John Gibson: No sign of Lady T at New Club

If it’s not a Conservative stronghold, maybe “outpost” sounds better. Anyway, I half-expected to see a flag for Lady T flying at half-mast at the New Club.

No sign of one. I was surprised to discover that in her visits to Edinburgh, which were few throughout her reign, she never set foot at 86 Princes Street.

Club secretary Colonel Andrew Campbell, pictured below, was most respectful nonetheless: “I was sad at her passing.” I double-checked in the coffee lounge. An eye-catching portrait of Earl Beatty, when he was Admiral of the Fleet, and, of course, Her Majesty. But no Thatcher.

Colonel Campbell looked in rude health. Wearing in a Sharm el-Sheikh tan he acquired on a three-day break in the Argyll, he revisited the hydro-electric power station at Ben Cruachan where his late father was one of the station’s design team in the mid-Sixties, and sampled some of Scotland’s picturesque B&Bs.

See what Mrs T missed! Mind you, if you can choose your deathbed, you’re as well settling for the Ritz.

A stare case

True or false? Trigger, hallowed horse of singing cowboy Roy Rogers, famously hoofed it up the Caley Hotel’s chintzy main staircase.

On another day you’d perhaps have asked Columbo to check this out, but he was having his raincoat dry-cleaned. Rogers starred in a hundred Westerns and I saw half of those in sunny Leith.