Help Sitemap Home Skip Navigation Contact Us Disability Statement


John Gibson: This can't be the Archie I know and love

Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image

Published Date: 15 October 2009
CAN it possibly be true? Archie MacPherson consorting with gangsters. The heavy mob. (I'm reading in the papers).. Bundles of notes involved.

I'm picturing him wearing a light blue fedora, in a long, light blue overcoat, chomping on a big fat cigar at the wheel of a light blue limo.

Certainly not the Archie I knew and loved. We go back a long way, to even before his three-year stint a
s Edinburgh Uni rector in the Eighties.

A whole new ball game and the revelations in his autobiography confirm, once and for all, that it is a game of two haufs.

On and on . .
Fingers on buzzers. How often has Chariots of Fire been on TV? Is it 12, 22 or 32 times? And Ice Cold in Alex, The Comancheros, Titanic, Krakatoa East of Java, High Anxiety, Jungle Book, The Glenn Miller Story, The Caine Mutiny, Highlander, The Red Shoes, Conan the Barbarian, Guns at Batasi, etc, etc, etc.

Biding my time
Words stuck in my memory, from novelist of repute Anthony Powell in The Acceptance: "He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful."

Which could well apply to an Edinburgher who is no stranger to the political spectrum. A regular reader, he well knows who I'm talking about. Biding my time till the general election before splashing him here in block caps, again quoting Anthony Powell (no relation to Sandy Powell).

Gord knows
Off the ball? . . . here's wee Gordon Strachan timely talking: "I do believe that if you're not a decent man, you can't be a decent footballer."

I do believe there's every chance he'll come to eat his words. See you later, regurgitator.

Afterwords . .
. . . from Joan Rivers, who's never stuck for them: "I'm an outsider. You don't want to be too close to the people you make fun of. You cannot make a joke about Mrs Obama, then go to the White House. You have to make the choice. Except I'm never invited, so I have no choice."





Page 1 of 1

  • Last Updated: 15 October 2009 9:32 AM
  • Source: Edinburgh Evening News
  • Location: Edinburgh
  • Related Topics: John Gibson
 
1

emperor tomato ketchup,

15/10/2009 12:47:53
Then they fed him some Ready Brek from a plastic spoon, put his straitjacket back on, and wheeled him from the day room to what the orderlies referred to as 'the animal enclosure' - an area so dangerous, even with its inmates bound of torso, that sixteen psychiatrists had needed to form an ad-hoc SWAT team the previous full moon during a particularly bloody riot caused by a mass hysteria so fierce that one inmate actually decapitated himself nd used his own head as a weapon to bash against the riot shield like a pale, crimson-dripping coconut.

But today the Animal Enclosure was quiet. The inmates had been tranquilised up to the eyebrows, and the moon was waning gibbous. The straitjacketed inmates walked like zombies along the three-quarter-mile long corridors, drool hanging like raw albumen from their chins. "John the Baptist" wept quietly in a corner, saying repeatedly "but I AM John the Baptist". A black orderly with a hip South Bronx accent laughed callously as he handed "the Baptist" a Kleenex. "Sure you are, bro. And I'm Joan f@!&ing Rivvers fo' sho'!"

The six foot eight inch tall Pakistani inmate looked at a pack of chewing gum, and laughed a long slow laugh, for tonight he would break free from here, maybe lie low in Dumbidykes, then at sunset swim the estuary and make a new life in Fife.
2

Jaco Pastorius,

15/10/2009 15:27:45
Oh come on. It's a bit like Chaucer, really. Isn't it?

 

Comment on this Story

 

In order to post comments you must Register or Sign In

 
 
 
  

 
 

Featured Advertising



Sister Newspapers:
Press Complaints Commission

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Press Complaints Commission’s Code of Practice. If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the PCC by clicking here.