John Gibson: No thanks to tramsfor Welches

Sleeping with the fishes? No way, Gary Welch is telling me their Queensferry Street fishmongers at the West End has been obliged to close, as we told you in Saturday’s paper, but they are still very much in business.

“My dad started it all in Leith’s Portland Place 56 years ago and it’s still in the family. Still in Great Junction Street, we closed our Morningside branch last September but you’ll also find us in Clerk Street and we are now headquartered in Newhaven, by the harbourside in what used to be Harry Ramsden’s, wholesaling and retailing, supplying hotels and restaurants.

“Sad to be vacating our corner premises at the West End but the traffic system’s chaotic. Trawlers started it for us, now the trams inadvertently are making it impossible for so many of our customers.”

In the bunker

Forget Blackpool for a holiday this year. Stuff Alton Towers. Plump instead for the Wolf’s Lair in eastern Poland. Hitler hung out there between 1941 and 44.

Not much left of his bunker but ruins enough to pull 200,000 tourists annually and, with its 32 acres, available for renting at £90,000 a year. The bed that the Fuhrer shared with the delectable Eva Braun vanished in the eight tonnes of TNT blast.

Fond memories you certainly can’t savour in Blackpool. Settle instead for a soothing schnapps for 90 grand at the bunker.

Afterwords . .

. . . John Hurt is feeling the pain from Downton Abbey: “I just think it’s poxy. I mean, I’m sorry but it is rotten writing and rotten acting.”