John Gibson: The silvery Tay is now the magnet

Dammit, Dundee’s out to spoil my recurring cheap little joke at its expense. The city by the silvery Tay on a beautiful day of four Js, I’ve liked to jibe . . . . jute, jam, journalism and Jesus, who’d want to live in a place like this!

Now, I hear in disbelief, it has launched a campaign to dramatically change its image. To lure Edinburgh and Glasgow residents to settle there and take advantage of the many delights planned for it by the city council’s visionary, Stan Ure. A city with “vision and aspiration”, he’s touting.

Gives me no joy at all to respond with, “Stan Ure, you’re on a loser.”

Mind you, we can carp when Edinburgh’s grandiose multi-million pound plan to convert the waterfront between Granton and Leith into a poor man’s riviera has been scuppered.

Maybe the Dundee ploy merits second thoughts (just joking).

Afterwords . .

. . . from Marianne Faithfull, currently enjoying the role of curator at the Tate Liverpool: “One of the things that attracted me most to Mick Jagger was how clever he was and how much he had to teach me about recording and making records. Keith Richards taught me about the blues. I got a fantastic education from them. Stuff a little girl from a convent in Reading would never have known.”