John Gibson: We all had to hang on for Wendy

Hadn’t seen her in yonks. Winsome Wendy Jones, the lone female among six of us, turned up over an hour late. Women believe that late-coming is their prerogative. It isn’t. And it gets on my wick.

We were judges of the Edinburgh Festival Cavalcade, the defunct, much-lamented parade that pulled 200,000 along Princes Street and holding a reunion of judges at the rustic Rusticana in Hanover Street.

The Cavalcade was free, in the days when youngsters and oldies weren’t stung as they are set to be on the Capital’s abominable trams.

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Wendy, a former publicity exec with the Scotsman Publications, claims she originated the Cavalcade. So did one-time Evening Dispatch journalist Iain Crawford and Iain is no longer with us to stake his claim.

Anyway, Duchess Jones re-lived the Cavalcade era as did co-judges Brian Leishman, Roddy Martine, David Todd, Martin Hunt and the redoubtable Gibbo. More about them in this column another day.

Booze blues

Learning all the time. Researchers, who should be ashamed to take the money if they’re paid for it, are delving in detail into a male affliction commonly, often jokingly, known as “brewer’s droop”. It’s been around since the New Testament was at the printers.

Now, though, the Journal of Sexual Medicine (I must place a regular order with my newsagent) says frequent consumption of alcohol can cause lasting damage to men’s sexual performance.

So, lads, try staying home and watching the telly rather than that swift pint at the pub.