Let’s just be grateful it wasn’t Forres & Buckie

Struan Metcalfe, MSP for Aberdeenshire North and Surrounding Nether Regions

Now look here, the job of a politician is not an easy one. Every day we are thrown an absolute barrage of facts, figures, dossiers and briefings. It’s not easy staying on top of all that complicated info, especially when one also has to wine and dine Party donors and get sozzled on golf days at Trump on the Tax-payer’s coin!

On top of all that, how on earth can we be expected to get the names of places right, whether they be in our constituency or from the areas we grew up.

So, give Gove a break!  So what if he got Peterhead and Fraserburgh muddled up and called them Peterburgh and Fraserhead? The man has a lot to think about, not least getting our backsides out of Brussels.

I’ll be honest; I’ve done it myself. Well, these no-mark back-of-beyond places are all the same anyway, aren’t they? I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been heckled by some oik farmer for mixing up my Stoneruries and Banfuff’s. I tell you, it’s a proverbial potato-field!

Shelley Shingles, Showbiz correspondent and Miss Fetteresso 1983

O.M. Actual G!  It’s been a sensational week here on planet showbiz, with one of my absolute fave heartthrobs getting a grilling in the papers.

Jonny Depp has been one of Hollywood’s hottest hunks for years, but right now he is most definitely NOT big Down Under! Him and his wife, Amber Heard, got their knuckles wrapped for smuggling their dogs (the totes adorbs Pistol and Boo) into Australia last year. In fact, they had to film themselves apologizing in order to get off with it.  IMHO Jonny’s performance wasn’t the most convincing bit of acting he’s ever done, but I still enjoyed it more than ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’.

For a lot of us, this story was a real shocker. Jonny Depp is married? How did I miss that? I thought he was still not-making-and-honest-Mademoiselle of French pop starlet Vanessa Paradis.

I’ve never met Jonny, (or he would have been mine. Mine, I tell you!) But of course, Vanessa and me go way back.  I first met her when she was promoting her single ‘Joe Le Taxi’ on This Morning with Richard and Judy in 1988.  I was doing some modeling work for a fashion piece on faux leather handbags.  We were hanging about the free buffet in the green room during the show, and I’ll never forget what she said to me:

“Si j’étais toi ma chère, je mangerais pas ça. Ca m’a l’air bien suspect!”.

Wise words from a great lady.

Cava Kenny Cordiner, the sports writer who’s not retiring.

I don’t understand modren sportsmen.  It seems that hardly not one of them actually enjoys the sports that they is paid good money to play, despite the fact they is paid good money to play it.  If it’s not Ronny O’Sullivan throwing a cobbler and missing his press conference, it’s Tyson Fury or Connor McGregor saying they is going to retire, despite being at the peak of their powders.  When I heard that, I turned around to the lovely Melody and I says, “What’s that about?  If I’d had the choice, I wouldn’t have retired until my legs was hanging off!”  Melody turned around and says to me she says “Well, after playing against you, a lot of people had to, because they was!”

Of course, in the end, retirement comes to us all.  I knew myself when my time had come.  Partly because I’d lost a yard of pace; partly because I didn’t not have the same touch on the ball; but mainly because I got banned for life by the SFA for putting the heid on Banks o’ Dee’s goalie.

Charles Farquhar McCain, Editor-Proprietor, The Foggieloan Times – All the news you need, every single second Tuesday

There has been much hilarity this week about The West Highland Free Press’s decision to downplay Kanye West’s visit to Skye by relegating it to page 16, alongside news of a kayaker rescuing some sheep.  Media types have congratulated those involved for not playing the fame game and declining to burnish West’s gargantuan ego.

Well, they will receive no such praise from me.  This is the oldest trick in the book.  It is a cheap ploy that has garnered the editor of that newspaper a vast amount of undeserved attention.  It brings the industry into disrepute.  And I wish I’d thought of it first.

See us live in ‘Dreich Encounter’ HMT Aberdeen June 2nd-11th