The DIARY
Socks and dregs and sausage rolls are very good indeed – unlike the Beeb’s latest Hogmanay offerings
Lights, camera, action man
SCOTLAND’S one-man movie industry, Haston McLaren, has just won another clutch of awards for his first film, A Life In August – a movie he didn’t just direct, produce, shoot, write and compose the music for but also starred in and probably even prepared cordon bleu meals for the crew, AKA himself. And all this he fitted in around his day job. Last month, the film won a prestigious international award at the Accolade film festival in La Jolla, California, and now it has won four golds at the International Independent Film Awards in Encino, Los Angeles, including cinematography, original score and best actress – Lisa Miller.
It’s been a six-year journey – more an obsession – by Haston (or Harry, as he’s known) since he decided to spend six hundred quid on a video camera and do it himself.
Harry’s day job is head of electronics and avionics design at a light aircraft maintenance company based at Cumbernauld airport, where he installed the technical gizmos in the aircraft 007 flew in the film Spectre and built some of the other aircraft which were used in the more destructive sequences.
He was once also a professional musician and sound engineer and claims that the whole project has cost less than £20,000, although his wife, June, tells him that one of the few things he can’t do is count. He financed it on credit cards. So what next? Harry vows he has no plans for a follow-up. “My wife insisted I say that,” he says.
Sausages are the boy
THE public relations coup of the year so far – though admittedly there’s not much competition after less than a week – comes from Greggs, notably assisted by Piers Morgan.
The retail chain launched a vegan sausage roll (is that not an oxymoron?) which was first denounced by the TV host who then tweeted that he had ordered one from room service (what kind of hotel stocks Greggs?).
The company responded that it was waiting on his order, which Morgan later pronounced wasn’t at all bad.
There followed a run on vegan sausage rolls and many branches quickly sold out.
It is no doubt a huge coincidence that Greggs and Morgan are represented by the same PR company.
Getting sniffy
A chum of the diary sniffs out the latest scents on the market just so your sinuses don’t have to.
She has discovered a new unisex perfume from Tom Ford, which is said to be a “tempting dichotomy of playful, candylike gleam on the outside and luscious flesh on the inside” – prose that Piers Morgan might have penned. Apparently, innocence intersects with indulgence, too. It’s called Lost Cherry but, according to our chum, carries more than a hint of regret.
The curse of socks
DID your mum or granny repeatedly warn you to make sure your underpants were clean on today, in case you get knocked down by a bus? Probably just after she told you that if you didn’t eat up your porridge the bad man would come and take you away to the fire.
Well, I feel the same about socks. What if I get run down by the number 64 en route to Auchenshuggle and the paramedics discover that one doesn’t match the other? They’d probably switch off the oxygen, or pause mid-CPR, and walk away in disgust.
Does anyone nowadays pair socks, never mind darn them? It’s absolute chaos in my sock drawer – I take it as a Brexit analogy – and
with the new ones I’ve been given over the festive period fated, after only one outing, never to see their twin again, the infernal guddle will only worsen.
Why isn’t there some law that socks can only be plain black? If the EU can legislate about bent bananas why isn’t there this binding directive on foot coverings?
Is it any wonder that millions of people, at least half of them in odd socks, voted to leave?
The joy of sex
SOME lawyers have very odd second jobs and interests. There’s Stephen Fox who buries stiffs as a Glasgow undertaker when he’s not in his gown and wig.
But, putting a totally different interpretation on the word, er, stiff, there’s John Webber Fraser, head of litigation at PRP Legal, who is now advertising himself as a sex coach.
He’s formed a company called Everybody Loves Limited with Karen Welch who, I presume, is the woman he is cosying up to on their Facebook page.
I don’t know how you qualify as a sex coach but I imagine it takes plenty of practice.
They seem to be disciples of Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent, which I imagine is an intimate position involving cartwheels. They’re looking for volunteers for a couple of hours a month.
As my athletic days have gone, I’ll pass on that one.
In memoriam
THE year is barely new and already two great people have passed.
RIP Airdrie’s Tommy McAleese, better known as Dean Ford, a brilliant singer and songwriter who fronted Marmalade and wrote (with Junior Campbell) Reflections Of My Life. The royalties from that song kept him alive in Los Angeles when he fought chronic alcoholism and worked as a chauffeur to celebrities.
Prior to that he was the lead singer with the Glasgow band The Gaylords, although the name didn’t have quite the same meaning back then. If you haven’t heard beautiful The Glasgow Road, written and performed by him with ex-Badfinger guitarist and producer Joe Tansin, here it is: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=QQtat8hn-18.
Dean died on New Year’s Day and a day later Bob Einstein, the US comedian, writer and outrageously dirty jokester, went to that great comedy improv in the sky. He was a regular as Marty Funkhouser on Curb Your Enthusiasm – his best joke is too filthy to repeat – and as Larry Middleman on Arrested Development and as mad stuntman Super Dave Osborne, a massive hit in Canada.
Perhaps the best tribute to him comes from Canadian comedian Scott Thompson who tweeted that he hoped Bob’s coffin is transported to the cemetery on top of a parade float that misjudges the height of an overpass.