Nordic no-no

ABBA are back performing live! Actually, what me meant to say is ABBA are back performing live… kinda. The ‘kinda’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. For what’s actually happening is that the Scandinavian super(trouper)group are playing nightly in London in hologram form.

Some overly gullible fans may think this is as good as watching the real Agnetha, Anni-Frid, Benny and Bjorn. It’s certainly true that animated avatars, created using advanced technology, can be useful.

For example, a hologram Boris Johnson would be less likely to glug booze and chomp cake at illegal parties.

But a fake ABBA? Nah.

For such a hologram is unable to mimic the simmering tensions that exist between the genuine Nordic foursome. To be truly petty one must first be truly human.

The following tales from the Diary’s archives celebrate our species in all its small-minded glory. Muttering about books, chit-chatting over children, pontificating politically… There’s also money moans and feisty Facebook fuming. In other words, it’s the human race at its most ridiculous… and rewarding.

Pants to that

WE recall when the novel Fifty Shades of Grey was a bestseller due to its racy content, though that wasn’t immediately apparent from the title.

One Diary correspondent wondered if it was about the Scottish summer. Another opined: “Surely it’s about my boyfriend’s underwear drawer.”

Boy? Oh, boy…

A READER bumped into a pal who had two sons and congratulated him on the news that his wife was pregnant with a third child.

“Thanks,” said the prospective father. “If it’s a girl, we’re calling her Isabella. If it’s a boy, we’re calling it quits.”

Mouthing off

WE recall when the late left-wing campaigner Tony Benn appeared at the Edinburgh Book Festival and argued against hereditary peers sitting in the House of Lords.

As he put it at the time: “I wouldn’t be impressed if I went to a dentist and he said to me: ‘I’m not a dentist, but my father was a rather good one.’”

Sobering situation

A TIPPLER in a Glasgow bar was asked about his weekend, and replied that he had suffered, “classic withdrawal symptoms.”

Asked for further enlightenment, he replied: “My head was sore, my bank account had been emptied out and I had three ATM receipts in my pocket.”

Face facts

LIVELY place, Glasgow on a Saturday night. A reader in the Central Station taxi queue heard a short-skirted young lady slur at her pal: “Did ye see that Sophie slagged ye aff oan Facebook?”

“Aye,” replied her pal. “Mair like Two-face Book.”

Youthful indiscretion

A DIARY fan in Partick spotted in a newspaper the claim that ‘sixteen-year-olds are drinking twice as much as they did 10 years ago’.

He thought to himself: “Well they would do – they were only six then.”