With a little help from Sex in the City

TO the cellar born. Perhaps I should try to do an exceptionally poor man's Ronnie Wood, hang about Edinburgh's cocktail bars and try to pick up a slip of a Russian waitress. Just like Ron.

Which brings me intriguingly to Patrick Raguenaud, cellarmaster for Grand Marnier, crucial ingredient of some of the classier cocktails. He'd come over from the cognac-producing Charente region, home to his family since the 17th century, a now annual visit to Tigerlily to preach his liqueur's key properties to assorted bartenders

One of the world's top five "Cognac noses", he admitted that the liqueurs business currently is "flat" but, thanks a lot to Sex In the City, a cocktails culture is growing significantly among 20 and 30-year-olds in style bars.

"Our market typically is steady but we were 2.7 per cent up in 2007, otherwise we never reveal figures.

"The US market has taken a dip but the outlook for our product is positive. Here in George Street it's healthy for us."

Monsieur Ragenaud was struggling with a heavy head cold. "Do something about it," I suggested. "Try a Grand Marnier."

Knocked for six
The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art shuts at five (extended till six for the Festival). Everybody out or you'll be herded into cattle trucks at nearby Haymarket Station and shunted to Murmansk via Linlithgow and Polmont.

You always imagine some boring little squirt, full of his own non-importance, laying down the closing time law. Up to a few weeks ago you had to be out of St Andrew Square Garden by six or risk a public flogging. Fifty lashes, and don't let it happen again.

Aren't these jobsworths aware that it's summer time? That means daylight when, unlike numpties like themselves, people are out and about, wanting to enjoy these amenities.

Okay for Tracey Emin, here at the galleries this month. They can shut the gates at six, then lock her in for an early night in the unmade bed she's brought with her.

Afterwords . .
. . .sobering comment from Gorgeous George Galloway: "I'm glad ten times a day that I don't drink. I see the effect it has on other people. I've never been tempted, I'm a man of iron will."