A stroke of bad lock

SINGER Jean Redpath, who will be performing with the 30-memberAmerican choir The Chorale, at a charity concert at Paisley Abbey on August 9, will be hoping for an easier appearance than when she sang at the Fraser Gathering in the clan castle's grounds.

Jean and fellow female performers were allowed by the lady of the castle to change inside, and Jean, as she was on later in the programme, was still in the tower enjoying the views when she realised she was soon to go on.

Unfortunately, both the back and front doors of the castle had now been locked. She even tried to find a window that was open, but no luck.

Eventually in desperation she signalled SOS on the hallway lights before she was finally spotted and made a breathless last-minute appearance.

So who says Morse Code is no longer required?

Devilish delivery

POLITICIAN Tommy Sheridan is going through the wars just now so we imagine he must remember fondly his younger days when he played junior football with St Anthony's. Reader Des Divers remembers watching Tommy playing on the wing against Rutherglen Glencairn and not having the best of games.

It was less than a week before an election and a Glencairn fan shouted at Tommy, asking if he was voting the following Thursday.

Tommy turned and said of course he was, which allowed the fan to reply: "Well it will be the first time you'll manage to get a cross in the box."

It's worth a shout BBC NewAct award winner Andrew Lawrence, who is bringing his comedy show, How To ButcherYour Loved Ones, to the Edinburgh Fringe, remembers in horror the 2001 Fringe when, as a St Andrews University student, he would try to drum up business for their student sketch show by standing on a bin on the Royal Mile singing a song about torturing a donkey.

Inevitably he was shouted at by nearby residents, attacked by a drunk tramp and moved on frequently by the police.

Says Andrew: "It was a bad show, and we were all very obnoxious. Nowadays I avoid the Royal Mile fastidiously for fear of seeing some acned specimen of higher education making a dramatic tit of himself in a fashion that reminds me horribly of myself."

A cutting remark

READER Eamonn McFadden noticed that the police spokesman on the ITN news discussing the recent knife amnesty was the Met's acting deputy assistant commissioner, Alfred Hitchcock. Alas, the top cop failed to mention the knife scene from the film Psycho.

Ready for take-off

THE pilots featured in Scottish Television's new series starting tomorrow, The Jet Set, about the trainee Tornado GR4 jet pilots at Lossiemouth, all deny that Top Gun is their favourite film and that they were inspired by Tom Cruise's character, Maverick, pictured. Fair enough.

It's just that after the series launch in Glasgow, some of them, a few post-launch vodka and Red Bulls later, were seen reducing a barmaid to jelly by singing You've Lost that Loving Feeling just as Tom Cruise did in Top Gun.

Good-looking pilots in a Glasgow bar - what chance did the locals have?

The stink tank

A GLASGOW pub landlady was telling a customer how good it was to work in a smoke-free environment, apart from the fact that the smoke no longer hid the rather obvious odours emanating from some of the clientele.

"So why don't you, " he told her, "copy the old swear boxes and have a BO and fart box that offenders have to pay into?"

"No, " she replied with a shake of the head, "I would have to employ Securicor to take it away every week, it would be that full."

The Red devil

THE death of veteran actor Red Buttons, pictured, reminds us that it was Red who originally defined old age as "When your wife says, 'let's go upstairs and make love, ' and you answer, 'Honey, I can't do both'."