Talk of the Town: No prizes for awards team after blunder

ANCIENT Islamic scholars were experts in astronomy and would have known that the Ramadan 2010 will end on September 9 many centuries in advance.

However, such advance scheduling appears to have escaped the team behind this year's Young Minority Ethnic Awards, attended each year by dozens of organisations from the Capital.

Organisers of the event mistakenly scheduled it for last Thursday - in the middle of the holy month when Muslims are discouraged from eating, drinking or partying to excess. The event will now take place in December.

Crossed wires over Lord's friendship with Miliband

PETER Mandelson has been stirring up controversy recently, warning that if Ed Miliband becomes Labour leader he could take the party down an electoral cul-de-sac.

Appearing at the Book Festival on Sunday night, however, Lord Mandelson went out of his way to say how close he was to the younger Miliband brother.

"Ed extended a great hand of friendship to me when I came back into government in 2008," said Mandy. "I saw him more. It was helped by the fact we were neighbours in London, we went for walks. He was having his kid, whom I said should be called Peter."

The links are evidently not that strong - the child's called Daniel.

A treasured adaptation?

IT seems Holywood's recent trend for "updating" classic tales is about to see a new spin put on Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure tale Treasure Island

The Edinburgh author's much-loved work is to be brought up to date by Australian director Peter Cornwell, who has promised it will be a modern - and "hippier" - film.

Cornwell, whose credits include the 2009 horror The Haunting In Connecticut, is set to start filming in 2011 on the new version of the swashbuckling tale, which will play up the relationship between narrator Jim Hawkins and the newly "hip" Long John Silver, in the style of Robert Downey Jr's interpretation of Sherlock Holmes.

We're still in touch . . .

FOR those who still cling to the belief that Edinburgh folk can be a bit less friendly than our neighbours in the West, results from a survey show Edinburgh is officially a touching city.

The study by body language psychologist Geoff Beattie, shows that people in Edinburgh need to touch each other virtually once a minute, with more than half (52 per cent) saying they feel deprived and neglected when "touch starved" for longer than a day. The Power of Touch Study looked at how people touch by hand in work, family and social situations compared with more than 40 years ago.