P&J Column for 1.9.14
For treachery, betrayal and controversy, even turncoat backbenchers can’t beat the Bake-off.
Shelley Shingles, showbiz correspondent and Miss Fetteresso 1985
OMG! I’m just back from the big smoke where I seen Kate Bush at the Hammersmith Apollo! I’ve always been a fan, ever since “Wuthering Heights”. What a song that was, and such a story behind it. Honestly, they could make it into a book!When I got home I just had to catch up with the Great British Bake-off and WOW! Talk about fireworks! I couldn’t believe my eyes when that beardie boy’s ice-cream got left out of the freezer and turned into mush! Nightmare! I know exactly how he feels. I had a dinner party once where I looked out the Vienneta before serving it, and when I went to get it my cat was up on on the bunker having a lick! Still, I never lost the plot and put it in the bin like fuzzy-face. It’s amazing what you can cover up with a bit of gravy powder.
Some folk were giving my old pal Paul Hollywood pelters for chucking the poor lad out but I agreed with him. Paul and me go way back. I first met him at the Taste of Grampian in 1999. He was doing a bread-making demonstration and I was the face of Young’s Scampi. When I passed through his tent he was working his dough in quite an energetic fashion. He called me over, with a look of desperation on his mahogany face, and I asked him what he was kneading. ‘The toilet!’ He replied. ‘Take over for 2 minutes, will you?” Wise words from a true gent.
Struan Metcalf, MSP for Aberdeenshire North and surrounding Nether Regions – An Apology.
The Conservative party was cut to the quick this week with the news that backbencher and habitual pain in the posterior Dougie Carswell was throwing his political lot in with UKIP. When I heard the news I was in the middle of a spectacularly boozy fund-raising lunch at Trump’s Menie Estate. To be honest, I think we raised more hell than moolah, but in any event, I took immediately to twitter (lazy journalists will invariably print whatever is said by whoever tweets first on any story, as it saves them the bother of contacting people who might have something relevant to say – so get in first and you’ll get your name in the paper! That’s what Stephen Fry always says, anyway). So it was that in a post-Krug fug, barely able to see the phone screen, my fat fingers laden with goose fat, I announced my condemnation of the betrayal as follows:
“So, Dougie Carswell has joined UKIP, the dirty defecator!
Whoopsy. I can only blame auto-correct. And while I disapprove of his switch of allegiance, I must apologise for the suggestion that there’s something abnormal about his intestinal health. On sober reflection, good luck to him. We in the Conservative Party will weather the storm. Well, it’s not as if a potentially game-changing political event is likely to hit us full whack in the gentleman’s trophy cabinet in the next few weeks, is it?
Barclay Lloyd, a Banker you can trust.
As manager of the Mannofield branch of the Aberdeen and District Savings bank, I spend a lot of time dealing with the concerns of customers who are not, as they say, “tech savvy”, regarding online or telephone banking. I have to say that I also have concerns about online and telephone banking. They revolve mainly around whether the Bank will still have any jobs for branch managers in six months time.
Recently, a number of my customers have been called up by highly plausible individuals, claiming to represent the bank, asking for account details, personal information and PIN numbers. Let us be absolutely clear. These people are scammers; fraudsters intent only on emptying your account. They have no connection to this bank whatsoever. We would never phone and ask you for your PIN number or identifying information. Rest assured, when we want to take money off you, we do it by selling you vastly overpriced and wholly unnecessary payment protection insurance.
Kevin Cash, Money Saving Expert and King of the Grips
I was sickened to the very pit of my stomach this week fan I seen Jim Murphy getting egged files he wiz oot on the campaign trail. I wiz roond at my pal Mick the Pill’s, making fizzy watter with a knocked-off soda stream so he could refill empty Perrier bottles and sell them at his newsagent’s (I could tell ye fit een it is, but then I wid hiv to kill ye) fan I seen the footage. I wiz disgusted. I jist couldna believe fit I wiz seeing. In Scotland of aa places.
Eggs retail for as much as £2.30 for six and, if eked oot properly with aim-brand mayo, a single large egg can be used in year bairn’s sandwich for three days on the spin. Fit wye wid somebody be feel enough to waste something as valuable as that on a politician? Nah, nah. Booing is certainly yer maist cost effective form of political protest. Breathing in air and exhaling it forcefully is still free. For the moment, onywye.