Long gone are the days when the school hall was laid out with chairs and we would be filed in, sat down and then the curtains on the stage would open and a projector screen would be revealed.

Ladies, if you’ve got a big fat bum, forget it.

Today...

You might have missed this, but Sir Alex Ferguson retired. I mean, there wasn’t much coverage beyond pages 1-16 of certain newspapers, with a 10-page pull-out supplement.

MANY celebrities live the high life – but while Lana Del Rey was well off the ground, her feet were firmly on it.

Are the wheels beginning to come off David Cameron’s coalition wagon? Did it ever have four wheels in the first place?

supporting the most vulnerable members of society, and helping them to live as full and productive a life as possible, has to be one of the most important roles we play as a community.

Today . . .

Last year, 3000 people – young and old – pedalled on the Scottish Parliament to call for safer roads for everyone.

SHE is set to become the next Moderator of the General Assembly – but that didn’t stop Reverend Lorna Hood having a run-in with the law.

THERE’S a lot of fun poked at Midlothian Council. If it’s not a provost buying an expensive kilt out of council coffers and then declaring not only that he had “eff all to answer for” but that his clothing allowance wasn’t large enough, it’s a demand for the Tartan Army to be considered bigoted against the English, or it’s the bizarre fallings in and out of the SNP group and its leaders currently running the council.

Frosty the showman. A man for all seasons. David Frost, 74, was at his zenith when we first met in Edinburgh and he answered my knock at his door in the George.

THERE is no doubt it has become one of Edinburgh’s biggest eyesores.

SEX will be top of the agenda again at the Church of 
Scotland’s General Assembly, which opens on Saturday. Four years after its first debate on whether or not to accept gay ministers, the question still dominates the Kirk’s deliberations.

Today . . .

‘Lock em up and throw away the keys” . . . not a sentiment I’d experienced even when faced with proof of horrendous crimes.

So, Irvine Welsh can now add successful community campaigner to best-selling author and creator of controversy to his CV.

We’re sorry to hear that Angelina Jolie has the BRCA 1 gene fault. In sharing her story, it is understandable that women will now be asking what this means for them.

In the navy you can sail the seven seas but brace yourself. You’ll be in a navy without an aircraft carrier by 2017. Ship without a sail, so to speak, while they do a bits-and-pieces job on the new Queen Elizabeth at Rosyth.

IT might still be more than two months away, but the Fringe is already looming large - you might not believe this, but I received my first Fringe press release last December. That’s how keen companies are to make their mark - after all, in August more than 3000 shows a day vie to put your bum on their seats.