John Gibson: Time to let Liza live for today

Her all-too-brief UK tour brought her this side of the Border only to Glasgow, when, doubtless, she’d have preferred Edinburgh. Presumably her management set her itinerary.

Liza Minnelli (Liza with a zee) doesn’t get about much now she’s got the bus pass and she’s bored talking about her mother Judy Garland, as notorious as she was illustrious, who died at 47 from drink and pills.

This much she’s saying, though, regrets she has more than a few: “There are hundreds of things I’ve said and done that I wish I hadn’t. But that must be true of everyone. What I try to do now is live today in a way that won’t give me regrets tomorrow.”

Too often now for Liza when the nights are bitter, the stars have lost their glitter. Edinburghers would have paid fortune to see her at the Playhouse.

Yelping hand

Yelp for heroes. Like Bear Grylls, the great adventurer. Tailor-made for telly. After mingling with the SAS, he keeps reminding us, he is “fearless”.

Well, not quite. One is germs, the other TV crews. He reportedly is admitting to two. Shouldn’t that be three? In the person of Harry Hill.

Harry in his show “exposed” Grylls in a clip from Born Survivor, supposedly at large in the wilds when he was holed up in the comfort of a hotel.

In a Sunday paper interview Grylls, pictured all menace with a hunting knife, couldn’t wriggle out of that episode. He’s the last adventurer I’d want as companion/protector in the great outdoors.

Afterwords . .

... Sixty-five. Is that all he is? Tony Robinson, the wee man who raised archaeology on television to an unprecedented level of boredom, hit 65. Turgid telly. I much prefer Mrs Robinson, as did Dustin Hoffman, it should go without dribbling.