Talk of the Town: Rowling’s ready to webcast her spell

AS if any youngsters needed an incentive to bury their heads in her enthralling novels, Harry Potter author JK Rowling is taking to the airwaves to promote a book club dedicated to the popular wizard.

The Edinburgh-based author is taking part in a live webcast from her Merchiston home this October and will be answering questions from young fans for the first time in five years.

While JK has moved on from children’s fantasy and into grown-up novels, she was only too happy to spread the word about the Harry Potter Reading Club discussion on October 11.

TOTT expects fans will be on tenterhooks for the event, with the millionaire writer using the last webcast in 2007 to reveal that Professor Dumbledore – Hogwarts’ headmaster – was gay.

A healthy way to heal broken relationships

IT sounds a bit like The Jeremy Kyle Show – only with a surprise trip to a five-star spa instead of a surprise trip to the local maternity unit.

Television production company Nerd has appealed for Capital couples whose relationships have been soured by health problems to come forward to star in a new show. Using doctors and psychologists, the programme will attempt to mend the ailments and the romance.

It promises: “Your partner’s treatment will be paid for as they gain a new-found sense of confidence; both in themselves, and in their relationship.”

So for a free trip to a luxury getaway, place a banana skin on your partner’s freshly cleaned kitchen floor, then e-mail [email protected] or call 0207-043 0080.

You know you want to lead

THE phrase “he’s a born leader” is a quote most armchair sports fans can relate to. On the other hand, legendary American football coach Vince Lombardi insisted: “Leaders are made, not born.”

And it is the latter that Edinburgh Napier University is trying to prove by launching a new Masters course in Entrepreneurial Leadership.

Napier says the business degree has been created to produce leaders to thrive amidst the kind of uncertainty the former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld called “unknown unknowns”.

In other words, students must be comfortable with problems they don’t know exist and know how to deal with things they don’t know have happened. Or something.