A few good tips
RIVER City actress Holly Jack is expanding her creative horizons by learning how to write film and TV scripts. Looking for advice, she took to Twitter and lobbed a general question to her followers: “People who write stuff,” she wrote. “How do you approach second drafts?”
Upon asking such a question on social media you usually get a smattering of responses from amateur scribblers.
Holly got a reply from Aaron Sorkin, widely regarded as Hollywood’s greatest living scriptwriter, and the man behind A Few Good Men starring Tom Cruise. He also wrote and directed hit Netflix movie The Trial of the Chicago 7.
In a video monologue, Sorkin explained to Holly how to improve her script. Having made contact, we hope he’ll now ask her for writing shifts on River City.
Maybe he’ll devise a scene for Tom Cruise, playing Wee Shug in the local boozer…
There’s the rub
TEACHERS can be amusing when they’re not snarling at pupils or making horrible screechy noises with chalk on a blackboard.
Reader Ken Hughes recalls his English teacher saying: “Remember kids. Erasers are selflessly sacrificing their lives for your silly mistakes.”
Chubby chump
WE’RE devising costumes for Boris Johnson to wear this Halloween. Lisa Parker suggests the Fat Controller from Thomas the Tank Engine. Our reader then has second thoughts. “It’s true that Boris is portly,” she says, “though he isn’t capable of controlling anything. Especially a government.”
Who’s Sarry now?
WE continue our pontifications regarding that almost extinct venue of refreshment and conviviality, the Scottish public house. Malcolm Boyd from Milngavie recalls the perhaps apocryphal tale of the bloke who saunters into Glasgow’s Sarry Heid and requests a lager and lime.
The nauseated barman responds in a suitably contemptuous manner, and growls: “Nae cocktails in here, son.”
Feeling sketchy
AFTER an exhausting and messy day keeping her three-year-old son amused, Hannah Curran noticed the lad had somehow managed to embellish her upper arm using the nearest available writing material.
When our reader informed her husband, he wasn’t entirely sympathetic. “Guess the wee fella was looking for a shoulder to crayon,” he smirked.
Hip replacement
RATHER unexpectedly (and quite outrageously, we may add) reader John Mulholland gets in touch to say: “Let’s hear it for lockdown. Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hip, hooray!”
After the briefest of pauses, he adds shamefacedly: “My apologies. Is it three tiers?”
Come again?
SCEPTICAL reader Karen Powell says: “I didn’t believe in reincarnation the last time either.”
Read more: Herald Diary: Chris Patten and the definition of a bampot
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