A kick in the ribs, some bruising words and a case of third degree Burns

‘CAVA’ KENNY CORDINER, the football pundit who kicks back!

Football hut the headlights last week as wonderdogs Bradford and Swansea both beat the odds to reach the League Cup final – but they was overshadowed by a moment of madness.   If you ask me, it is agadoo about nothing. Back when I was playing it, football was a man’s game. You could give your opposite number a right snapping and the ref wouldn’t look twice.  These days the players can’t do nothing without someone whining about broken metal-tassles and ruptured linaments. That Swansea ballboy only has himself to blame.  He was time-wasting and the Chelsea player wanted the ball back so he did what any other professional would have done – he hoofed the lad in the ribs.

As my career total of 31 red cards will tell you, refs always had it in for me.  But my tally would be even massiver if you was getting red cards for little incidents like that.  I remember one game for Locos against Rothes when this boy runs on the pitch following one of my trademark “reducers” on their centre forward.  He was sprinting towards us with a face like thunder so for everyone’s safety I took matters into my own hands and lamped him.  Turned out it was their physio.  But he seen the funny side, when he eventually regained consciousness.

When I was in the skylight of my career I played at some intimate venues, and sometimes I got a little closer to the crowd than what I would have wanted to.  One time, during an ill-temperatured Longside v Mintlaw derby, some joker in the stand starts shouting at me.  “H’min Cordiner! Your time is up!”.  I may have been something of a veteranarian but I wrasn’t having some random telling me I was past it.  So I waits til I was making a clearance and smashed it off his coupon.  That time the joke was on me though, it turns out he was just trying to warn me that my money had run out in the parking meter.

STRUAN METCALFE, MSP

Once again I’m required to apologise unreservedly for remarks I may or may not have made (OK, fair cop, I did make them) on Twitter last week. The re-negotiation of Britain’s involvement in the EU is a delicate matter of international relations, and in no way was the following tweet intended to imply anything but the utmost respect for our European partners: “Super Dave, I salute you. About time we showed Johnny foreigner who’s boss. We’re out of here! Sayōnara, Merkel, and the rest of you euro-chumps!”

Dave’s speech last week was the most inspiring of his life. And I include in that his “Toast to the Fox” at the Bullingdon Old Boys Hunt of 1992. The namby-pamby liberal press “seem” to be implying that calling for a referendum to seek the views of the nation is somehow divisive, that his cherry-picking from the EU tree is wrong. I have just one thing to say to that. Bof! Surely we have the right to renegotiate our relationship with Europe? And isn’t it time to re-define the sordid Menage A Vingt-Sept in which we find ourselves? So I say it’s time to put Britain first. After all, what has all this hob-nobbing with the continentals ever got us?

Apologies made, I’m off. The BMW needs a service, and I have to pop into Lidls for some chorizo, half a pound of gouda and a bottle of Chateaux Neuf du Pape.

THE REVEREND EDMOND EVEREND, Minister of Holburn North North East

The annual church Burns supper took place on Friday.  I must confess to being about as agnostic about the Bard as he was about God. However, the Kirk Session rejected my offer of an illustrated presentation on the great Scottish missionary, James Chalmers, and so it came to pass that, in the interests of tradition, we celebrated the life and work of a drunken womaniser whose attitude to the church bore some relation to the relationship between a dog and a lamp-post.

As it turned out, the evening was not without it’s merits.  We were treated to excellent fare by Bunty, and her team in the kitchen and our speaker (a wine wholesaler to trade who, going by his complexion, can personally vouch for the quality of his wares), started his Immortal Memory well, his “A Man’s A Man For A’ That” drawing deserved applause.

But, as he progressed through both his speech and his second bottle of red, he embarked upon a performance of “Nine Inch Will Please A Lady” as spirited as it was ill-advised. A silence fell, broken by the thud of Betty Topp falling to the ground in a swoon, followed by the Session Clerk shouting “get him!”  As we bundled the fellow out into the night, thrashing, biting and screaming couplets from “Holy Wullie’s Prayer”, it occurred to me that this was perhaps the most authentic Burns Night that the Church had ever hosted.

It was a curious but in its own way invigorating experience, one for which I give thanks to God; and if anyone has any tips on how to get bloodstains off  a clerical collar, I would be very grateful.