LUCKY me to have had for a long time now a standing invitation, from close friends who live there, to holiday in Dubai. Yes, a freebie, just like the Blairs get.
Luckier still, I'm thinking, having seen Monday night's BBC2 programme, never to have taken up their kind offer. Who wants to be char-grilled in 100F?
Climate apart, this telly picture of insanity in the sand was the absolute turn-off. "But all the hotels (800 of them before long) and shops are air-conditioned," my charitable chums reassure me. Just stay out of the sun and off the beaches. Crazy.
The Auf Wiedersehen crew and the entire Toon Army were crawling ant-like all over the skyscraper building sites. Millions of Brits will be either living or holidaying in this shangri-la by 2010. By which time Dubai will have sent Vegas to the bottom of the league for vulgarity and tat.
1. Can you name the judge who, at Dunfermline's High Court, gave the killer of a grandmother at a car boot sale three years' probation, then had that sentence changed on appeal to four years' jail? 2. Do you applaud Anna Ford's decision to retire at 62? 3. Is George Best already on the prowl for another liver? 4. Are you aware three jobs are available for each job-seeker in Edinburgh? 5. Was that Donald Dewar I saw with a rope round his neck?
Replies: 1. With extreme pleasure, and writ large, LADY LEEONA DORRIAN. 2, Vigorously. Anna has been described as a "doe-eyed talented autocue reader". A perfect pen picture to remember her by. She was a pub singer in her student days and recorded a song or two. Wish I had her album. And, no, she's no relation to Tennessee Ernie Ford. Nor Donald Ford, for that matter. 3. If so, he must go to the end of the queue. 4. So why are so many able-bodied individuals begging in the city's streets? 5. The same. He was removed from a plinth in Glasgow's Buchanan Street. After a wash and brush-up he was restored to his pedestal. Surprising they didn't plonk him outside the parliament building, the shambles for which he was largely responsible.
My heartfelt commiserations to dog/cat owners this week past. November 5 (not to mention 6 and 7, along with 1, 2, 3 and 4) has been sheer hell for their animals. Demented, many of them must have been.
More hellish than ever, Edinburgh city centre sounded like Baghdad or Basra. Kids shouldn't be denied their fun, but, you'd perhaps notice, a lot of the indiscriminate biggest bangs were caused by grown-up kids.
If they must watch explosions in the sky they should be aware the UK, actively involved in various war zones, is short of big bairns who love to play with bangers. Your Army needs you.
Having done my bit for recruitment, there should be legislation - and this tottering Government is never short of it - against manufacturers who sell fireworks noisy enough to severely traumatise dogs and cats and, I daresay, humans too.
Address your complaints to Mr G Fawkes, Downing Street. Next November 5, if you spot one of the aforementioned offenders, stick a banger up his posterior. Or get your distressed Rottweiler to bite his bum.
One of the joys of not having LIVINGtv is that Gail Porter won't get into the house on November 11, 12 and 13 in some dross called Dead Famous Live (crayons and colouring books out, kiddies!).
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