John Gibson: Skeletons from my cupboard

Hysterical historians, English by birth, are blustering that Edward Balliol, King of Scots, could well be lying beneath a Doncaster post office.

No he isn’t. He is, rather, prostrate, in a state of repose but desperately in need of a dust down, under a hostelry in Leith’s Great Junction Street. We’re talking 1332-36. A good wee while before Hibernian won the Scottish Cup.

Everybody who was somebody is being unearthed these days. It’s the fashion. Apart from Balliol, known to his mates as Fast Eddie, we’ve got King James I under another car park and Richard III beneath yet another car park, this time in Leicester. They all have a penchant for flash cars, you’ll notice. Probably Mercs or Jags. Pre-Spartacus. The age of the chariots and Charlton Heston had yet to be invented.

Late flash: A reader in the Kirkgate suggests digging in South Leith Parish Church graveyard. I don’t dig it. My great grandad’s lying there. Why disturb him? He’s not doing anybody any harm.

Far from perfect

BLIGHTS our screens afternoons, when only the mad and deluded seem to be watching. How else would you rate Perfection, another of these infernal quiz shows conceived by the BBC, costing the Corporation peanuts.

Was 21 a hit album for Lady Gaga? is a barometer of what the motley crop of contestants, with a studio audience to match.

At the top of the heap, Nick Knowles, the presenter who look and sounded like he’d come straight in from a stall on the Cockney barrows.

Perfection wins the prize here for a wet Wednesday’s magnificent misnomer.