The TWENTIETH Century and Beyond

 

 

1900

FARMER BEHOLDS MERMAID OF RAVISHING BEAUTY

(5 January) While tending to his sheep in remote Sandwood Bay in Sutherland, a local farmer, Alexander Gunn, had an uncanny experience. His friend, MacDonald Robertson, recounted what Gunn had told him:

Gunn’s collie suddenly let out a howl and cringed in terror at his feet. On a ledge, above the tide, a figure was reclining on the rock face. At first he thought it was a seal, then he saw the hair was reddish-yellow, the eyes greenish-blue and the body yellowish and about 7 ft long. To the day Alexander Gunn died in 1944, his story never changed and he maintained that he had seen a mermaid of ravishing beauty.

THE MYSTERY OF THE FLANNAN ISLES

The only inhabitants of the remote Flannan Isles, far out to sea west of Lewis, were the three lighthouse keepers. On Boxing Day 1900 the Northern Lights vessel Hesperus arrived from Oban, having been delayed several days by severe storms. When the relief party landed they could find no sign of any of the three keepers. There were notes for the log up to 15 December, the kitchen was tidy apart from one chair lying on its side, and the lamp was ready to be lit. Two sets of oilskins were missing from their pegs by the door. The door and the gate beyond were both closed.

The official investigation concluded that all three men must have gone to the west landing (where the investigator found considerable damage) to secure some gear. Here, he concluded, they had been overwhelmed by a huge wave breaking over them and sweeping them out to sea. But why would one of the men have gone out without his oilskins in such weather? The mystery has led to much wild speculation. Had one keeper gone mad and murdered the other two? Perhaps a sea serpent had snatched them from the shore? Had foreign spies abducted them? A more prosaic explanation may be that the third keeper, knowing that the west landing was vulnerable to huge breakers, had spotted some massive waves heading that way and rushed out to warn his two companions. But why, in that case, had he taken the time to close the door and the gate?

1902

JUDGES DECRY PROSPECT OF SCOTLAND BEING DOTTED WITH MONUMENTS TO OBSCURE PERSONS

Death of the banker, businessman and philanthropist John Stuart McCaig, the son of a farmer from Lismore. He had prepared for his eventual demise by designing McCaig’s Tower, a circular structure resembling the Colosseum in Rome, with a diameter of 200 metres, to be built on top of a hill overlooking Oban. The intention was to provide a monument to himself and his family, and in the process to give work to local stonemasons through the winter months. In his will McCaig specified precisely what he wanted: on top of the wall of the tower were to be erected giant bronze statues of his mother, father, five brothers and four sisters. These would provide work for Scottish sculptors, who were to base the likenesses on photographs, and where these were unavailable for any of his relatives, the sculptors were to use one of McCaig himself. Construction began in 1897.

After his death, McCaig’s will was challenged by his surviving sibling Catherine, and the Court of Session duly ruled that the Tower was self-advertisement, and was therefore not charitable in purpose. Strangely enough, Catherine’s own will after she died in 1913 specified that the statues of herself, her parents and her siblings should be erected after all. Her will in turn was challenged, and in 1915 the Court of Session considered the case, which was gleefully reported in the Scotsman:

The Lord Justice Clerk said it was a good thing it was limited to statues and not to obelisks such as were set up. These things were monstrous . . . They could be seen fifty miles away. It would be useful if Zeppelins would come and knock them down.

There was some debate as to how to treat the proposed statue of McCaig’s brother Peter, who had died in infancy around three-quarters of a century earlier. To deal with this problem, the Lord Justice Clerk suggested ‘that they could get a prize baby to copy from’. He went on to suggest that ‘Mr McCaig might look splendid in a Roman toga’, to which the Dean of the Faculty responded: ‘Our own statesmen are always enveloped in a toga which they never wore. They would have been taken up for indecent exposure if they had.’ Lord Guthrie added, ‘If the statues were put in, the place would be called “McCaig’s Folly.”’ To which the Lord Justice Clerk replied, ‘It is called that already.’

On 21 January 1915 their lordships delivered their verdict. Lord Salvesen’s views were reported as follows:

The expenditure of this large sum on statues, which was directed apparently from motives of personal and family vanity, would serve no purpose, all the more seeing that the family had virtually become extinct. It could not be of benefit to the public, because the enclosure in which the statues were to be erected was one to which they would have no right of access . . . The prospect of Scotland being dotted with monuments to obscure persons who happened to have amassed a sufficiency of means, and cumbered with trusts for the purpose of maintaining these monuments in all time coming, appeared to his Lordship to be little less than appalling.

For his part, Lord Guthrie opined:

The statues would not, in fact, achieve Miss McCaig’s object of perpetuating an honourable memory. They would turn a respectable and creditable family into a laughing-stock to succeeding generations.

The Lord Justice Clerk agreed, saying ‘that with reference to a remark made by Lord Guthrie, where he spoke of a testator ordering his money to be thrown into the sea, he thought such an order might be more rational than the orders given to the trustees in this case’.

Nevertheless, the Court of Session approved the establishment of the Catherine McCaig Trust, intended to promote the use of the Gaelic language. The Tower itself, devoid of statuary, now encloses a public garden, providing splendid views out towards some of the Inner Hebrides.

1910

POSSIBLE SIGHTING OF THE NUGGLE OFF ORKNEY

While out shooting ducks in Shapinsay Sound off Orkney Mainland, a man saw a sea monster with an 18-foot neck and the head of a horse. This may have been the Nuggle, or Noggelvi, the Orkney and Shetland version of the Celtic Kelpie.

1920

BLUE WHALE PUTREFIES OFF COAST OF LEWIS

(September) A blue whale was found on the shores of Lewis, stuck in some rocks. How the unfortunate beast had found its way this far north from its customary habitat in the Southern Ocean is unclear, but there was a harpoon sticking out of its back. The remains, now in an advanced state of decay, were towed to Bragar Bay, to await the pleasure of His Majesty – all whales being ‘royal fish’. No decision being forthcoming from the powers that be, the villagers found themselves increasingly troubled by the stench, and eventually took the initiative by towing the putrid innards out to sea and harvesting the valuable blubber. The local postmaster created an arch out of the lower jawbone, which still stands. The harpoon, much to everybody’s surprise, suddenly detonated while it was being polished in a garage, and blew a hole in the wall. It was subsequently incorporated as the centrepiece of the jawbone archway.

1921

INVERNESS BECOMES SEAT OF IMPERIAL POWER

(7 September) For the first time ever, the British Cabinet met outside London – in Inverness. This unlikely choice of venue was dictated by the fact that Lloyd George was holidaying in Gairloch at the time, and summoned an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis in Ireland.

1922

EIGHT SUFFER DEATH BY DUCK PASTE

Tragedy struck the Loch Maree Hotel, a place popular with anglers. Eight people – both guests and gillies – died in mysterious circumstances. After an extensive investigation, it was established that all of the victims had on the same day (14 August) eaten duck-paste sandwiches. The duck paste in question turned out to have been contaminated by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, the cause of the disease called botulism (from Latin botulus, ‘sausage’ – sausages being prone to contamination with the microbe in question). Botulism is characterised by progressive failure of the nervous system, leading to loss of control over eye movements, speech, chewing and swallowing, followed by weakness of the limbs, and, in severe cases, respiratory failure. There is no fever, and the patient is aware of what is happening throughout.

1924

GAME SPOILS SPORT

For centuries, the people of Fortingall in Perthshire had celebrated Halloween on the nearby Càrn nam Marbh (‘cairn of the dead’), by tradition the mass grave of locals who had died in the Black Death, but in reality a Bronze Age barrow. In preparation for the festivities the locals would gather large amounts of gorse from the neighbouring hillsides and pile it on top of the barrow. On the night itself, the gorse would be set alight and the villagers would dance around the fire, holding hands. As the flames died down, the young men would dare each other to leap over the smouldering embers. All this came to an end in 1924, when the local gamekeeper, concerned that his birds were being deprived of cover, issued an edict that no more gorse was to be taken from the locality.

1927

SCOTLAND ’S LATTERDAY HERMITS

Johnnie Logie took up residence in a cave on Luce Bay, near the Mull of Galloway. For the next 35 years he kept himself comfortable there with the aid of a wood-burning stove and his own rainwater gathering system. He fed himself on potatoes grown in the seaweed he gathered from the shore. Logie only left his cave on two occasions, both times in need of medical attention. ‘Oh, I wish I was back in ma ain wee cave,’ he told the Sunday Post. A year before his death in 1962 he moved out of his cave to spend his last days with relatives in Ayrshire.

The role of Scotland’s best-known hermit was taken over by a former soldier, Tom Leppard (né Woodbridge), known as the Leopard Man, as more than 99 per cent of his body is covered with tattooed spots. Leppard lived for many years in a simple home-made bothy near Kyleakin on Skye. Every week he would kayak across the strait to do his shopping and collect his pension in Kyle of Lochalsh. Should he require anything at the chemist, the usual question was whether he needed something to clear up his spots. In 2008, at the age of 73, he retired to sheltered housing in Broadford.

1931

ISLANDERS SALVAGE CONDOMS, A PIANO AND TWO CADILLACS

(July) An American ship, the Pennsylvania, got into difficulties in the wild waters of the Pentland Firth, and found itself grounded on rocks off the small island of Stroma. The inhabitants of the island, long skilled in salvage work, set about ‘rescuing’ the ship’s cargo, which included prams, toys, slot-machines, furniture, sewing machines, watches, lingerie, food, tobacco, typewriters, condoms, a piano and two Cadillacs. It wasn’t long before the authorities – in the form of customs officials, policemen, coastguards and the Receiver of Wrecks – descended upon the island. But they were no match for the cunning of the islanders, who hid the booty in peat stacks, lochs and caves – even under the font in the church. The women of the island proved adept at diversionary tactics, rushing around with cloth-wrapped bundles, most of which contained innocuous items such as a bag of potatoes or a baby, but some of which contained genuine booty. One of the former inhabitants of the island, which was finally deserted in the 1960s, justified the actions of the ‘Stroma Pirates’ by explaining that if they had not reached the wreck quickly, all the cargo would have ended up at the bottom of the sea, beyond all hope of salvage.

1932

SHIP GETS INTO TROUBLE ABOVE STRATHPEFFER

An event occurred in the popular spa village of Strathpeffer that was taken to fulfil a troubling prophecy by the Brahan Seer (see 1851): ‘A village with four churches will get another spire, and a ship will come from the sky and moor at it.’ Tradition took the village to be Strathpeffer, close to Brahan, and there was considerable local opposition in the mid-19th century when it was proposed to build a fifth church, many fearing that it would herald the drowning of the village in some deluge. So there was some relief, and even amusement, when in 1932 an airship got into trouble near the village and was obliged to anchor itself by grappling iron to the spire of the new church.

1933

TOURIST INDUSTRY GIVEN MAJOR BOOST

On 22 July 1933 it was reported that a ‘grey monster’, some six feet long, had been seen crossing a road near Loch Ness. No such creature had been reported in the vicinity since St Adamnan, in his life of Columba (7th century), had mentioned an aquatalis bestia living in Loch Ness. However, after the 1933 sighting the beast was being spotted right, left and centre. It was all excellent news for the local hoteliers, hirers of boats, drivers of charabancs, and so on.

1936

‘I OUGHT TO BE KING OF THIS COUNTRY’

Death of Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, adventurer, writer and politician, ardent champion of the underdog and one of the most colourful Scots of his age, who in 1934 had become the first president of the Scottish National Party. Cunninghame Graham, whose name reflects his descent from the Cunningham Earls of Glencairn and the Graham Earls of Menteith, was the eldest son of Major William Cunninghame Bontine of the Renfrew Militia and the Hon. Anne Elizabeth Elphinstone-Fleeming, daughter of Admiral Charles Elphinstone-Fleeming and a Spanish noblewoman, Doña Catalina Paulina Alessandro de Jiménez (the birth took place aboard the admiral’s flagship off the coast of Venezuela). Through the Earls of Menteith, Cunninghame Graham could trace his ancestry back to Robert II, and indeed his friend Andrew Lang insisted that he should be known as Robert IV of Scotland (and Robert I of Great Britain and Ireland). ‘I ought, madam, if I had my rights,’ Cunninghame Graham once informed an acquaintance, ‘to be king of this country.’

1937

BE GOOD TO YOUR GRANNY AND GIVE HER PLENTY OF WHISKY

Death of Alexander Wylie Petrie, a colourful Glasgow character who had adopted the byname ‘the Clincher’, claiming that he possessed one particularly brilliant brain cell, which gave him the power to clinch any argument. A hairdresser by trade, from 1897 until his death Petrie wrote, published and sold his own newspaper, The Glasgow Clincher, in which he campaigned tirelessly against the Glasgow Establishment, and in particular against what he saw as the inefficiency, prodigality, corruption and vulgarity of Glasgow corporation (the council), telling his readers:

You Glasgow people, for years and years you have been sending men into the Town Council who have no brains, but then you are a consistent people. You love your neighbours as yourselves.

His constant vexing of the corporation led them to have him arrested and incarcerated in Woodilee Asylum near Lenzie, where they attempted to have him certified insane. However, Petrie had gained the loyalty of his readers, whom he had shamelessly flattered in the pages of his paper with such pronouncements as:

The Clincher has not the largest circulation in Glasgow, but it has the most intellectual readers in the world.

Outraged at his incarceration at Woodilee, his followers raised a public outcry, and ensured that Petrie was examined by an independent doctor, who issued him with a clean bill of mental health. Thereafter Petrie, resplendent in his customary formal suit, top hat and fulsome white beard, would regale passers-by with the boast that he was the only man in Glasgow to be certified sane. Michael Munro, in the 2002 edition of The Crack: The Best of Glasgow Humour, relates his own father’s memories of the Clincher:

He always had a kindly word for children, and would invariably advise my father and his cronies to ‘be good to your granny and give her plenty of whisky’.

1939

THE LIGHTS HAVE GONE OUT ALL OVER EUROPE

At the first Hogmanay of the Second World War, blackout regulations meant that the citizens of Biggar had to abandon their centuries-old custom of lighting a huge bonfire in the main street of the town. Instead, they gathered round a solitary candle, burning in a tin.

1941

DYNAMITING WHISKY JUDGED CRAZY

(5 February) The SS Politician foundered in the Sound of Barra south of Eriskay. It had been carrying a cargo of 264,000 bottles of whisky to the USA, along with 290,000 ten-shilling notes. The islanders set about salvaging as much as they could, but the officers of HM Customs and Excise were soon on the case, and several men ended up serving prison sentences in Inverness or Peterhead. In the end the authorities blew up the wreck. ‘Dynamiting whisky?’ exclaimed one witness. ‘You wouldn’t think there’d be men in the world so crazy as that!’ The incident was the basis of Compton Mackenzie’s novel Whisky Galore, and the film based upon it.

1942

THE SEEDING OF ANTHRAX ISLAND

Government scientists, fearing that the Germans were about to attack Britain with biological weapons, decided to use Gruinard Island in the far northwest of Scotland to test the effects of anthrax. They herded a flock of sheep into wooden frames, and exploded a bomb, spreading spores of the deadly disease. Within three days the sheep started to die. Subsequent attempts to disinfect the island were unsuccessful, leading experts to conclude that 100 kg of anthrax spores dropped over a city could kill three million people, and leave it uninhabitable ‘for generations’. Eventually, in 1986, a major decontamination project took place, in which the entire island was soaked in formaldehyde and sea water, and in 1990, after extensive testing, the quarantine on the island was lifted.

1946

SCOTLAND’S SECOND NATIONAL DRINK

A.G. Barr & Co. were obliged by new legislation on the labelling of food and drink to change the name of their best-selling soft drink, hitherto called Strachan’s Brew. But as Strachan’s Brew was not brewed, it could no longer be called a brew. So Strachan’s Brew was reincarnated as Irn Bru, the mangled spelling getting round the difficulty. Only two people in the company know the recipe, which is kept in a bank vault. And these two people are never allowed to fly in the same aeroplane. The only iron in Irn Bru is the 0.0002 per cent ferric nitrate listed in the ingredients.

1951

HER GRACE BESTOWS HER FAVOURS

Ian Douglas Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll, married Margaret Whigham, the US-raised daughter of a Scottish millionaire. Celebrated for her good looks, Margaret lost her virginity at the age of 15 to the actor David Niven. She went on to become Debutante of the Year in 1930, before her first marriage in 1933. Before, during and after this first marriage (which ended in 1947) Margaret acquired a reputation for sexual voraciousness, and her friends noted that her appetites in this department increased markedly after she fell 40 feet down a lift shaft while visiting her chiropodist in 1943. Her watchword was, ‘Go to bed early and often.’

Margaret’s marriage to the Duke was not a happy one. He had a taste for the bottle, she for other men. In 1963 he hired a locksmith to break into a locked cupboard in her flat in Mayfair, where he discovered extensive evidence of her infidelities, which he later put before a court during his action for divorce. Among the evidence was a Polaroid photograph of the Duchess in her three-strand pearl necklace fellating a naked man, whose head was not visible. The identity of the Headless Man kept the tabloid press busy for many years, favoured candidates including Duncan Sandys, Minister of Defence at the time, and the film star Douglas Fairbanks Junior. After her divorce, the Duchess fell into debt. She died in penury in 1993.

1954

COW BEHAVES LIKE A BULL IN A CHINA SHOP

In Inverness a cow escaped a livestock auction, ran down the street and into a doorway. Mounting the stairs, it then fell through the floor into the shop below, where it ran amok. In the course of its rampage, it managed to turn on a tap, resulting in a flood. The owner of the shop sued the auction firm, but the judge ruled against the plaintiff, explaining that ‘a gate-crashing, stair-climbing, floor-bursting, tap-turning cow was something sui generis [a unique case] for whose depredations the law affords no remedy unless there was foreknowledge of some such propensities’.

CHILDREN IN GORBALS HUNT VAMPIRE WITH IRON TEETH

(23 September) To the amazement of their elders, hundreds of primary school children flocked to the Southern Necropolis, next door to the Gorbals in Glasgow. A rumour had spread like wildfire that haunting the cemetery was a seven-foot-high vampire with iron teeth who had killed and eaten two small boys. All evening, to a background of smoke and flares from the nearby steelworks, the children milled about, some of them carrying stakes (a necessary implement for dispatching vampires). The children returned to the Necropolis on two successive evenings, and their mass hysteria was matched by those of many grown-ups, who blamed imported American horror comics. The campaign against the latter, led by Gorbals MP Alice Cullen, eventually reached Westminster, and the result was the 1955 Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act. What the campaigners had failed to notice was that the Book of Daniel in the Bible contains a similar – perhaps even more terrifying – creature:

After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.

1955

SMALL ROCK ANNEXED TO THE CROWN

(18 September) A Royal Navy party from HMS Vidal was landed by helicopter on Rockall, a remote rock 240 miles to the west of Harris, and annexed it to the Crown. It appears the MoD wanted to prevent any hostile power from installing spying equipment on the rock, which lay in the path of missiles being test-fired from South Uist. Although the Soviet Union kept its own counsel, the same could not be said of J. Abrach Mackay, an 84-year-old local councillor, who on 7 November 1955 issued a strongly worded objection. ‘My old father, God rest his soul, claimed that island for the Clan of Mackay in 1846,’ he protested, ‘and I now demand that the Admiralty hand it back. It’s no’ theirs.’ Mr Mackay’s objection was brushed aside, and in 1972 the Island of Rockall Act formally incorporated the islet into the UK, specifically into ‘that part known as Scotland’. As interest built in the fishing rights thereabouts, and more crucially in the potential for oil and gas extraction, other countries – Ireland, Iceland and Denmark – questioned whether an uninhabitable rock could be any nation’s sovereign territory. To prove that it was habitable, in 1985 ex-SAS man Tom Maclean lived on the rock from 26 May to 4 July. In 1997 a small party of Greenpeace activists took up temporary residence as a protest against oil exploration in the area, and declared the islet to be the sovereign territory of Waveland.

1957

TREES FELLED TO ALLOW SPACESHIP TO LAND

Peter Caddy, a Harrow-educated member of the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship and a former officer in the catering branch of the RAF, together with his wife Eileen, took over the management of the Cluny Hill Hotel near Forres. It was the height of the Cold War, and the Caddys (according to Peter’s autobiography Perfect Time) opened up discussions with extraterrestrials in order to negotiate an evacuation in case of nuclear apocalypse. The extraterrestrials were prepared to cooperate, and in 1961 they instructed the Caddys to fell an area of trees behind the hotel so that they could land their spaceship safely. The Caddys followed orders, but had failed to obtain the permission of the hotel’s owner. This led to their dismissal. The following year, prompted by Eileen’s ‘inner voice’, they moved into a caravan at Findhorn and were joined by their friend Dorothy Maclean. They started to grow vegetables, and attributed their success in this line of work to Dorothy’s ability to communicate with plants. This claim attracted attention from a wide range of New Agers, and led to the establishment of the Findhorn Foundation.

The local villagers sometimes look askance at their neighbours. After going to a concert put on by the Foundation, the wife of the local pub landlord expressed her unhappiness with the proceedings. ‘At the end they asked you to hug the people on either side of you,’ she complained. ‘It’s not our way.’ Peter Caddy was killed in a car crash in 1994. Eileen died in 2006.

1963

THE KNICKERBOCKER POLITICIAN AND THE ANTI-PANTIES PARTY

Death of Guy Alfred Aldred, an anarcho-communist known as the Knickerbocker Politician owing to his preferred mode of dress (to which were added an Eton collar, a starched shirt front, a black bow tie and a Norfolk jacket). Aldred was born in London in 1886, but moved to Glasgow after the First World War, where he stood in many elections for the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation – the so-called Anti-Panties. True to his principals, he urged people not to vote for him. By and large they took his advice.

1964

WHO’S COUNTING?

Forfar FC beat East Fife five–four. Fans are still awaiting the dream result: East Fife five, Forfar four.

1969

A LITTLE BIT OF THE HEBRIDES GOES TO THE MOON

(20 July) The first men landed on the Moon. With them they carried notepads fireproofed with alginate – a material made from seaweed harvested on Lewis.

1972

JUDGE REQUESTS TO BE TRAMPLED UPON BY GIRLS IN STILETTOS

On a visit to Troon in his role as Chief Reporter to Public Inquiries, Judge David Anderson was charged with approaching two 14-year-old girls in nearby Prestwick and asking them to go to a quiet place with him, where they were to walk over his naked body and subject him to a beating. His defence pointed out that a member of staff at the hotel where he was staying testified that his Bentley had not moved all night, and furthermore that the girls had failed to identify Anderson. In addition, Anderson’s wife testified that the coat he was supposedly wearing on the night in question was at that time at the cleaners. Nevertheless, Anderson was found guilty of a breach of the peace, fined £50, and, after exhausting the appeals process, was in 1974 dismissed from his posts. He himself was adamant that he had been framed by the KGB, who, he claimed, had employed a double to impersonate him. This was in revenge, he said, for his role in northern Norway in 1945 in putting down a revolt by Soviet PoWs held by the German army, a revolt that the West feared might herald an attempted takeover of the country by Stalin. Anderson’s attempts to clear his name were to no avail, and in 2005, ten years after his death, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ruled that his conviction should stand.

In 2010, Lady Judy Steel, wife of the Liberal politician David Steel, shone an additional light on the case, when she described in her autobiography how as a young student in Edinburgh in 1959 she had been accosted by a well-dressed man in a car, who had told her he was ‘something high up at the university’ and that he had a bet on with a female friend, a Wren, as to how much pain he could withstand. Would she accompany him to a local gym and walk over his body in stiletto heels? She declined, but agreed to his request that she say nothing to anyone about the matter. Many years later, as she watched John Hale’s play, The Case of David Anderson QC, she realised with horror that the man who propositioned her must have been Anderson, who at the time had been a law lecturer at Edinburgh University. The man, she remembered, had worn a Glenalmond tie.

1973

THE MORRIS MEN OF DEESIDE

An incomer from south of the Border formed the Banchory Morris Men, the only group of its kind in Scotland. Some years later, facing an alarming decline in numbers, one of the founder members commented, ‘There’s a limit as to how far most Scotsmen are willing to go to make a fool of themselves.’

1977

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF MISS NOYCE’S HOUSE OF PLEASURE

Death of Dora Noyce, Edinburgh’s most famous madam, whose establishment in the New Town’s elegant Danube Street was supposedly patronised by large sections of the city’s Establishment. She herself claimed that business was briskest during the annual General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Dressed in twinset and pearls, she cultivated the persona of a respectable Morningside lady, referring to her brothel as ‘a house of leisure and pleasure’ and ‘a YMCA with extras’. The police were generally tolerant, given the orderliness of her house, but would come calling every now and again. ‘Business or pleasure, officers?’ Miss Noyce would enquire at the door.

1982

A CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES

A banner flown by Scots fans at a football match between Scotland and the Soviet Union carried a slogan summarising the nation’s approach to the Cold War: ‘Alcoholism vs Communism’. The result of the match was a draw.

DUKES OF ARGYLL STILL APPARENTLY EMBARRASSED

The Glasgow-based publisher Wm. Collins launched Massacre: The Story of Glencoe by former Sunday Times Insight journalist Magnus Linklater. The Collins sales representative who called at Inveraray Castle, seat of the Duke of Argyll, was told that the castle’s shop would not be stocking the book. Three hundred years before, Archibald Campbell, 10th Earl (and later 1st Duke) of Argyll, had been colonel-in-chief of the regiment that undertook the massacre. The 10th Earl was also remembered for the conduct of his personal affairs. He was, according to George Lockhart (1673–1731), ‘addicted to a lewd and profligate life’. He died in 1703 after being fatally stabbed during a brawl in a brothel.

GOD WILL HAVE TO PUNISH THE CITY OF GLASGOW, SAYS PASTOR

Among the candidates in the Glasgow Hillhead by-election was Pastor Jack Glass, standing for the ‘Protestant Crusade Against the Papal Visit Party’. Glass gained only 388 votes, the victor being Roy Jenkins of the newly formed Social Democratic Party. Glass had denounced Jenkins as ‘the Herod of Hillhead’ – as Labour Home Secretary in the 1960s Jenkins had overseen the legalisation of abortion. Despite his poor showing, Glass successfully publicised his campaign against the visit to Glasgow of Pope John Paul II. As the Pope landed by helicopter in Bellahouston Park, Glass, together with his friend Dr Ian (‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’) Paisley and their massed acolytes uttered cries of ‘The Beast Is Coming!’, ‘Down with the Pope of Rome!’, ‘Away with the Anti-Christ!’ and so on. Glass and his followers then turned up on the Mound in Edinburgh to picket the popemobile as it drove past. The limousine slowed down as it passed by, so that John Paul could give Glass and his followers a blessing. It was said to be the only time that Glass was ever reduced to silence.

Glass had long been involved in an international campaign against Roman Catholicism and what he regarded as its undercover ‘entry-ist’ arm, the ecumenical movement. In 1966 he and Paisley travelled to Rome to picket the meeting of Dr Michael Ramsay, then Archbishop of Canterbury, and Pope Paul VI. They were detained for some hours by the Italian police, who thought their demonstration was something to do with the England football manager, Sir Alf Ramsey, who was then visiting Rome.

Glass mounted frequent protests against ‘sacrilegious’ shows and performers such as Marilyn Manson and Billy Connolly, describing the latter as a ‘blasphemous buffoon’ for his sketch transposing the Last Supper to the Saracen’s Head in Glasgow’s East End. ‘If the Forth was lava,’ Glass fulminated after a Connolly show in Edinburgh, ‘I would throw him in.’ In response, Connolly picketed Glass’s church, holding a placard reading ‘Jack is a Wee Pastor.’

When Glass was diagnosed with lung cancer, he asserted that it was a personal attack on him by Satan. ‘The Devil would not pay much attention to me,’ he said, ‘if I wasn’t doing something useful for God.’ Shortly before his death in 2004 he announced that he didn’t hate anyone, but, he insisted, ‘Glasgow has turned its back on God. Sadly, God will have to punish it.’ By this time even Dr Paisley had come to think of Glass as ‘a bit of an extremist’.

1983

AN ERROR

Alasdair Gray’s collection Unlikely Stories, Mostly contained an erratum stating: ‘This slip has been inserted by mistake.’

ARTIST WINS BATTLE OF LITTLE SPARTA

The concrete poet and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay had begun creating his celebrated garden at Stonypath, Lanarkshire, in 1966, and had installed in it many works of art, largely classical in inspiration. In 1983 Strathclyde Regional Council informed him that they were increasing his rates, as the garden had been deemed to be an art gallery. On the contrary, Finlay argued, the garden was a temple and should therefore not be subjected to business rates. The Council sent in the bailiffs, but Finlay and his supporters successfully rebuffed the invasion in an encounter that became known as the Battle of Little Sparta.

1988

THATCHER PREACHES SERMON ON THE MOUND

In the Assembly Hall at the top of the Mound in Edinburgh, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher addressed the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Amidst what Ludovic Kennedy described as ‘a weird amalgam of fundamental Conservatism and simplistic Sunday school homilies’, Thatcher asserted that Christianity, like free-market economics, was about choice, and that the social teaching of the Bible could be summed up in the phrase ‘Create wealth.’ Thatcher also quoted St Paul to the effect that ‘If a man shall not work he shall not eat.’ The Assembly members were aghast, and Thatcher’s address became known as ‘the Sermon on the Mound’.

1989

MP CHARGED WITH STEALING EX-MISTRESS’S KNICKERS

Ron Brown, the left-wing Labour MP for Leith, was charged with stealing two pairs of knickers from the flat of his former mistress. In the subsequent trial he was cleared of theft, but found guilty of causing criminal damage. Brown had been suspended from the House of Commons on several occasions, notably after damaging the Mace in 1988, which also led to a three-month withdrawal of the party whip. He was deselected prior to the 1992 election. Brown’s Soviet sympathies prompted the KGB to make contact with him, with a view to cooperation. But the KGB decided it couldn’t make use of him as an agent because they couldn’t understand a word he said, so thick was his accent.

1991

THE SAD DEMISE OF BERNIE THE BULL

The causeway linking the small island of Vatersay to the larger island of Barra was opened to traffic. Prior to this, the farmers of Vatersay had been obliged to encourage their cattle to swim across the channel. In 1986 tragedy struck, when Bernie the prize bull drowned while trying to make the passage, perhaps having already exhausted himself carrying out his duties. Such was the outcry at his death that the government was obliged to act, and construction of the causeway began.

1993

NAVY DEFENDS ISLAND FROM MARAUDING SHEEP

The Orkney island of South Ronaldsay has a unique variety of sheep, one that subsists entirely on seaweed. The sheep are kept on the shore by a wall that runs right round the island, but this was badly damaged by storms in 1993. As the sheep burst through the gaps and rampaged across the fields, the Royal Navy was called in to fill up the breaches, if not with our English dead, then at least with some emergency fencing work.

1995

CRIMINAL CLASSES FIND INNOVATIVE USES FOR LAVATORY PAPER

A minor criminal called James Beattie raided a Kentucky Fried Chicken shop in Main Street, Rutherglen. Before committing the robbery, he had visited a public toilet and torn off yards of lavatory paper, which he wrapped round his head in an attempt to disguise himself. He then entered the shop and threatened the supervisor with a piece of broken glass, but fled when the till would not open. On 10 January 1996 Beattie was sentenced at the Glasgow High Court to 12 years in jail. The press dubbed him ‘the Bog Roll Bandit’.

Another ‘Bog Roll Bandit’ hit the headlines in 2009, when at an identity parade a minor criminal called William Wingate attempted to disguise himself by shaving off his eyebrows and stuffing his cheeks with lavatory paper. Despite this, he was still identified as the man who had undertaken three raids on shops, armed with a knife, in the space of a fortnight. He was sentenced to eight years for robbery and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

BIRTH OF THE DEEP-FRIED MARS BAR

The first deep-fried Mars Bar is said to have been served in a chip shop in Stonehaven. Apparently the local schoolchildren would ask the proprietor to deep-fry a range of foods they brought in, and the deep-fried Mars Bar turned into an instant success. It was reported in the Aberdeen Evening Express, and then picked up by the nationals and the BBC, and within days deep-fried Mars Bars were on sale across the country – and became the epitome of the healthy Scottish diet.

1997

FINGERS POINT TO FAIRIES O’ CARLOPS

The small village of Carlops, on the south side of the Pentland Hills, is celebrated among the scientific community as the birthplace of C. T. R. Wilson (1869–1959), winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize for Physics and inventor of the Wilson cloud chamber. However, the irrational will out. Not only does the village take its name from the Carlin’s Loup (‘witch’s leap’), a sheer rock in the village from which a witch is said to have flown, but in more recent times, in 1997, a mobile-telephone mast near to the village, to which the inhabitants had objected, mysteriously disappeared overnight. The locals were unanimously agreed that it was the ‘Fairies o’ Carlops’ who were to blame.

TORTOISESHELL CAT MISTAKEN FOR BEAST OF BALMORAL

Reports of a black panther roaming the area round Balmoral Castle put the local gamekeepers onto high alert. One of them, believing he had the beast in his sights, let off a shot – and found that he had killed the tortoiseshell cat of the minister of Craithie Kirk, where the Queen worships while staying at her Highland residence.

2000

ANSWER TO A HEADLINE WRITER’S PRAYER

Caledonian Thistle’s decisive victory over Celtic in the Scottish Cup supplied The Sun with the ultimate dream of all headline writers: ‘Super Cally Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious’.

SCOTS STILL IN DANGER IN CITY OF YORK

It was still legal to kill a Scotsman within the city walls of York, but only if he was carrying a bow and arrow. There still supposedly exists a law in Scotland that if someone knocks on your door and asks to use your lavatory, you must allow them to do so (but whether this is actually a law or just traditional good manners is a little vague).

2003

THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND OF TEN EN A

The Bookseller magazine reported the following conversation heard in an Edinburgh bookshop:

American customer: Do you have a map of Ten en a?
Bookseller: Ten en a, sir? Where is that?
American customer: Well, it’s a little island off the west coast of Scotland [IONA].

POTENTIAL FOR WMD DETECTED IN INNER HEBRIDES

As US and UK forces prepared to inflict shock and awe on the people of Iraq, operatives at the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency, while surfing the Web, identified the Bruichladdich distillery on the island of Islay as a potentially lethal threat to world peace. Apparently, with ‘just a small tweak’, its facilities could be converted to the production of chemical weapons. The natives of Islay girded themselves for the expected onslaught.

MAN WALKS LENGTH OF LOCH NESS UNDERWATER

Lloyd Scott spent 12 days walking along the bottom of Loch Ness kitted out in an old-fashioned diver’s suit, with lead boots and round metal helmet fed with air via a tube from the surface. In total his kit weighed 120 lb, and the 26 miles he walked was the equivalent of a marathon. He said the experience had been ‘cold and lonely’, but worth it: he was raising money for children with leukaemia.

2007

DEMISE OF THE MUCH HONOURED THE LAIRD OF BLADNOCH AND LOCHANBARDS

Scotland lost one of its more colourful incomers with the death of His Excellency Colonel Professor Chevalier Helmut Bräundle-Falkensee GCJ, FMA, MEASc, Grand Master of the Order of St Joachim and The Much Honoured the Laird of Bladnoch and Lochanbards. Needless to say His Excellency had a passion for heraldry.

2008

A NEW DANGER: DOOKING FOR APPLES

The traditional Halloween custom of dooking for apples, in which the contestants plunge their heads into a tub of water and attempt to retrieve apples with their teeth, was banned in many primary schools on the grounds of hygiene. The following year one head teacher gave another reason: ‘It’s too big a temptation for the staff just to hold some of the kids’ heads under until they drown.’

2009

BUCKFAST KORMA

The Hamilton Advertiser reported that the local House of Shah takeaway was offering a new dish, Buckfast Korma. Although brewed by monks in Devon, Buckfast Tonic Wine has become particularly popular in the Glasgow area, where it goes by a number of nicknames, including Electric Soup, Commotion Lotion and Wreck-the-Hoose Juice, all alluding to its tendency to increase the aggression of the imbiber. Cal Shah, the proprietor of House of Shah, told the Advertiser, ‘I always noticed that Buckfast was something that certain people like to drink, and because it was so popular within the local area I added it to the ingredients. Some of my customers have even asked for Buckie Bhoona.’ Mr Shah previously owned a takeaway in Motherwell, where one of the dishes on offer was Chicken Lager Tikka.

2012

ARMSTRONG THE GOOD GIRAFFE

A man called Armstrong Baillie hit the headlines after making public appearances as ‘Armstrong the Good Giraffe’. Twice a week Armstrong, an unemployed man from Dundee, would don a giraffe costume (including long neck) made for him by his mother and travel to different parts of Scotland to commit good deeds, such as handing out bananas to runners in the Edinburgh half marathon, clearing litter off Portobello beach, cleaning out cages in cat homes, handing out £10 vouchers to mothers in hospitals, and presenting passers-by with cups of coffee on cold mornings. He funded his acts of charity with the cash he raised by busking with his kazoo and djembe drum, and saved money by hitch-hiking to his destinations. Unfortunately, the length of his neck meant that he was only able to accept lifts from open-topped convertibles. ‘Giraffes are like me,’ he said, ‘as my head is in the clouds but my heart is in the right place.’ Mostly he received a good welcome from people, but once a Kevin Bridges [a Scottish stand-up comedian] lookalike tried to pull his head off in a pub. ‘It might have been the real Kevin Bridges,’ Baillie mused, ‘as I didn’t have my glasses on.’ He got a mixed reaction from dogs, and was once chased by a beagle.

MAN DRESSED AS PENGUIN WINS MORE VOTES THAN LIB DEMS

(May) A candidate styling himself Professor Pongoo (in reality Mike Ferrigan, a climate activist) won more first-preference votes than the Liberal Democrats in Pentland Hills, one of Edinburgh City Council’s wards. Lib Dems and Labour, said Professor Pongoo, may ‘talk the talk’, but, he said, ‘as a penguin I can show them how to walk the walk’.

A UFO OVER BAILLIESTON

(2 December) The pilot and co-pilot of an Airbus A320 approaching Glasgow Airport reported that while flying about 1,200 metres above the Baillieston area of Glasgow they had seen an object ‘loom ahead’ of them, about 100 metres away. The object, which appeared to be blue and yellow in colour and ‘bigger than a balloon’, passed directly underneath the Airbus. It did not show up on the radar of air-traffic control. The incident was reported as a near miss, but investigators were unable to say what the unidentified flying object might have been, having ruled out gliders, hangliders, microlights, weather balloons, and all other known possibilities.

2014

MESSAGES OF DEFIANCE

A Glasgow motorist, disgruntled that his battered old runabout had been wheel-clamped, left a message for the clampers scrawled along the side of the vehicle: ‘Fucking keep it.’

Meanwhile, in Edinburgh, a chip shop was closed down by health inspectors, a notice affixed to the window explaining that this was due to an infestation of mice. An irate customer stuck up his own notice next to the official one. ‘Whae geez a fuck aboot mice!???’ the notice said. ‘I dinnae go tae a chippy tae get healthy, YA C*NTS!’

2015

WE STILL KNOW OUR PLACE

(January) The Earl of Hopetoun, who lives in a vast stately home near Edinburgh, advertised on Gumtree for a live-in help to carry out such tasks as ironing shirts, polishing silver, and carrying heavy suitcases and vases. The advertisement said the position would suit a recent graduate, and that the successful candidate would be expected to remain in post for at least three years. Accommodation, but not food, was offered. There was no mention of a salary.