Blood, Sweat and Churchill's Kipper
In Edinburgh today. A hot and sticky train journey from Glasgow surrounded by a family of American tourists including a little boy whose name I thought was Earache, but it was just the way his Mom pronounced Eric. Mind you...he was a bit loud. And opposite me sat two women who spent the journey talking about blood poisoning and then, just outside Haymarket, one of them rolled up a sleeve to show the other an infected wound. This, it transpired, was the result of a gardening injury and, upon closer inspection, it turned out there was still a piece of rose thorn stuck under her skin. Naturually the other woman then decided to squeeze the wound to see how painful it would be!
I couldn't wait to get off the train and made my way down to the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ studios at The Tun where I met producer David Stenhouse and congratulated him on the programme he'd made about Winston's Churchill's early career as a politician in Dundee. The programme was presented by Alan Cochrane - himself a native of Dundee -and included a wonderful interview with Cochrane's mother. She, in turn, remembered her own mother talking about Churchill and how the great man's death prompted her to say that she hoped he would "roast in Hell".
The programme - The Maggot in Churchill's Kipper - is well worth hearing on our Listen Again site. As too is Stanley Baxter at 80, in which comedian Arnold Brown talks to the legendary funnyman about his life and career. I loved the story about Baxter's childhood performances in the family kitchen. He would use the clothes pully draped with sheets as a makeshift curtain and it would be raised and lowered between performances.
Back to the office in Glasgow this afternoon and a wonderful e-mail from Catriona Stewart, the Daily Mail reporter who had interviewed me about the ghosts in the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ basement some weeks ago. It turns out Catriona is a student journalist who was on a work placement at the Mail when she interviewed me on the phone and that article has just won her a student newswriter of the year award.
Catriona tells me she was surprised to win. I'm happy to report that she did not say anything about not having a ghost of a chance. I'm sure she'll go far.
