John Gibson: Get one of these as the ideal gift

The very dab for your mantelpiece. Or your china cabinet if gran left you one in her will. The Kate and Wills dolls. A foot tall at fifty quid each, now on sale in London at Hamleys, top of the toy shops.

Close as the makers could get to the royal couple as we saw them in their wedding day glad rags. Designed to enthral three-year-olds and over. Replacement, perhaps, for your garden gnome who’s paid his dues?

Ideal as the Christmas present for someone you hate. Hang on, though. My dear old mum would often tell me never to “hate” anybody.

But there’s bound to be somebody out there who deserves one.

All that jazz

Introducing the first personality from the Gibcress Files, an occasional series featuring pictorial blasts from the past.

Up first, one of my favourite jazz musicians. The redoubtable Georgie Fame, seen pictured above bunneted along with the late, great New Orleans entertainer Doc Cheatham and a local groupie at an Edinburgh Jazz Festival.

Fame is due in Scotland soon but his gigs with Bill Wyman’s band exclude Edinburgh. Our loss.

Fun conkered

Spoilsports. The way of the world these days. A children’s conker championship in Essex has had to be called off because the father-and-son organisers hadn’t taken out public liability insurance.

Every parent had to sign a permission form and every youngster participating had to wear gloves and goggles.

The insurers stooped this low to conquer.

Afterwords . .

. . . research scientists in Nevada are saying the secret to a longer life may lie in dog food. You’d have to be barking to believe it.