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It's Elizabeth's shout on her bingo day out
JOHN GIBSON
Edinburgh’s best known columnist
SMARTER than the average Edinburgh city councillor, Elizabeth Maginnis is about to indulge in a cultural pursuit completely foreign to her. Caller at a bingo palace, by jingo!
"I’ve never been in a bingo hall in my life," the councillor for Granton tells me. "So when the Gala Club in West Granton Road asked me to be guest caller there at noon a week on Friday it seemed every bit as much of a chuckle as a challenge."
But I’ve discovered that Cllr Maginnis, chair of Waterfront Edinburgh Ltd, the company planning to create the Forth Riviera, is taking it seriously. She’s picking up bingo lingo on the internet. "And I’ve been inventing my own set of calls, for example: ‘Cute and flirty, number 30’!"
She is stockpiling others, some of which are a tad too risque to repeat in a family newspaper.
• So sad, the latest pic of man-mountain Marlon Brando, in a wheelchair and, 80 come April, struggling to keep under 30 stones.
He was wearing a Jambo scarf, incidentally. What’s this got to do with the price of butter in Paris, you’re asking.
By the way, Hearts-daft Mario Cugini, owner of West End ristorante Bar Roma, vows to shred his season ticket and become a Hibby if his team flits to Murrayfield.
• Hardly surprised to see the Scotsman Hotel’s £17,000 luxury Valentine weekend in its penthouse suite was hard to sell, particularly to foreign visitors, when staff members Michael Ceccato and Niomi Lucjan were pictured marketing its facilities.
Just supposing . . . if you booked into, for argument’s sake, the Washington Post Hotel, would you want to be pampered in its $20,000 suite by Jock McKay or Jeannie McDougall?
• You ask: a) Would you rate Prince Harry something of a free spirit? b) How would you feel if you were a relative of a Lockerbie victim and you read that President Blair’s going to get close up and personal with Gaddafi? c) Did you notice the ceramic expert’s fingernails in the Antiques Roadshow? d) Can you help me with my personal problem?
a) You mean something of a rosy-cheeked nerd, a tearaway? If I can put it this way, if he hasn’t got that free spirit, as portrayed in the tabloids, out of his system before long the idea of him as first reserve for the throne will convert me into a republican. As long as I’m a monarchist the notion of ever bowing and scraping before him is horrendous; b) Sick. But by no means surprised; c) Did, indeed. He’d been picking tatties; d) I must refer you to your shrink. But eating peanut butter sandwiches in bed does it, or used to, for Jack seven-times-a-night Nicholson.
Rotten smile
Why, oh, why . . . hadn’t £15,000-a-week Wolves and former Easter Road hit man Kenny Miller, convicted last week, paid his car insurance? Why won’t ex-Sex Pistol Johnny Lydon, with his smile to run a mile from, see a dentist before the Brit Awards tomorrow? And still wondering why respectable totty Jennie Bond, who once had my respect when she reported on the Royals, ever got involved in the cesspit Celebrity jungle?
• FINALLY: Pensioner Paul Daniels is said to be a runner in the search for the new Dr Who.
Can we expect to see dinky Daniels take off in a tiny Tardis, hopefully on a one-way ticket?
Another telly titbit ... Radio Five’s Nicky Campbell is rumoured to be replacing Kilroy-Silk.
An even larger size in hats for cocky Campbell?
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