Talk of the Town: Joe hails initiative of Aberdeen fans

X FACTOR star Joe McElderry has announced plans for a gig in the city’s Festival Theatre later this year – and will hope to travel home to South Shields without the extra baggage he picked up during his last visit to Scotland.

The 20-year-old has revealed that en route home from a gig at an Aberdeen nightclub he discovered two fans hiding in the boot of his car.

“They seemed pretty chuffed – it was definitely a bold way to get to meet me,” he said.

But can he be so sure the girls had stowed away just to meet their idol? Or could this be a case of two canny Aberdonians trying to save on their bus fare south?

Mark’s rather irritated

ROUND the World cyclist Mark Beaumont is always keen to share the thrill of his travels with his followers.

Newly-returned from an expedition to ocean row through the icy seas of the Arctic, he told Twitter followers it had taken its toll slightly: “Went to Dr earlier who diagnosed skin irritation on my leg by saying ‘I normally only see that on tramps’.”

It’s not all glamour, then.

A website too far

IT may be an iconic structure, but the Forth Road Bridge is being replaced as it cannot cope with the volume of traffic thundering across it every day.

So it was perhaps a touch ironic that the internet home of the bridge appeared to develop a similar problem yesterday.

Visitors to the website www.forthroadbridge.org – and there were a lot of them, perhaps a result of the ongoing high wind caused by Hurricane Katia – were greeted with a very basic version of the site. A statement said: “Due to high levels of demand the FRB website has been temporarily simplified to reduce bandwidth.”

The website was returned to normal after a few hours, but perhaps this is a warning sign – bids for the Forth Replacement Website will no doubt be invited any day now.

Just doing our job..

WITH rescues that often involve a treacherous trip into freezing open waters, it must have been a nice change for lifeboat crewmen to tackle a job closer to home.

The crew of the Kinghorn lifeboat were practising safety exercises by Fisher Row yesterday evening when a rather foolhardy man in a dinghy capsized right in front of them.

The crew, who admitted they had “been in the right place at the right time”, quickly hauled the man out of the water and took him to shore – before issuing some important, if obvious, safety advice.