According to reports, this year’s firework display to mark the end of the Edinburgh International Festival has been scrapped. A wise move.
One stray spark and, thanks to the litter piled high on every street, our capital city would look like Atlanta in Gone With The Wind. Edinburgh is an absolute mess. I spoke to an American tourist on Monday who assumed she had got on the wrong plane and landed in Glasgow.
The Athens of the North? More like the Kyiv of the East. If the build-up of bacteria gets into everyone’s lungs, we’ll soon hear a new rhetorical question from the locals: “You’ll have had your TB?”
The amount of stuffed bin bags is incredible – it’s like my front steps when I forgot my wife’s birthday the morning after getting caught watching Babestation – and the pest control services have been called in. Any chance they could exterminate the guy who tried to give me a flyer for Nish Kumar? (Oh yes, if you thought the discarded rubbish was stinking …)
On the plus side, it’s now a week since any day-trippers were dive-bombed by hungry seagulls at Portobello Beach. Why steal the odd chip when, just a few miles up the road there’s a five-course feast on every street corner?
When the pay dispute is over and our brilliant binmen are back on duty (I take it everyone now appreciates what a terrific job these low-paid workers do?) I wonder what they’ll do with the mountains of filth? Last I heard, the Tories are insisting it’s pumped into the sea …
Anyway, folks, talking of garbage, what about the Funniest Joke at the Fringe? Written by stand-up Masai Graham (aye right, I reckon he knocked it from a Christmas cracker) and with a warning it could split your sides, here’s the gag in all its glory …
“I tried to steal spaghetti from the shop but the female guard saw me and I couldn’t get pasta.”
Jimmy Carr must be sh*tting himself, eh? That’s awful!
I’ve got an appointment with my doctor tomorrow and even if he tells me I’m terminally ill, that’ll be only the second-worst thing I’ve heard this week. Mind you, I HATE pasta jokes. Why? They’re bad for your carbonara footprint.
(Oh come on, that’s a hundred times better – where’s MY award?!?)
No harm to the lad Masai (I admire just about ANYONE who goes up on stage to try to make people laugh) but if that’s the funniest joke at the biggest and best comedy festival in the world – just a week after The Pleasance Theatre cancelled Jerry Sadowitz – I only have one thing to say…
RIP, the Edinburgh Fringe. PS. My mate went on a cruise last Thursday and, as he lay back on the balcony of his cabin to read my column, a gust of wind blew it overboard. Another example, he reckons, of raw sewage being pumped into the sea…
● After a fallout with bosses over pay, staff at a ghost tour in Bristol are set to take industrial action.
Starting tomorrow, they’ll just be running a skeleton service. Times are tough, eh? With the UK’s potato crop badly damaged this year by record temperatures, the price of chips is set to rocket.
So what will the Hibs fans throw at Hearts players now?
Meanwhile, as customers face being plunged into poverty by spiralling fuel costs, the boss of Scottish Power has been criticised after it was revealed he earned a whopping £11million last year. He hit back, however, saying: “Have you plebs any idea how much it costs to heat a castle and two villas in the south of France?”
Better financial news for the woman down south who won a bottle of wine in a tombola for 50p… and sold it for £185 after experts revealed it was a vintage 1982 Bordeaux!
If you want to read more about cheap plonk selling for exorbitant prices, just pick up a wine list in any restaurant.
PPS. Experts say a love of alcohol can be found in the genes.
Not for the first time, I must admit, a love of TOO MUCH alcohol – followed by a curry – has been found in my jeans…
Quiz show clip that still Mex me laugh years later
Channel 4 is screening a special series of programmes in November to celebrate the station’s 40th anniversary.
So, can I beg the bosses to please, please, pretty please dig deep into the archives and find what I’ve always considered to be the funniest moment in the history of British television?
I’d LOVE to see it again. On an episode of quiz show Fifteen to One, circa 1990, William G Stewart asked a contestant for the “official” name of the country known as Mexico.
The correct answer was Estados Unidos Mexicanos or the United Mexican States. But this fella looked straight into the camera and, in his very best spaghetti western voice, said: “Meh-hee-co!”
I was still laughing when Brookside came on at 8pm…
Staying with telly, what about Rishi Sunak trying to prove he’s a man of the people by telling This Morning viewers he’s a regular at McDonald’s, where his favourite treat is a breakfast wrap?
Turns out that particular item was discontinued TWO YEARS AGO. Oops.
I believe he went on to reveal he also loves to pop into Woolworths for a Texan bar, a packet of Spangles and a Mint Cracknel…
Unlike McColgan, I’m now losing my race against time
When Eilish McColgan won the 10,000m Commonwealth gold a couple of weeks ago – the same race I’d watched her mum Liz winning at Meadowbank Stadium in 1986 – I suddenly felt quite old.
When John Craven, the Newsround legend, celebrated his 82nd birthday last week, I felt ANCIENT.
And when Motherwell signed Stuart McKinstry (I was at school with his mum and dad) from Leeds United on a season-long loan a day later, well I thought about booking the hearse…
But I was reminded that age is just a number when My Old School, starring Alan Cumming, was released in cinemas this week.
It’s the story of Brian MacKinnon who, at the age of 30, famously enrolled at Bearsden Academy as 17-year-old pupil “Brandon Lee”.
We had a boy in our class who was 43!
No funny business, though. Just a lad from Airdrie who kept getting held back…
Meanwhile, what about the teenage girl who is allowed to identify as a CAT at a school in Australia? For her sake, I hope the school bully doesn’t identify as a big dug.
The teachers say it’s no problem as she doesn’t distract any of the other pupils – to be honest, she just sleeps most of the day.
Well, apart from the incident in computer class when she lunged at a mouse…
Oh yeah, and the time they had to phone the fire brigade when she got stuck up a tree.
If this all sounds very 21st century, I’ll remind you that way back in 1987 at Braidhurst High School in Motherwell I identified as a lizard.
Well, I was a monitor…
Murder he wrote
According to a recent poll, Cluedo has been named the most boring board game of all-time.
But I’ve got an idea that could jazz it up a wee bit.
Instead of the murder being committed by, say, Professor Plum in the conservatory with lead piping… how about Willie Collum, on the football pitch, with a red card?
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