John Gibson: If you need a wee, that will cost you 50p

Published on Thursday 12 November 2009 08:34

COST you 50p if you need a wee around Holyrood Palace and you're caught short. But if you're not dining in a restaurant or coffee shop and you're popping in entirely at your convenience, the loo charge is justifiable.

You can be paying for water, soap, lighting, heating, drying (if you've washed your hands). Fair, is it not? Clarinda's, opposite the Palace and imposer of the 50p charge, presumably was named after one of Robert Burns' birds.

What none of the books about the bard tells you is that he had a bladder problem and here's a snippet from one of his lesser-known poems: "Nae matter how ye shake yer peg, the last few draps run doon yer leg."

Well, Rabbie was only human. Ever the working man.

Classy Bassey

Old enough to be your granny but does your granny have legs like Shirley Bassey's? I bet your granny, when you see her dressed to kill at the Christmas party, won't be in a silver-sequinned outfit split to the high thigh. She won't wear it as well as Dame Shirley, belle of a ball in London the other night. Seventy-two and still up for it.

Coffin up $800

Could it happen here? I'm informed by my man in Florida, sizzling by his pool at 90 (highest November temperature in 50 years), that he is seeing on TV Walmart/Asda advertising coffins online at 800 bucks. Undertakers are charging twice as much.

Imagine, you're at check-out and, as an afterthought, you casually pile a coffin on the trolley. You just never know when you'll need one.

Surely sends a shiver through undertakers here. Come to think of it, we've got undertakers galore but we've never had an undertakers strike. Unthinkable in a profession the Co-op seems to have pretty well sewn up. Scant competition. Different if it were a dying trade

Afterwords . .

. . . fetching face of TV's Countryfile Julia Bradbury at 38: "I'm really broody. I don't want to look back on my life and just have a stack of DVDs to show for it. I definitely want to have children but it's a question of finding the right person." Stand in line, chaps.