John Gibson: Any chance the Mona Lisa is a Jambo?

Published on Tuesday 17 February 2009 09:13

NEVER mind all this endless tittle-tattle over the Titian. That's for arty-farty folk, all la-di-dah and blissfully unaware of these trying times ( I say, Tristram . . . economic downturn? What the devil is that, old chap?).

They've been weeping and wailing down the Walk that leads to Leith for months now. The anguish, the despair, the retailers driven to the wall. All brought on by the trams. Prelude to the nightmares on Princes Street and the Walk turmoil is now happening all over again.

Thanks a bunch, John, for cheering us up! But I'm happy to report that the Mona Lisa has kept smiling throughout, cheering Leith Walkers from her strategic perch at the door of the aptly-named Elm Row pizza place, The Jolly.

A portrait of the lady's been there for most of the restaurant's 30-year existence, though latterly the smile has been partially obliterated by a moustache.

Says proprietor Vito Alongi: "Some wag, possibly after excess vino, stuck the elaborate moustache on her portrait and we've just let it stick.

"The trams upheaval has gone on close to our front door but the Mona doesn't seem to have bothered unduly. What wipes the smile off her face completely is a Hibs scarf wrapped round the portrait. I suspect she's a Jambo."

Club class

Happy Gampers. If I can take you back . . . the club scene in Edinburgh in the Sixties was "vibrant". Well, there was little else to do of an evening.

Among the Old Town haunts were The Gamp, The Place, Bungy's and on the other side of the tracks, Romano's. Crying into my Mateus Rose as I write.

Nostalgia beckons. A Gampers Oldies Night has been arranged for the Masonic Club, Shrub Hill, on February 27 but don't reach under the bed for your blue suedes. All 275 tickets have been snapped up.

The thrash should raise around 1500 for the multiple sclerosis therapy unit at Swanfield, Leith. My informant: Brian Joyce of the city council's emergency services, himself a sentimental old Gamper.

Afterwords . .

. . . composed by Burt Bacharach, at 80 and deliriously happy with his fourth wife: "I'm very lucky so many of the songs I wrote were written at the time they were. A good song is still a good song, it's just harder now to make them exist and last."