Out for the count
SENIOR STV reporter Mike Edwards’s latest book,The Road Home, sees him travelling to five places in the States that bear the name of his own home town, Inverness.
It also contains lots of anecdotes from his distinguished career as a newsman. One concerns his cameraman colleague, Neil McLaren.
Mike and Neil were about to interview a young mother, and Neil was testing his microphone by saying. “One two, one two.” The woman’s young daughter, noticing that something was amiss, tried to get her attention, to no avail. “Mummy’s busy,” she was told.
“One two, one two,” said Neil.
The girl tried again but was told that mummy was somewhat pre-occupied.
“One two, one two,” Neil continued.
“Mummy, mummy,” the girl persisted. Her mother’s patience snapped. “What is it?” she yelled in the distracted manner of someone who was clearly nervous about doing a television interview.
“Mummy, that man can’t count up to three.”
Heads you lose
FROM America comes word of a new approach in law enforcement. Two cops were debating to do about a female motorist who’d been caught speeding in wet conditions. One of them decides the answer might lie in the toss of a coin, so she turns to her mobile, which has a coin-tossing app, complete with appropriate sounds. Arrest was heads, Release was tails. Though tails comes up, one of the officers uses a police code for arrest, whereupon the woman is handcuffed and placed in the back of a police vehicle.
The police chief lamented that the officer “apparently based her decision to arrest the violator on a coin-toss app that was on her cellphone.”
Both officers have been placed on “administrative leave.”
Ever hopeful
A TIMELY suggestion from Mark Boyle: “Finally, perhaps it’s time that Scotland’s domestic clubs on Champions League and Europa League duties met with the Prime Minister to compare strategies - after all, she’s also doing her best to defy expectations and stay in Europe beyond next March, too.”
Cycle of life
READER Gilbert MacKay says his passion for the Tour de France is being mildly diluted by the commercials in its coverage on ITV4.
He asks plaintively: “Is it just my sensitivity, or are they all about funeral plans? This must either say something about the demographic of the viewers - or that cycling’s not as good for you as I thought it was.”
Losing face
AS Others See Us... Reader Kenneth Morin emails to say: “Having boarded our tour bus in China and chosen our seats, the guide introduced herself and welcomed us. Then, with, I think, a slight smile on her face, told us that we were to have these seats for the whole tour and not to change or swap as she wanted to get to know us and moving would confuse her as ‘we all looked the same to her!’”
And finally ...
A COLLEAGUE informed the Diary yesterday that his aunt had had to give up her stairlift.
“Because it was costing her too much to run?” we asked.
“No,” he said. “Because it was driving her up the wall.”
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