John Gibson: A fag in the square if you dare

Every breath you take. Only a matter of time before smoking is banned in Princes Street Gardens. New York's clampdown on smoking in its parks and beaches and in its squares is imminent . . .

Get caught lighting up there and you'll be fined 100 dollars.

The scourge of nicotine addicts here inevitably will smite smokers in the gardens and in the likes of St Andrew Square. If you don't die first in the city centre of diesel fume inhalation from our buses and trains.

Fat of the land

To the one in six women who've told researchers in the States, their findings published in the American Journal of Public Heath, they'd rather be blind than obese, I'd want to give them stick.

If only these researchers from Arizona State University would come over to Edinburgh they'd find enough obesity in the raw to astound the Journal's readership.

Step this way

You couldn't make it up. A bunch of gypsies on the travellers' patch in Cardiff have been given 5,000 Lottery loot to learn hip-hop dancing.

The grant will finance specialist tutors to visit the caravans and teach the street dance moves.

Would the Lottery's philanthropists care to have specialists teach me the St Bernard's Waltz? Prospective partners are queuing up already.

Afterwords . .

. . . Bob Dylan keeping us right: "What you gotta understand is that I do something because I feel like doing it. If people can relate to it, that's great. If they can't, that's fine too. But I don't think I'm going to be really understood until maybe a hundred years from now." You should understand that Dylan's real name is Knevovitch. With close chums, responds to "Knevi".