Brian Ferguson: Keep your eyes peeled for famous faces

Watch out for Joe Jordan. Picture: Ben Radford/Getty Images

However, Scottish football fans of a certain generation should keep their eyes peeled for one of the country’s most iconic strikers.

Fiona Sagar, right, niece of Joe Jordan, the only Scot to score in three World Cups, has her own one-woman show, Sagar Mega Drive.

London-based Sagar, whose mother hails from Lanarkshire, tells me that “Uncle Joe” is hoping to slip away from his duties as Middlesbrough’s assistant coach to catch her show at Laughing Horse @ The Free Sisters.

| Publicist Gaby Jerrard was already gearing up for a busy August, with a bulging portfolio of clients as weighty as the Fringe programme. But success for Mark Nelson – and his three-year-old daughter, Isla – at the Scottish Comedy Awards sparked a flurry of interest in the comic even before the Fringe had officially started.

With Nelson booked in for an early morning BBC interview, Jerrard set off on a late-night journey to Glasgow – only to find that her hotel opposite Pacific Quay had a booking but no room when she turned up at midnight.

When a promised cab failed to show the following morning from her much further away alternative lodgings, Nelson himself had to ride to the rescue to ensure they both made it to the studios in the nick of time.

| Now for the last word on the Battle of St Andrew Square – on these pages anyway – following the declaration of war from The Stand director Kenny O’Brien against the Edinburgh International Festival and Standard Life over the banishment of the Fringe to make way for the EIF’s official curtain-raiser, Bloom.

As darkness fell on the New Town for the opening of the sound and light show, a few familiar Fringe figures could be spotted emerging from the gloom. It was clear that some of the highly sought-after tickets had fallen into the hands of The Stand team – after I found myself being cornered by a flyerer for the first time this month.