TRAGIC news!

Cobbler extraordinaire Robbie is to shut up shop. This has come to pass because of the humanitarian catastrophe that is Edinburgh's trams project, which ought urgently to be investigated by the United Nations. For years Edinburghers had been in a state of abject confusion, unsure as they are how to proceed from A to B. One spies these countless vacant souls standing by the kerbside scratching their scalps as if they've got nits and wondering which way to turn. Unreliable sources suggest the number of missing citizens has risen exponentially because of the chaos caused by the trams. Roads that were passable one day are no longer passable the next. I tried recently to raid the Royal Bank's HQ in St Andrew Square but by the time I'd followed the diversions I was in Dunfermline.

Robbie's is situated just off the Square, within spitting distance of Harvey Nicks, purveyors of the best beans in Scotia. Never what you might call a sunbeam, Mr Robbie was gloom personified when I went to collect a pair of boots which he'd soled and heeled to perfection. He thought he'd weathered the storm, he said. It's true that when the roads were first dug up business dipped but then it levelled out. However, little did he know that more horrible disruption was heading in his direction. Today, York Place, where Mr Robbie is to be found, looks like London in the Blitz. Where once buses rumbled constantly, there is no traffic, which means that there is no footfall either. Thus Mr Robbie is yet another victim of council incompetence. Nor, I fear, will he be the last. But he does hope to be reincarnated and resume cobbling as soon as he's found suitable premises. Let's pray for all our soles that he's successful.

HAD I not been instructed by the Home Secretary to do the weekly shop in Iceland I would have followed Scotland to Serbia to savour another humiliation. The alternative was a trip to Montenegro, where the creme de la creme of England's premier league had innumerable objects thrown at them, including coins, cigarette lighters, pens and other lucky charms. Joe Hart, the goalie, says that at one point he was so covered in toilet roll he looked like a mummy. Urine was also transmitted.

Quite how this got from incontinent Montenegrins to Wayne Rooney and Stevie Gerrard is a mystery. It's possible that a direct route was chosen but this calls for remarkable powers of projection. It's also possible that the urine came pre-bagged, which, obviously, would require careful sealing to prevent leakage. Having said that, who among us has the forethought and the wherewithal to store quantities of urine? To which – it has just occurred to me – the answer can only be: those employed in Montenegro's medical sector.

Mr Bean lookalike, Davie Moribund, says he is resigning as MP for South Shields and taking up a job working for a charity in New York where he will be looking after even poorer people than those in his constituency.

I am reminded of what Dorothy Parker said on the death of President Coolidge: "How can they tell?" (to which Robert Benchley provided an answer which alas cannot be repeated in this throbbing family organ).

According to his bereft chums Mr Moribund will be much missed. Really? Apparently, in the past year, he has earned a million quid from lucrative directorships and speaking engagements for which he is paid £20,000 a pop. Have you heard him speak? I'd rather listen to a ScotRail announcer.

WOW! The Rolling Stones are going to Glastonbury! If only it were Gifford or Gourock. Mick says he's already got his wellies and his yurt. The decision to play Glastonbury has been a long time coming. Said a spokeswallah: "The thing with the Stones is that they move slowly." You better believe it! Given the abuse they've given themselves, what's truly remarkable is that they can move at all.

THERE is a fine and moving piece by my old chum Arthur Bell on the Scottish Review website. It concerns Mr Bell's father, Leonard, who was editor of Life And Work – or Amen Only! as one is wont to call it – the Kirk's in-house mag, for five years from the mid-1960s. Leonard Bell was then in his 50s and gave up his job as parish minister to resuscitate the ailing publication. This, remarkably, he did, for which he was rewarded with the boot, because he wanted to put a Botticelli painting of the Madonna and child on the cover, which was deemed too Catholic for Kirk sensibilities. Although this decision was later overturned at the General Assembly, Rev Leonard died shortly thereafter, his spirit broken by tubes. However, Amen Only! continues and has just launched a celestial edition which is available on tablet computers. Holy Moses!

MY dear friend Campbell Gunn is to receive a lifetime achievement award from fellow hacks, having sheathed his nib after 43 years at the Shunday Post, the past 14 as political editor. A wee bird tells me that Mr G has already persuaded the Broons to vote "yup" en masse at next year's referendum.

Lest anyone wonder what Oor Wullie's intentions are, may I remind you that even if he was old enough to vote, which he's not, it would take a lot more than the prospect of independence to make him abandon his bucket.