Ladies part of Burns Supper
to toast them. The audience was made to share the tragic appearance of Ken’s adolescent verruca at the swimming gala and the romancebusting effects of its attendant Woolies poly bag. And yet amorous fortunes followed, leading to the Dows’ classic contribution to SinoScots relations - the mixed marriage creation that is Haggis Dimsum.
Ken went on to quote Burns’ very positive words on the Rights of Women and one of these is surely the right of reply which came from former Scottish Conservative leader Baroness Annabel Goldie.
Having already picked up a man for navigational purposes en route and thus found the hotel, she began by immediately shooting down the chairman’s plans for a Scottish wing of Clan Cockshoot; she then proceeded graciously to confer upon chaplain Rev Gary McIntyre, the noble title of “God’s Antidote to Gloom”.
Being ennobled herself, she passed over the peasant tale of the drunken pheasant plucker with the stutter, pausing however to quote the cautionary tale of one prelate’s profanely gifted parrot. Moving on, Annabel accepted with good grace the lads’ compliments to her and all of her kind.
The artistes, for their part, shone. Paul Carey followed up his splendid Tam o’ Shanter with a modern retake on the great poem, a nice role reversal when it’s Tam’s turn to pursue a particularly saucy witch. Then there were classic Burns numbers from Delia Binnie and Peter Nevans - from John Anderson My Jo to the haunting tones of Ay Waukin O.
Janice Hepburn gave an eloquent vote of thanks to the chairman, artistes and croupiers and presentations were made to Forrester Pyke for his services as musical accompanist and to Sandy Tennant for 26 years in the role of club secretary before Auld Lang Syne.