SO THERE I was sitting in the bar of the Isle of Benbecula House Hotel at Creagorry and someone said it was about time I changed my name to Michael and be like the rest of the company. The bartender beside me was Yorkshire Michael, and the other bar steward was Mickey from Dublin.

Cameraman is one of them, too. No, not Irish. That’s not what I meant. Silly.

Then Mickey helpfully pointed out that while there may, indeed, be three Michaels, only two of them held that most illustrious of titles, The Best Barmen in the Western Isles.

Turns out they had both nominated each other and then, being nice guys, both awarded the titles to each other. They were joint winners. And as there have still been no challengers for the title, they remain the Two Best Barmen in the Western Isles. Brilliant.

Lots of people put themselves forward for all sorts of things and some of them even get the grand titles they want.

However, most people have to go through some kind of tiresome voting thingummybob to get the big titles.

Like Esther Rantzen and John Smeaton, for example. They want the titles of MP for Luton South and Glasgow North East respectively. Er, why?

Unlike the Premier Pint Pullers of Creagorry, those two need more than each other’s votes to snatch those beauties.

Dear old Esther. I do love her. How we giggled at her funny vegetables and that dog that could pronounce the word sausages better than most people at home.

And John Smeaton seems sound. At his press conference, I thought he was going to tell one reporter he was going to set aboot him.

But Esther and John as MPs? No, no, no. We want them on the box being bonkers – what they are good at. Did you get that? No.

Now I think I’ll do some nominating myself. I nominate Willie Macaulay, of Sketch’s Taxis of Benbecula, as Best Taxi Driver in the Western Isles.

It was Yorkshire Michael who ordered a cab from Sketch’s recently to take him to Margaret, the hairdresser. He did not have much in for his tea and said Willie may have to take him shopping afterwards.

But there was going to be a bit of a wait until Michael got his locks permed.

So off goes Willie, promising to be back in an hour. However, oor Wullie got out his fishing rod and went on to the loch. By the time he was due to pick up Michael, he had hooked three brown trout.

Then, when he did pick up the closely-sheared bartender, Willie presented him with the fish, all skinned and filleted. Not only that, he also gave Michael detailed instructions on how to cook them so they tasted just grand.

Can anyone beat that giant among roadsters, Willie Mac of Sketch’s, for customer service? Has any other knight of island highways and passing places gone above and beyond in helping their passengers? I would be delighted to hear.

I must nominate Cameraman for an award, too. Without a quibble or a murmur, he showed his carefully-hidden caring side when he answered my call and came to soothe my fevered brow.

In the last few days, I have been flattened by what seemed at first like a common cold but turned into something more fluey – a swine of a thing, but probably not swine flu. Just the plain, ordinary, boring, gut-wrenching, head-bursting, eye-smarting, bone-aching, chest-tightening, toilet-troubling variety that we had all but forgotten was still lurking out there.

Mrs X, I regret to report, was no help at all. The sight of my distress must have been too much for the poor thing. She wrapped herself in the most un-sexy bedjacket she could find and lay down on the couch, in a forest of hot-water bottles and tissues, while declaring herself far more ill than I was.

“Scuse me, m’eudail, what about me-ee-ee?” I might as well have been banging my head against a wall.

If these women had any idea what man flu was really like, they would be more sympathetic. Could anything be worse?

So it was Cameraman who was my unlikely angel of mercy. Within seconds, he was racing back from Leurbost to bring us no fewer than three of the latest guaranteed best cures known to medical science.

However, there were mixed results, I am sad to say. I was better for an hour then felt worse and then was sick and then felt better but, just in case it would help, had some more of the supposedly lemon-flavoured concoction that the unshaven angel Cameraman had rushed to my bedside.

Lemon-flavoured? The powder you make it from looks a bit yellowish, but why, if there was any lemon in it, would it have a different taste: like a cross between stewed dung beetles, stale tobacco and Foggy the fisherman’s armpit after a long gutting session?

Not that I have been anywhere near Mr Macdonald’s usually well-fragranced underarms after any such activity, but he is a fisher of men I know well, so hopefully he won’t bash me. It was that different. With added vitamin C, of course.

If I didn’t have tears in my eyes before slugging that back, I sure did afterwards.

It will be all to do with motivation. The theory will be that one swig of that foul brew and your whole body will want to repair itself immediately to avoid any future trauma.

No pain, no gain, though. At least I can type now. So I can tell the world that Cameraman could have another career as a latter-day Florence Nightingale if he wants to jump ship to the NHS.

Yes, despite the sheer agony I suffered as he tried to find somewhere to stick that thermometer, I propose Cameraman as the Best Nursemaid in the Western Isles. But he does have shockingly cold hands.

Question: Who is the odd one out from the following list?

Lord Stevenson, former chairman, HBOS
Andy Hornby, former chief executive, HBOS
Sir Fred Goodwin, former chief executive, RBS
Sir Tom McKillop, former chairman, RBS
John McFall MP, chairman of Treasury select committee
Alister Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer
Sir Terry Wogan, presenter of Radio 2 breakfast show

Answer: Sir Terry Wogan. He is the only one with a banking qualification.

Acknowledgement:  Private Eye

EVER woken up in the middle of the night and found yourself completely sure you were somewhere else entirely? The dream you had was so real that you are still sure that you are there doing whatever you dreamed you were doing? No? Just me, then.

Research has shown that has happened to most people, but very few will admit it – not in front of their partner, anyway.

As my dream the other night concerned nothing more saucy that sitting in a Rolls-Royce in front of a huge house which looked a bit like Lews Castle with a butler who looked a bit like Alex Salmond, I don’t care who knows.

Everyone says that you’ve got to have a dream. Some people have even written songs to say as much. It’s just that some people have fantastic dreams compared to mine. They show up my dreams as pathetic wee visions that never come to pass.

Maybe that is because we learn to be more careful about what we really want. As we get older and wiser, we realise that it is actually really dangerous to dream and wish upon a star. I once closed my eyes really hard and dreamed that I was married to a lassie from Plasterfield.

And just look what happened. Nearly 13 years later, she is upstairs now in the huff because I said I may mention her in the paper this week, but wouldn’t tell her why.

No, I don’t regret that dream. Of course not. Except when she flounces off upstairs muttering that she should have married someone caring, thoughtful and loving when she had the chance. He must have been from the mainland. Can’t have been anyone from Stornoway, that’s for sure.

It was one of these What Happened 25 Years Ago reports that reminded me how people I’ve known had bigger dreams than me.

It was all about a former RAF colleague of mine. Bill Grant, who I think was from Nairn, worked in the Bird Control Unit.

Similar things were happening in our lives back then. His job was to scare the birds away from the end of the runway so the Nimrods could take off and land safely at Kinloss. He had this amazing big pistol to shoot flares over the birds which would then explode with an almighty bang and rattle the windows in nearby Findhorn.

Me, I also used to scare the birds, but it was the ones at the Naafi disco at the weekend. But then maybe that was because I didn’t have an impressive weapon that shoogled anyone’s glazing.

Bill was always going off on these trips here and there and telling us all about the things he wanted to do with his life.

After I got posted down south, it wasn’t long before I heard an item on the radio in which he said he was going to use his RAF payoff to go off on an expedition to the Himalayas.

He hoped to get to the bottom of the legend of the Abominable Snowman.

Crikey. The only legends I was into back then were the fabulous icons of rock’n’roll superstardom. Yep, the incomparable Rolling Stones and the fantastic, or at least slightly amazing, er, Village People. I know, I know, don’t go on about it. Remember I was young. I was from Stornoway. The Young Men’s Christian Association was a big thing here. May still be, but no one is allowed to mention the guys from that particular village.

Bill nearly came a cropper when heavy snowstorms cut off his only route in a mountain pass high up at something like 20,000 feet. But he was found by a sherpa and led to safety just in the nick of time. He was made a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society after that. And you don’t get that just for giving a fine rendition of In the Navy.

I found footage on the internet of Bill taking part with two outrageous liars in a TV game show. Various celebrities of the 1980s were trying to figure out which one of them was rightfully claiming to be a yeti hunter called Bill Grant. Not an everyday job, that one.

Maybe Bill didn’t ever stumble across the fabled hairy creature with the supposedly big feet, although he did make several trips to places like Nepal and Tibet. However, he followed his dream.

I must do that. If I close my eyes really hard, herself might come down and make me a cuppa. No, nothing’s happening.

Wait. I must be in the Himalayas. All I can see is this creature lumbering towards me. It’s carrying something.

It is offering them to me. Good grief, it looks strangely like . . . a mug of tea and a custard cream.

Well done to that august publication The Publican for its informative piece on Carinish Inn being bought by the Free Church (below). And well done to Rev Iver Martin for talking to the aptly-named hack, Roy Beers.

Pub to be converted into place of worship

A church famous for its hardline stance against drinking has bought a pub to bring its parishioners together.

But the Free Church of Scotland is adamant its purchase, through property firm Bruce and Co, has nothing to do with trying to deny anybody the chance of enjoying a drink.

It has acquired the Carinish Inn on the island of North Uist in the Hebrides for around £395,000. The pub will be converted into a church complex serving three different island communities.

A downturn in tourism trade to North Uist, due in part to a dismal summer, is understood to have persuaded owners the Macinnes brothers to put the three-star Visit Scotland-rated pub and restaurant-with-rooms on the market.

The Free Church was keen to acquire a building able to act as the focus for a currently scattered congregation.

Spokesman Rev Iver Martin told The Publican the new church would bring together worshippers currently meeting in small numbers on Berneray, North Uist and Grimsay.

“This is not about the church wanting or trying to close down pubs,” he said. “It’s just the case that this building came on the market and is ideal.”

The church would have preferred a new build but the pub is in a good central site, has full disabled access and a large car-park.

The purchase goes against the trend which has seen former churches being converted to licensed premises – for example in Glasgow’s West End two landmark former churches already play host to major “arts-with-bars” hybrid ventures.

Two pubs in South East England are also facing conversion into places of worship. In October the Skinny Dog in Aylesbury was sold to the Toheed Ul Islam Association to be redeveloped into a mosque, whilst regulars at the Swan on Clapton Common in East London are campaigning against the conversion of the pub into a synagogue by the Stamford Hill Bobov Jewish community.