Now there's a real Rocco to build on

ONLY one venue for the re-launch of the Scottish Catholic Observer. It had to be the Balmoral. It's one of Sir Rocco Forte's hotels and he owns the paper. That and the Catholic Herald.

A touch of the closet Rupert Murdochs about Rocco? "Hardly," he told me at the lunchtime reception, "but there's little point running a fine production of a paper with excellent content if you don't have the sales and we've recruited the right team to get the Observer back up and running.

"It's a young team. I'm the only old fogey – we didn't want to leave the paper in the hands of a bunch of old fogeys down south. I became involved by chance.

"There's a lack of moral leadership these days and the paper once a week will endeavour in its small way to help address that."

This would have been no show without Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who managed in his address to inform the gathering, Sir Tom Farmer among the kent faces, that I write my notes on scraps of paper or on the back of a cigarette packet.

In the name of Christ Keith (we enjoy a special relationship), here's a word in your ear. Try to trim five minutes off some of your speeches, they do run on a bit. And you should know by now I don't smoke.

Keith told us the Observer has been his bedtime reading for 60 years. And that he expects the re-launched version will follow Pope Benedict 16th's example and "spread the gospel of salvation".

I couldn't help notice that the Observer's new editor, Liz Leydon, was wearing fishnets. Would Pope Paul approve?

By the way, fitness fanatic Sir Rocco won't be competing in the World Triathlon Championship this year. "Adding hotels to our chain as we do, I'll be too busy." Tanned and bearded, he still managed to bicycle 100 miles from Berlin to Dresden last week.

Afterwords . .
Woody Allen (Allan Stewart Konigsberg to you) owning up: "I haven't read a word regarding myself or my films in over 30 years. I have no idea how they are regarded. Even from a financial point of view, if one does well I'd never know as the money flows to my accountants – and I have no contact with them." Just as well Woody, who seems to have lost the plot totally, doesn't read the reviews. His new Cassandra's Dream, slagged out of sight, has yet to get a kicking in Edinburgh.