John Gibson: They feel Hilary’s tum is hot stuff

She thought she had the stomach for it. Belly dancing on the Royal Mile. And she has, by God!

Hilary Thacker traded her shop, Hilary’s Oriental Bazaar, on George IV Bridge, next to Frankenstein’s nightspot, for another prime location, a Kurdish site at 297 Canongate.

That was three years ago and, in keeping with her all-consuming passion, it’s proving a grind. What she’s selling in the shop seven days is appropriate to her calling . . . erotic bits and pieces. The footfall, though, hardly sustains the shop.

Custom throughout the darker days is sparse.

Says Hilary, 50, soft-spoken in a voice as sensuous as her money-making tum: “I was naive enough to believe that this would be a gold mine. Times when I’ve been really busy are when the ladies who totter the few hundred yards down the Canongate to the church or to the palace in their finery and in ridiculously high heels, come in, shoes in hand, wanting to buy flats. They seek sandals for their blistering feet.”

So hard-luck Hilary is off soon to perform for a month in a ritzy Morocco hotel. Apparently the locals find her belly’s whiter shade of pale exciting. A yummy tummy.

Afterwords . .

. . . The entire team who bring Reporting Scotland to our screens at tea time every night deserve a medal for gallantry. Or, rather, pin the medal on viewers who have to grin and bear it. Judith Ralston, who usually plods through the weather forecast, merits a special award. Jumbling Judith. She should be bloated by now, swallowing most of her words. Indecipherable. Hey Jude, watch the weather specialists in London and learn from there.