Tough love

QUENTIN Tarantino - whose magnum opus, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is released this week - has always extended the hand of friendship to Scottish fans.

But a leg up in the biz? Not so fast, buster.

At one Q&A session at the Glasgow Film Theatre, Quentin informed his audience, including a large number of aspiring film makers, he’d be accepting: “No resumes, no short films, no scripts. Just questions.”

Tarantino. He doesn’t just kill Bill. He dashes dreams to death, too.

Pillow talk

FOLLOWING our yarn about a wife coming home from a weekend break to discover hubby’s failure to complete basic household chores, reader Melvyn Fitzgerald, from Dedridge, shares his own marital tale of woe.

“Miss me?” Melvyn asked his wife on her return from a business trip.

Her response was a non-comital nod, though she added with increased ardour: “I can’t wait to get my hands on my orthopaedic pillow. My back’s killing me.”

Wife strife

CELEBS also struggle with marital relations. Ask Noel Gallagher, who has sold his London home.

We’re not sure where Noel’s moving, but chances are he’s still in possession of at least two swanky mansions. As he previously admitted, an extra gaff is an essential accessory in his relationship with Edinburgh-born wife, Sara MacDonald.

“I’m living in one house and I’ve got a spare one,” he said. “Which comes in handy if you’ve had a row with the missus.”

Corking comment

LONG, lean thespian, Peter Capaldi, has been spotted in Hull wearing a long, lean hat of the topper variety.

The former Doctor Who was kitted out in Victorian garb to play Mr. Micawber in fellow Scot, Armando Iannucci’s film of David Copperfield.

Capaldi has big shoes to fill. The great vaudevillian, W. C. Fields, played Micawber in an earlier movie. Fields was American, of course. But let us embrace him as an honorary Scot for his credibly Caledonian comment: “What contemptable scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch?”

Hero to zero

IT’S Batman’s 80th anniversary, meaning it’s also the birthday of Bat’s alter ego, Bruce Wayne, who was named after Robert the Bruce.

The superhero’s creator, Bob Kane, wanted his filthy rich protagonist to be a well-heeled socialite, so plundered Scotland’s aristocracy for an authentic posh-boy moniker.

If Kane had created Batman decades later, he might have appropriated the name of an alternative lord of the manner.

How satisfying it would be if Batman whipped off his cowl to reveal that international playboy of Gotham city… Rab C. Nesbitt.

Cross dad

LAST week’s Herald story celebrating the photograph of the Beatles traversing a zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios reminds reader, Ramsey Haggard, from Clarkston, of his early attempt to emulate the iconic image.

As there was a similar crossing near his childhood home, 13-year-old Ramsay pleaded with his father and two brothers to stroll the stripes with him, while a neighbour took an authentically Beatleish photo.

Dad declined to take part. “I’m precisely one Yoko Ono and several million pounds short of being a real, live Beatle,” he grumped. “What would be the point?”

Bet on wet

THE riotous rain of recent times had reader, Rachael Cooper, from Inchinnan, sighing that such a Biblical deluge might mean the end of days.

“Great,” beamed her son: “I won’t have to return to school after the holidays.”

Armageddon – not so bad when it helps you dodge trigonometry.