Carolyn goes with the music

Life imitated art as Carolyn joined the protesting crowd. Earlier this week, we noted that neo-punk Tommy MacKay had dedicated a song to Leckie, the title inspired by our man Rab McNeil’s line, "her lips were made for kissing megaphones".

Outside on the the street, Carolyn was living up to the line from Kissing Megaphones:

She belongs on the picket line, not in Parliament.

Meanwhile, Rhona Brankin was spotted sneaking in the side entrance at Parliament. Unusual for the blushing Brankin to keep such a low profile, but she was obviously keen to avoid the protesting nursery nurses at the front of the Hub. They may remember the "stairheid rammy" she had with Carolyn Leckie and Rosie Kane over daring to bring in some of the protesters to the Parliament’s subsidised canteen.

Holyrood hell

HELL is other people, especially if you’re stuck in a lift with four MSPs - and not just any old MSPs, but Margo MacDonald, Tommy Sheridan, John Swinburne and Phil Gallie.

Sartre’s vision of hell from his play No Exit came to pass at the new Parliament building yesterday. It may only have been 15 minutes, but our condolences to civilian John Brown, Glasgow’s former PR, trapped inside with them. Existential angst has nothing on that. But another MSP reckons: "It was not so much like Sartre, or even that film when Joan Collins was stuck in a lift with Oliver Tobias, but more like something from The Last of the Summer Wine."

• THE fishy tale about Labour and Loch Fyne saw David McLetchie hook Jack McConnell at First Minister’s questions. He asked Jack when he would next be meeting the Prime Minister. Jack said he’d no immediate plans, to which Big D replied: "I’m sorry to hear that. I thought he might take him to Loch Fyne for a kipper."

Rector Brown remembered on Labour's 20th anniversary

AULD Reekie’s red roses will be in full bloom at the EICC this evening to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first time Labour won an overall majority on the council.

But will the leader of the "Hole in the Ground" gang, Alex Wood, be there? As group leader, Alex’s cry was: "No opera house but more council houses." Today, though, there is an opera house but no more council houses, with the stock getting turned over to a "trust". Alex also is no longer in the party, and the Tory Leaderene from that time, Christine Richards, is now New Labour.

At tonight’s bash, Bob Cairns and Eric Milligan will receive a presentation to mark their own anniversaries - 30 years as councillors.

Indeed, Milligan celebrates as good a hat-trick as his hero, Willie Bauld, ever accomplished. It’s 40 years since he joined the People’s Party, campaigning for Magnus Williamson in Pentlands at the 1964 general election.

"A key year for Labour was 1972, when Jack Kane became the first Labour Lord Provost in a hung council and Gordon Brown became student rector at Edinburgh University," Eric tells us. "That’s when the seeds were planted."

The Tories had boasted that Edinburgh was the most right-wing city in Britain, having returned a Conservative majority since 1945, if not before time began. However, with the council bridgehead the city swung left when Alistair Darling won Edinburgh Central in 1987.

And when Malcolm Rifkind and Lord James Douglas-Hamilton were awarded the order of the boot by the electorate ten years later, Edinburgh, in Westminster terms, became the Tory-free zone it is today.

Meanwhile, the comrades this evening may reflect that if Jack McConnell approves PR for local government elections, this could be Edinburgh’s last Labour council with an overall majority.

A rival for Johnny Rotten

THE news of a former member of the Sex Pistols playing on the same bill as the Alexander Brothers reminded our resident punk of the time when the Pistols were interviewed on Radio Forth back in 1976.

Johnny Rotten started the interview by demanding to know: "Oo’s Oor Wullie?"

Apparently people in Edinburgh kept commenting on his resemblance to DC Thomson’s pioneer of spiky hair.

• HOW many more laurels can be laid at Kirsty Wark’s feet? The Open University will confer an honorary degree upon her later this month in Glasgow. Pity Kirsty could not be more "open" about the Holyrood Tapes.

Meanwhile, our man Patrick Gaffney has won an accolade from the Law Society of Scotland for his efforts to educate young people about the law, and we feel we should bask in his reflected glory as the launch of the Scottish Schools Law Project was another Diary exclusive. Pat refers modestly to his gong as his "Lawscar".