I have been asked to post David Cameron’s interview on The Letterman Show. Good history lesson and an embarrassing moment or two, apparently. No probs.
David Cameron on Letterman
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Category Archives: Popular culture
Count leaves Little Bernera to National Trust for Scotland
Aside
Aristocrat whose bed-hopping ways inspired James Bond author donates Little Bernera to National Trust
- Count Robin de la Lanne-Mirrlees romanced a string of socialites
- Character in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was based on laird
- He shunned position as a French aristocrat to live in Outer Hebrides
- Conservationists hail ‘extraordinary’ gift of £1m isle
By DREW DICKSON
An eccentric aristocrat who inspired James Bond author Ian Fleming has posthumously donated a remote island to the National Trust for Scotland.
Count Robin de la Lanne-Mirrlees, who died in June aged 87, stated in his will that the island of Little Bernera be given to the trust’s Scottish division.
The trust has accepted the gift but Count Robin’s other Scottish island, Great Bernera, will remain in private ownership.
The former Queen’s Herald was best known for his work helping Fleming to research his 1963 James Bond novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
And like 007, the count wooed a succession of socialites.
Island aristocrat: Count Robin preferred his small farmhouse on the Outer Hebrides island of Great Bernera, which he owned, to a castle. He served as a ‘cover identity’ for fiction’s most famous spy
Unspoilt: A pristine beach on the Outer Hebridean island of Little Bernera, which has been donated to the Scottish National TrustIn the book, Bond’s cover as genealogist Sir Hilary Bray was based on Count Robin, who was then the heraldic researcher, appointed by the Queen, at the College of Arms in London.
He served as a ‘cover identity’ for fiction’s most famous spy, played in the film by George Lazenby on his only outing as Bond.
Bill Gardner, Development Manager at the NTS, said the gift of the uninhabited 250-acre Outer Hebridean island, worth an estimated £1million, had stunned his team.
He said: ‘This appears to be an extraordinary act of generosity from a man who led an extraordinary life.
‘We have not been contacted directly as yet regarding the bequest, but it is not unusual for there to be a gap of several months before legal papers are received following public registration of the will.
‘Once confirmation is received we will assess the island’s ecology and landscape as to how it can be best conserved for the nation in the light of any conditions attached to the bequest.’ Little Bernera is worth an estimated £1million.
An international playboy who spoke several languages, Count Robin won the hearts of debutantes including Fiona Campbell-Walker, a top model who married one of the richest men in Europe, Baron Thyssen.
After several years of ill health, his colourful life came to an end in the Western Isles at the Blar Buidhe nursing home in Stornoway, Lewis.
The Oxford-educated nobleman turned his back on his life as a French-born aristocrat to be laird of a Hebridean island, off Lewis. He had suffered two strokes in recent years and had been poorly for some time.
A descendant of King Louis Philippe I of France, Count Robin was the godson of the 11th Duke of Argyll, and the popular laird of Great Bernera.
Playboy: Count Robin’s success with glamorous, well-heeled women was also mirrored in the Bond novelsCount Robin was deeply involved in helping Ian Fleming (left) research James Bond’s adventures for the novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The film starred George Lazenby (right) as 007, who posed as genealogist Sir Hilary Bray, a cover inspired by the count’s job as heraldic researcher at the College Of Arms in London
Count Robin lived there for the second half of his life, latterly moving into a warden-run community care unit when staying alone in his crumbling croft house got too much.
He was born Robin Ian Evelyn Grinnell-Milne in January 1925 to Captain Duncan Grennell-Milne, a highly-decorated First World War RAF pilot and French Countess Frances de la Lanne.
His parents divorced and his mother later married Scots war hero Major General William Mirrlees.
Taking a liking to her new husband’s surname, her son changed his name by deed poll twice, in 1958 and then 20 years ago to Robin Ian Evelyn Milne Stuart le Prince de la Lanne-Mirrlees.
Count Robin became a captain in the Royal Artillery serving in India during the Second World War and was later a herald to the Queen and attended her coronation. He also held numerous foreign knighthoods.
And in 2005, he took up his title of Prince of Incoronata, an Adriatic archipelago, bestowed upon him in the 1960s by the exiled King Peter II of Yugoslavia, to whom he had been adjutant and confidant.
Fact following fiction: Telly Savalas stars as Blofeld in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which the head of Spectre seeks to claim the title of Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp. Ironically, Count Robin had the title Prince of Incoronata bestowed upon him in 1967 by the exiled King Peter II of Yugoslavia – four years after Fleming wrote his Bond novel
After he moved to Great Bernera, islanders grew extremely fond of the likeable, charming man they called their laird.
He supported many local causes and readily released land for community use, building a bond of trust between laird and crofter.
After the Lloyds insurance syndicates crash in the 1990s, Count Robin had to sell off his assets to pay £2million of losses.
But Great Bernera was never put on the market. He also refused to sell Inchdrewer Castle in Banffshire which he bought as a ruin and partially restored in 1971.
At the behest of islanders, he withdrew a clutch of uninhabited islands off Great Bernera – including Little Bernera – from the market. But other grand properties had to go, including a £400,000 chateau in France – his mother’s former home – a flat in Paris and Ratzenegg Castle in Austria.
Many of his prized collection of antiques and paintings were also auctioned off.
Count Robin won the hearts of debutantes including Fiona Campbell-Walker (pictured), a top model who married one of the richest men in Europe, Baron ThyssenLater on, the crash in prices of farmed salmon also hit his finances and he was forced to sell his seven-bedroom mansion in Holland Park, London, and his Swiss apartment.
He was highly regarded on Great Bernera, which has a population of just 350, as a benevolent man.
Fellow islander Rhona Macleod said in 2005: ‘He may be a prince, but to us he will always simply be Robin.
‘He’s had two castles in his life, but he must be the only prince who preferred a croft house on Bernera. That says it all.
‘He also must be the only prince who joined a local lottery syndicate – but after Lloyds he needed the money.’
Count Robin was married once, at the age of 45 to a nurse half his age, but it fizzled out after a week.
He had a long-term relationship with a German duchess, Margarethe of Württemberg, and is survived by their son Patrick de la Lanne, 50, the mayor of Delmenhort – a town of 74,000 people near Bremen in north Germany – and three adult grandchildren.
In his later years the count was best known for being an eccentric figure who had an aggressive dislike of the Prince of Wales, whom he called ‘an absolute disgrace’ in 2003.
And in the late 1990s he provoked opposition when he proposed to open a drying-out clinic for alcoholics on Great Bernera, which he wanted to call a ‘personal rediscovery centre’.
During February 2004 he was admitted to Hammersmith Hospital in London after suffering a stroke and while he was there, he contracted MRSA.
He was convinced he had been infected by bacteria on doctors’ ties and demanded that the neckwear should be banned.
The reason I do not want to sit on the fence is that it really, really hurts
Published in Press and Journal – Sep 19, 2011
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They are sharp and horrible and have caused me terrible pain and misery. I’m not actually talking about my in-laws – well, not this time. What I am talking about has had me agonisingly trapped by my shoulder, by my hand and one even came close to ripping off my undercarriage when I fell on it while straddling a stile in my rush to get to a beach.
The wretched instruments of torture of which I speak are, of course, our fearsome island fences. If there’s one thing guaranteed to bring tears to my eyes it is recalling that particular humiliating episode down at Coll Beach a few years ago when I was left dangling on the most penetrative barbed wire on which I have ever rested my wee pink bits.
And something equally painful happened on South Uist as well. Trying to get a better position to take photos of that pod of ill-fated pilot whales which had ended up in Loch Carnan, I thought I’d go up the road and climb the hill. Just one problem. There was a sturdy fence barring the way and no gate for miles. Oh no, it had vicious-looking barbed wire all along it. Ach, no bother, I can tackle any fence after what happened to me in Coll. I never learn.
This time, there wasn’t even a stile. So I had to drop the camera over it first and begin my ascent. What I didn’t plan for was that I was fairly high up the hill so, just as I was getting my leg over, I was hit amidships by Hurricane Floraidh. A sudden wind swung me back like a weather vane slamming me against the groaning fence post.
In situations like this, the kindly advice of physics teachers like Mr Robbie, Mr Campbell and Mr Mackay come flooding back. For any non-scientific readers, kinetic energy is best explained by showing how it is changed to and from other forms of energy.
For example, I was using chemical energy provided by the sausage and black pudding I had at the Dark Island Hotel to climb that fence at my chosen velocity. That movement had to be maintained with enough oomph to overcome air resistance and friction. So, the chemical energy was being converted into kinetic energy, the energy of motion, but that kind of process is never completely efficient and was also producing heat and sweatiness on certain parts of my anatomy. OK so far?
The law of gravity meant I’d acquired a whole shedload of even more kinetic energy and, by swinging back too far, had run out of options for transfer. Meanwhile, my right leg was still partly over the barbed wire and being dragged back over the by-now bloody pricks. Yeeeouch.
By the time I became completely dislodged and fell to earth, the pain was so intense I didn’t even notice my head bouncing off an ollack and rolling into the swamp.
Kinetic energy, of course, can be passed from one object to another and when I passed it to the fence post it went all wibbly-wobby and undoubtedly was thereon transferred by way of local terrestrial tremors. That’s kinetic energy. See? Science is so interesting when you have a tutor who has personally experienced what could otherwise be boring, theoretical situations. A bonus was that, as I eventually came to my senses, I realised there was no one around to witness my downfall. So no one could get offended if I let rip with the most fearsome oaths and curses about the usefulness of fences, the properties of barbed wire and my lessening affection for bewildered marine creatures.
Who’d have thought that loudly proclaiming unspecified doubts about the parentage of pilot whales above a Uist sea loch was an effective stress reliever? Worked for me, I tell you. Mind you, that was probably because this was South Uist and I was far away from the influence of the Free Church or the Continuing for the feelings of guilt at stooping to profanity to be sufficiently suppressed. I have to say I’m intrigued by a competition launched by a tradesmen’s website called Get Off The Fence. They are looking for get nominations for the biggest, best, ugliest or most ridiculous fences. Whether they are fabulous or very bad, they want to feature them.
Fences serve so many purposes, they say, including keeping out unwanted intruders, marking clear boundaries between neighbours and affording you privacy when you’re enjoying some time in the garden. They think it’s time to celebrate these brilliant boundary markers and fantastic fences which, while doing so many other things, actually brighten up our day. Yeah, right. One gets the impression it is more about poncey garden fences more than jaggy-topped livestock ones but, hey, a fence is a fence.
The blurb says Britain’s got millons so they acknowledge that not all are going to be that great. Some may be faded, splintered, too small or too tall, they expect. Whatever the reason, they are asking the public to get off the fence and name and shame the worst offenders. I think I could win this, you know. If I took them to those fences in Coll and Loch Carnan that are not just ugly to look at but capable of inflicting deep and lasting injury to innocent people, they would have to be impressed. No lily-livered lawn border or terrible trellis could beat my entries. Because I took photos before I applied the ointment.
A letter from Iain M Macdonald, Miavaig
A letter from my former classmate Iain M Macdonald, Miavaig, Uig, concerning matters recently discussed on this blog.
I am the letter writer who inadvertently initiated this particular debate at Iain X Maciver’s blog on attitudes to homosexuality/freedom of speech. I did so by submitting a letter which was forcibly withdrawn from publication when some of our island’s broad-minded and tolerant libertarians personally threatened, with action liable to disrupt his livelihood, the island journalist who briefly featured my correspondence on his Hebrides News website.
So I’m obliged to my once lean and nimble former hostel mate, Pluto – now better known as our cheerfully corpulent local press baron/newspaper colomnist, Iain X Maciver – for allowing me to put the record straight with an (uncensored) contribution to the debate. Although my views on homosexuality brought criticism from some quarters, the only way to avoid such criticism is to sit quietly in a corner and let others opinions prevail.In preference to which I’d rather risk incurring the barbed and vitriolic outbursts of our present host who would be sadly missed in the Western Isles, despite his propensity to launch highly personal attacks of flamboyantly embellished invective against his former school mate and others who inadvertently stray into his line of fire.
Whatever our philosophical disagreements,I would never wish that Iain X be replaced by another grey-suited,obediently PC yes-man/woman. We have quite enough of them already.
Contrary to what my detractors seem to believe, I have nothing against individual homosexuals, many of whom are decent people no worse and no better than their heterosexual brothers and sisters. Nor do I think myself to be ‘better’ or superior in any way to the average homosexual. But that doesn’t alter the fact that I recoil with revulsion at the thought of two men sharing an intimate physical relationship. It’s an involuntary reaction stemming from deep within my psyche. Although my reaction is a personal matter, why shouldn’t I be allowed to convey that reaction in any public forum or debate, whether I’m a bricklayer, B&B owner, or a Bishop.
And if denied that opportunity, who has conferred onto those who would seek to gag me ,the legal right to do so? Obviously some people believe they have that right, as shown by events referred to above. The revulsion I speak of is not a significant problem for me personally because it doesn’t prevent me from doing anything I otherwise would wish to do, such as a similar aversion to water would have prevented me learning to swim. Nor does my revulsion prevent anyone else from declaring their homosexuality, if that is their inclination. So why do some people view this situation as a problem – our website host included ?
I would suggest the real problem is caused by those amongst us- whether homosexual or heterosexual- who demand that everyone must follow to the letter their views on all aspects of homosexuality, To ensure their demands are met, they have introduced on the coattails of equality legislation, laws to forcibly impose their views on others. Laws incidentally, which I have no intention of recognising, in the same manner that I don’t recognise the validity of a law which permits the cruelty of fox-hunting or allows our fishermen to throw thousands of tonnes of edible dead fish back into the sea while countless people worldwide slowly starve to death.
Those feelings of revulsion mentioned earlier are shared to various degrees by many others in the male population. They then have the choice of either hiding their revulsion whilst paying lip-service to the gay lobby, knowing they’re hypocrites, or they can be honest and face the consequences,whether good or bad. So for the benefit of those men ( and women ) unacquainted with such feelings I’ll give an example of their manifestation.
I was recently watching a TV programme about Elton John’s musical career when a clip appeared showing the singer snogging his male partner. I felt physically sick looking at it and had to change channels. I was rather annoyed at the elaborately thatched English singer for ruining my appetite in anticipation of a rare and mouthwatering culinary treat of freshly caught Gallan Head herring smothered in oatmeal.
Although confessing to past homosexual experiences, Elton John’s fellow rock star David Bowie has never put me off my food in similar fashion. Bowie is today a happily married heterosexual family man, who has stated that dabbling in non- heterosexual activities was “the biggest mistake of my life “.
This rather disproves the theory advanced by Mr Iain Maclean ( A Gay Student Writes ) who believes his homosexual disposition was genetically inherited. Confusing, isn’t it ?
Perhaps all will be explained by eminent evolutionist Prof Richard Dawkins following up his widely read ‘The Selfish Gene’ with a sequel entitled “The Indecisive Gene.” Not content with postulating his own homespun theories on genetics, Mr Maclean also alludes to have been a highly proficient school debater, before promptly shattering that allusion by referring mockingly to ( Mr or Ms ?) Dare2Differ as a “dinosaur” for contradicting the gay student’s views on homosexuality. It must have escaped Mr Maclean’s attention that the quickest route for any race of people to follow the dinosuars into extinction is for it’s members to mate with their own gender.
Mr Maclean also declares his hope of eventually marrying another man in a church wedding. If that is his intended direction of travel ,I would wish him well in pursuing his obsession and think him no lesser a person for doing so. But it doesn’t alter in the slightest my attitude to homosexual practises.
You’ll understand there’s no offence intended Mr Maclean. But come the day of your nuptials, in the unlikely event of my driving past the chosen Island church as the two bridegrooms pose and embrace for the cameras, please excuse me for not throwing any confetti in your direction as I’ll be otherwise preoccupied searching the glove compartment for a sick-bag.
The Uig Chessmen belong here on Lewis but what can we do to keep them here?
Published: Press and Journal Sep 12, 2011
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Since April, a procession of people wound their weary way up that hill.
Heads down, they trundled up forsaking even the charms of the Carlton Bar. They were all following patiently-explained directions for the Isle of Lewis Chessmen at our museum in Stornoway.
Most got it wrong. Told to keep going up Francis Street and it would be on their left just before Matheson Road, the dozy walkers would always turn into Lewis Street, the last turn-off.
On that street, the bewildered culture vultures and archaeology addicts soon spotted the courthouse and, convinced they had finally found Museum nan Eilean, made for there in their endless search for something ancient and interesting.
In fact, some of them did find a couple of old treasures in there. However, the sheriff and the procurator fiscal don’t count so the visitors were ejected and told where to go.
The curtain twitchers of Lewis Street used to wonder just how popular were the little men from Uig round the corner in the museum. In fact, I have found out that no less than 20,000 visitors have been to see them since the exhibition began at Easter.
It’s now ending although the chessmen can be seen for a final day at Uig Museum tomorrow. You should go. If you’re reading this in some distant wilderness, like Aberdeenshire, you may just make it with a wee tailwind from Hurricane Katia.
The Isle of Lewis Chessmen are probably the one thing around the world that this wee island is known for – apart, of course, from intolerant sabbatarians. It must be nearly 14 or 15 years since they were last here. So on Saturday I decided I would go along for a decko before they are spirited away to be wrapped up and stuffed into someone’s drawers in the British Museum for another 15 years.
So I got up and asked Mrs X if, by any chance, she wanted to see the chessmen. Her ears pricked up straight away, she threw down her knitting and she had wheeched me out the door before I could squeak that I was still in my wincyette pyjamas.
Actually, there were one or two fibs there. Mrs X doesn’t knit and I don’t wear any jammies, wincyette, nylon or knitted. I only said that in case my auntie Kirsty Ann read this. She’s always telling me to wrap up nice and warm if I’m going out. In fact, she’s always telling me to wrap up, period.
It’s a great wee exhibition. Not only is it fantastic to see the wee Uigeachs in the flesh – OK, in the walrus ivory – but it is really informative. There are cards and wallcharts with the most fascinating facts clearly explained.
Did you know, for instance, that there is nothing certain about where the chessmen were actually found? Oh, it may indeed have been by Uig Sands but it may also have been at Mealasta, a fine beach up at Breanish. In fact, let’s be honest about this; it wasn’t properly recorded at the time so it could have been anywhere in the parish of Uig.
It could even have been on Great Bernera, a charming wee island to the northern boundary of the parish, and a place I happen to know. I have often experienced the call of the ancients there myself. That’s when I had to go in for my tea.
The point is that these 91 ivory pieces are a big draw. They should be permanently based on Lewis – ideally Bernera, but we would be open to negotiation – because they would be a real help to the fragile economy of these islands.
Back in the mid-1990s, when we had councillors who had a bit of bottle, there was an attempt to have the whole caboodle kept here. Of course, the British Museum and the National Museum of Scotland, kept arguing there would be no proper security here because they were uninsurable and CCTV was still in its early developing stages where, even close-up, all faces captured on video looked like fuzzy snowmen.
People like then-councillor George Lonie, a man of principle if ever there was one who is due to do well if, as I hear, he stands for the Scottish Socialist Party, would quiver with rage at the thought they would have to be handed back. How I remember the despair in his voice as he asked the packed Criterion: “Whit are we gonnae dae? I jist dinnae ken masel’.”
Someone shouted we should kidnap the wee coves. That was probably his councillor colleague Callum Ian MacMillan. He was always full of bright ideas. The suggestion brought the house down. They heard the roars of “We’re right behind youse” and “Let’s dae it the night, lads” as far away as Charles Morrison & Sons Ltd, a supplier of paint, pots and pans.
The raid to liberate the chessmen didn’t happen however. If only George Gawk, who after long deliberation was chosen to lead the expedition, hadn’t been dipping his sheep the following morning, who knows what course history would have taken.
So worried were the museums that the rebellious Leodhasachs would sober up enough to seize the chessmen that the museums flew up a couple of security guards to escort them back down south. That actually happened.
Now the chessmen are in Uig Museum for a final few hours tomorrow. Of course, I would never suggest kidnapping anyone or anything but I just wonder if the intrepid Gawk has a few hours free …
Singer and songwriter Mata Macdonald of Stornoway and Uist
Mata Macdonald, son of George Macdonald of North Uist Estate and previously Stornoway Trust, is in the top 20 in the Amazon charts. Here he is with a song about the lighthouse keepers on Flannan Isle.
Why the Outer Hebrides is just the place to send those looters and rioters
Published Press and Journal 22 August 2011
I love Sally Bercow. There, I’ve said it. What is there not to love about a dame who will take no sugar from nobody? My plan was to stay completely away from Big Brother this time but I know I’m going to rip up the pledge because of the pride of our alley.
She’s the wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons, who is a Tory MP. Not that she lets that wee detail stop her supporting, loudly and publicly, the Labour Party. She wants to be an MP herself too, a Labour one. As if that wasn’t enough to give hubby John a red face, he tried to stop her going in and making an amadan of herself. If you don’t know what that fine Gaelic word means, just think of the MP George Galloway in a catsuit lapping up milk from a bowl. That’s a complete amadan for you.
Did Sally do as her husband, famous for his ferocious tellings-off when MPs misbehave, cave in and do as he and other Tory bigwigs demanded? Did she heck. Which is why I now adore the lady. She doesn’t play by the rules of the rich and powerful. You can see what’s going to happen. Although she’s on the wagon now after admitting she thought nothing of swigging back two bottles of plonk most days, she is always up for telling it as it is. While most of the other housemates will need a few vino collapsos to loosen their tongues, I think Sally will give us some jaw-dropping revelations without benefit of even a wee swally.
Well done to John B for trying to stop her. He never had a chance though.
Well done too to the man of words who got round the 10 Downing Street tosh filter and somehow managed to post a petition on its website calling for English rioters to be shipped to my homeland here in the Hebrides. Deep thinker Richard Miller suggests that for five years, as an alternative to keeping them in clink where they are likely to come in contact with other Little Englanders who will corrupt them even further, they should instead be made to look after our Blackfaces and Cheviots.
Only in the sparkling jewels of the northern seas, where the islanders are on the straight and narrow – the descriptive term for the Pentland Road between Marybank in the east and Callanish and Carloway in the west – looters and common scallywags can be kept safe from the evil influences that have made them what they are. This product of the English education system, the envy of the world but a long time ago, declares that your typical namby-pamby lowlife found in Tottenham, Croydon or Manchester would get such a fright existing without comforts like running water, electricity, decent food, culture and shopping that they would be too petrified to riot or loot ever again.
He’s spot on. How I long for the day when I can make myself a cuppa of Earl Grey without tramping six miles to the well. As for that electricity thingummyjig, I saw on telly that it’s going up in price so we certainly don’t want any of that sort of thing here in our unspoilt islands – unless we generate it ourselves – as the People’s Socialist Republic of Point are going to do out on the Straight and Narrow. Decent food? Oh, for the day we had some of that here. Instead, we have to make do with a bit of locally-caught smoked salmon for breakfast, a rib-tickling rack of Lewis lamb for lunch and perhaps just a slab of Uig-reared venison for dindins – after a starter of a dod of black pudding and several plump, juicy, landed-that-day scallops, of course.
Eeh by gum, life is grim up north and then a bit further north. We make do but we lay awake at nights dreaming of tucking into a squish of jellified, slithery eels for our tea like those lucky Londoners. That’d be fab. The culture vultures of Englandshire may have the West End for the theatres and playhouses where they can watch musicals by various Americans and Lloyd Webber but we get by. We have An Lanntair arts centre and Gaelic singer Iain Mackay. That’ll do us.
Mind you, they would see a difference in petrol prices. These rioters who robbed the filling stations down south could certainly come up and get a taste of their own medicines. Up here, it’s the filling stations that are robbing everybody else. Which reminds me that I noticed something very peculiar when I happened to be at my local Manor filling station the other day having a chinwag. Although the conversation was very interesting, as it always is when bewildered-looking Labour party come and tell me of their woes, it was also a good chance to do some people watching out of the corner of my eye.
Has anyone else noticed how men and women behave differently when they’re getting fuel. It was very obvious to me that there was a particular ritual that men do but which the fairer sex just don’t bother with. It was the same, time after time after time. Maybe it’s because they are too tight to waste a drop of petrol because of the cost or, maybe, it’s because it’s triggered by some other habit.
Look for this yourself next time your at the pumps. When they have finished filling up, gentlemen motorists invariably shake the nozzle.
Miliband
Surprisingly good speech by Ed Miliband on the causes of the riots on now.
Coast is coming to Benbecula
Coast will be in the Dark Island Hotel on August 20th
Shetlanders launch Free Topiary on Facebook
You’ve got to hand it to the Shetlanders. Even before they knew the arrested alleged hacker was Jake Davis, they had set up Free Topiary on Facebook. Well, he’s one of their own even if he did manage to muck up the Serious Crime thingummyjig or whatever the Flying Squad is known as now.
Ach, computers. Nivver dae whit they’re telt, as one Mid Yell fella said to me tonight.
Now everyone knows it was Fox’s brother Jake, the quiet lad from Sunnyside, that got his collar felt by the Met, they have gone cock-a-hoop. Not thon lad wha wis kicked outta the school? Plenty had suspicions although many were wrong. Some came close but no, it’s not Ben Davies.
Phew, Ben. That’s why they were calling you Lottery. It Could Be You. No more though. Poor Jake’s the man.
