John Gibson: We’ve got a horror story for him here

This dead gallus guy has to be winding me up. Sends me a copy of his latest novel with two trams on the jacket. To further niggle me, both are Glasgow “caurs”.

Staying On Past the Terminus is Weegie Robert Douglas’ new yarn, again steeped in his native city. “Pure dead brilliant,” I slavered over the first in his trilogy on Sixties tenement life in the so-called mean city. Long retired, he was a latecomer to the literary jungle. So aromatic, this book got right up my nose.

Douglas must be well aware, as is everybody in the western world, of the capital city’s trams. Catch a ghost train from Queen Street, I’m urging him, and get here for the bones of your next book. Essentially a horror story. Or a comedy. Suit yourself.

All in control

All smiles. A chance meet on Monday with the Tattoo’s new boss, Brigadier David Allfrey, on his own Market Street patch, down the hill from the Esplanade, saw him chuffed with this year’s show. So far.

“More rain than we’d have wanted but, yes, it’s been good and we’re thinking 2012. We had our own creative conference about that at the weekend. We’ve hit on next year’s theme but nothing to reveal yet.”

Extensive globe-trotting ahead, autumn and spring. Got the passport, had the jags. “It’ll be totally different,” the Brig promised. Tattooists will expect nothing less.

Afterwords . .

. . . Jeremy Irons steeling himself to declare: “There are too many people in power with too little to do. So they churn out laws to justify their jobs. I hope it’s a rash that will wear itself out.” Not in our lifetime, Jeremy.