Brian Ferguson’s diary
She may have two of the most famous parents in the world, but Chelsea Clinton has enjoyed a spell of anonymity while staying in Edinburgh this week.
Speaking to Sally Magnusson at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, she told how she had taken a walk past the Elephant House cafe on George IV Bridge – reportedly where JK Rowling write the Harry Potter books – and been for a “long run” during her time in the Capital.
The Edinburgh-based author is one of the 13 women profiled in Ms Clinton’s picture book for children, called She Persisted Around the World.
“I have mostly been left alone,” she said. “But when people do stop me to talk, they want to talk about my mom.
And that’s fine with me, because I love talking about my mom.”
You wait years for the Edinburgh International Book Festival to attract a bona fide rock star and then two of them show up within a matter of days.
There is something ironic about iconic Queen guitarist Brian May, pictured, and Iron Maiden’s frontman Bruce Dickinson holding court in Charlotte Square Garden when controversy is raging about the impact of live music events in the city.
They are either falling foul of the city’s noise regulations throughout the year or provoking outrage because
0 Chelsea Clinton always enjoys talking about her mother
of their impact on views of Edinburgh Castle in Princes Street Gardens.
So it was perhaps inevitable that Dickinson’s book festival event event on Saturday night was disrupted by the sound of the Tattoo fireworks display.
It is fair to say the Edinburgh TV Festival and its celebrity guests come and go without the rest of the city noticing too much.
That may change this week with stellar names like Hugh Grant, Joanna Lumley, Michael Palin and Steve Coogan in its largely unheralded line-up.
But the TV Festival’s base at
the EICC is also the place to be on Saturday for arguably the best kept secret of the entire month – a Q&A with John Cleese. The Monty Python legend, joined on stage by his stand-up daughter Camilla, will be quizzed by Fred Macaulay. Even better news is that tickets are free, although donations are invited for Social Bite, the chain of sandwich shops which help tackle homelessness in Scotland.
With a week left of the festivals, everyone has probably met their nemesis by now – the persistent flyerer, the drunken heckler, the whinging taxi driver, the couldn’t-care-less barman and the sweetie rustler in the stalls. However Toby Jones, the man behind the Real Sherlock Holmes Walking Tour of Edinburgh, had no option but to offer a free place to a stranger offering proof of his surname: Moriarty.