do for Your Work

  Most folk spend a third of their lives at work, so it is not unusual that many Diary stories come from there.

  GLASGOW’S West End summed up beautifully as Rony Bridges, supporter of the Starchild charity for educating kids in Uganda, tells us: “What a week. Urgently needed a plumber and a tiler but all too busy so went to a play in the West End. Who is in the audience? Our tiler. Who’s in the play? Our plumber!”

  TALES of apprentices to mark Scottish Apprenticeship Week, and Raymond Lowe at Scottish Engineering tells us: “I was the apprentice instructor at Babcock’s in Renfrew in the mid-seventies. At the lunch break I was approached by a number of the apprentices complaining that the water coming out of the urn was rather cloudy. On examination I found a boil-in-the-bag curry with rice in the urn. Ten out of ten for initiative. I wonder if he became the managing director?”

  WE asked about telling folk what you do for a living and Peter Warren tells us: “In the sixties I worked as an apprentice plater in Fairfield’s shipyard when I met my future wife at the Locarno. When we started dating she asked me what I worked at, and I told her I was a plater. Sometime later she asked me if there was any chance of getting her ma a half tea set.

  “Coming up for 49 years married in August.”

  A READER who works in Glasgow’s city centre phones to tell us: “Our office computers were down today and our manager came out and told us all that we had to do everything manually.

  “It took me a while to find a pack of cards so that I could get on with my game of solitaire.”

  OUR tales of pies remind Louie Macari in Motherwell: “At the Glengarnock steelworks in the seventies, computers then filled up a room and data-input units were large metal cases which generated a fair amount of heat. An engineer called out to a fault opened the lid to discover a paper bag inside with a pie in it being kept warm. He held up the bag and was about to berate the operators when the owner of the pie turned up for his lunch. Not being a match for the heavily built steelworker, he just said to him, ‘Your pie’s ready,’ and handed the bag over before proceeding to investigate the fault.”

  NO, it’s not an old gag – we prefer the term classic. Anyway, we asked about telling folk what you do for a living, and Barry McGirr tells us: “Northern comedian Mick Miller told the tale he was stacking supermarket shelves with soap powder as a youth when a girl he’d dated passed him and hissed, ‘You told me you were in the Red Arrows!’

  “‘No I didn’t,’ was his reply. ‘I said I was in the aerial display team.’”

  UNIVERSAL EXTRAS, which provides extras for television and film work, is having an audition in Glasgow due to the growing number of productions in Scotland. We remember a chum telling us he appeared in a scene in Outlander where he had to stand on a windswept hillside alongside other clansmen, a couple of whom were on horses. After standing there in the freezing cold he was delighted to see the director halting filming and dispatching a runner up the hill with blankets. Alas they were immediately put on the horses.

  RECRUITMENT consultancy Robert Half says that almost two in five businesses take just two weeks to discover that they have hired the wrong person, with over a third of business bosses saying the reason is that people were found to be lying on their CVs. A recruiter once told us of an interview where the candidate was asked: “I see from your CV that your interests include politics. Who is the Prime Minister?” After a lengthy pause the graduate replied: “Oh, I said I was interested in politics, but I’m not obsessed by it.”

  TODAY’S the deadline for putting in your tax return if you are self-employed – no need
to thank me for the reminder. As radio producer Ed Morrish, who left the BBC to work as a freelancer, put it: “I have just paid tax by myself for the first time. If you need me, therefore, I’ll be in the Question Time audience, shouting about bringing back hanging.”

  ARTIST Ed Hunter tells us: “I remember very long ago when, as a spotty 17-year-old, I had a job with Glasgow Corporation delivering wages to the nightshift workers at Govan cleansing. I was then picked up by a chauffeur in an Austin Princess to return to the City Chambers. As we pulled up at traffic lights at Edmiston Drive I was seated with my feet up on the wages box eating a banana. Outside the car the two guys looking in were Ralph Brand and Jimmy Millar of Rangers. They had a ‘Who-the-hell-is-that?’ look on their faces.”

  IT is Scottish Apprenticeship Week, which reminds us of when the dance performance Sparr, about the Gaels who transformed shipbuilding in Glasgow, was put on in Govan’s Big Shed. Choreographer Norman Douglas revealed he had been a shipyard apprentice in the woodcutting section, and because he was the most nimble due to his then dancing hobby, he was instructed to “jump the wall” every Friday and bring back a bottle of whisky. The cash came from a whip-round, until one Friday, nervous about being caught, he dropped the bottle, which smashed, incurring the wrath of the woodcutting team. Next week he had to pay for the bottle out of his meagre apprentice wages, leaving him skint for the rest of the week.