Quintin Jardine's blog

I am very wary of offering opinions on American politics, but I feel compelled to say that I’m sorry to see Rick Perry dropping out. Before my friend Nurmi disowns me for ever, I will explain that I want the Republican candidate to  be the one with the least chance of beating President Obama and that was Perry, by a mile.

Another invitation, this one from Kenneth Roy, one of Scotland’s great journalists, to contribute today’s Diary to his ezine, The Scottish Review, and again, it’s been an honour to accept. Kenneth won’t mind me sharing, so please, click the link and I hope you will return many times thereafter.

http://www.scottishreview.net/QuintinJardine218.shtml

Incidentally, The Scottish Review was once described by the former pop singer, Pat Kane, or ‘Fat Pain’, as I have heard him called within my daughter’s circle, as being for ‘robust older curmudgeons’. All I can say to that gentleman is this, in the immortal words of the late Jim Holton, he who would have haunted the darkest dreams of today’s so-called football hard men, ‘Aye, son. And don’t you forget it!’

Just received an invitation to the inaugural Bloody Scotland, and I have been delighted to accept. Scotland’s inaugural international crime writing festival takes place in Stirling, from September 14 – 16. It’s being driven by the excellent Alex Gray and Jenny Brown, and it promises to be the major event that my country deserves, a chance to showcase its talent in one of fiction’s most popular genres. The programme will be revealed on May 17, so watch this space.

I had been giving serious thought to test-driving an Alfa Romeo Giulietta; very serious thought. Then I saw their latest round of TV ads and realised that they have dropped Uma Thurman as the public face of the model . Since it was she and she alone who’d made me interested in the damn thing,  the President of the company may now feel free to park his motor up his own fundament.

I watched a Rebus last night, one I’d seen before. I knew whodunnit, but I had to confirm what I thought I saw first time, namely the directorial liberty which allowed the entire village of Gullane to be taken out of the Firth of Forth and relocated somewhere south of Tantallon Castle. Also, I wanted to see Ken Stott in a Hibs scarf again. And finally: I needed to try one last time to get my head round the image of Ken snogging Julie Graham. Still can’t. I hate making personal remarks, but here I just can’t stop myself. She has to take evasive action to avoid his nose.

I am not entirely sure why Wikipedia is off the air today, as I’m not familiar with the detail of the US bills to which Jimmy Wales and others have taken exception. However, as someone who does his research on the hoof, it’ll be interesting to see how I get through a day without it. While the first rule remains ‘do not accept its content automatically as fact’, it is nonetheless a massively useful tool.

‘That isn’t writing at all, it’s typing.— Truman Capote’

He should know, he typed enough.

I’m told by a partial witness that the Fred Macaulay Show sounded okay this morning. I always come out of these things with a very hazy recollection of what I’ve said, but I don’t think I’ve offended anybody, and I will listen to realistic offers for my Bullworker. One lady listener phoned in to say I sound just like Chic Murray. (That would probably be spelled Xic in Catalan.) I don’t propose to go into stand-up, but any comparison with the peerless Tall Droll is an honour. Thanks to Anna in Glasgow for setting everything up and thanks also to Pilar and Iker in Girona, for making me feel welcome in their studio.

Awoke this morning to the news that Nick Clegg wants to create a ‘John Lewis economy’. I’m not against the policy proposal, but I find it ******g wonderful that it’s tabled by the leader of a party that has never knowingly undersold itself, or its principles.

First it was Paul Scholes. Then it was Thierry Henry.

Since major events and cataclysms are said to come in threes, I’ve been thinking. It’s less than a year since I hung up my Adidas Sambas and took my name off the Thursday Legends player pool, after a stellar career of something like 35 years. I’m still in shape, I’ve been training with the reserves, so why the hell not?

Either that or I may follow Eric Cantona’s example, and run for President of Scotland.

I am not a major fan of opinion polls. Mostly they are predictable and tell you what you know already. But the YouGov study which indicated that support for Scottish independence is greater in England than in Scotland did take me by surprise . . . not because I assume the English love us, but because most of them don’t actually know or care who we are. Until now, I’ve been dismissive of the view that anything referendum must be carried out across the union as a whole, but now I’m not so sure. At the turn of the century, as the Scottish Parliament  came into being, a very senior Tory politician, told me than in his view, independence would come when the rest of the Union tired of us and kicked us out. He also said that it might happen as soon as 2015. Looking back, that is beginning to sound like a very astute prophesy.

My support for independence comes from the heart, but the campaign is being run by some very gifted political thinkers within the SNP. It will be interesting to see how they read the implications of that YouGov poll and how they react to it.

So farewell to Fat Andy and Peter Pascoe, but most poignantly to their creator, Reginald Hill. I wish I’d met the man I still consider to be the master of the metaphor, so I could tell him how much I enjoy his work, and ask him how he came to learn how to pronounce ‘Dalziel’ correctly. I’m not being flip; I’m a Motherwell guy and I grew up next door to a high school of that very name.

I’ve just seen the latest circulation figures for newspapers on Scotland. They are very scary indeed if you’ve just invested in plant, but only to be expected as more and more people (me among them) choose to read on line rather than get ink on their fingers. The Herald and the Scotsman, supposedly our two flag-carriers, now sell between them a total of 86,000 copies a day, and their Sunday versions total under 80,000. The printed version of the Sunday Herald cannot be long for this world. For me, the saddest fact of all, and least explicable  is this. The Daily Mail, God rot it, is now Scotland’s top-performing paper, the only one with rising sales, year-end to year-end.

On several occasions I’ve had the privilege of being a guest on Fred Macaulay’s excellent morning show on BBC Radio Scotland. Fred’s a smashing bloke, what you see and hear is what he is, and so when I was asked to go on last Wednesday to talk about As Easy as Murder  and I couldn’t, I was gutted. I had two problems; one, I was travelling to Spain that day, and two, I had a cold so bad that if I’d done it on the way to the airport I’d have sounded like Tom Waits. I thought that was that, but they were kind enough to offer me a second date. Not only that they’ve gone to the trouble of booking me into a studio in Girona. So, on Monday morning, I’ll be in a room in Gran Via de Jaume I, between 11:30am and 12 noon, an hour later in Spain. Fred will be on holiday next week, but his stand-in will be Stephen Jardine (no relation). Looking forward to it.

Most of the time, the BBC’s Charlie Stayt is a very polite and considerate interviewer, most of the time being when he isn’t faced by a member of Her Majesty’s Government. When he is, he seems to feel obliged to turn into Jeremy Paxman. It happened again this morning when the Coalition’s Education Secretary, Michael Gove, came in to discuss the Cabinet’s plan to give head teachers more power  to fire under-performing teachers. I don’t agree with this policy, BTW. It’s populist and as such has been given the headline treatment. The way I see it the Government’s aggression can only undermine teacher morale, and therefore will do more harm than good.  That’s the point that Charlie tried to press also, forcefully, until Gove turned on him and asked him, ‘How would you feel if your child was under achieving in school and was not improving as they should?’ He had no counter, only silence that implied a concession on his part. No doubt his next report card will be marked, ‘Must do better’.

Quote of the day:

‘Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.’— Isaac Asimov

Maybe if you’d engaged your brain also, Isaac, more people would have understood you.

Ever heard of Margrethe Alexandrine Þórhildur Ingrid? Me neither until this afternoon, and now I feel very conscious of my insularity. She’s Queen of Denmark and she has been for the last forty years.

Settled into Spain now, where the sun is shining and it doesn’t get properly dark till after 6pm. That’s today; tomorrow, God knows.

A Homer Simpson moment. You go back to my website, click the Bob Skinner button and they’re listed there, in chronological order as requested.

I’m not sure what I enjoyed more in my youth:  reading about girls or reading to them. No, I don’t have a Twitter account but Bob Skinner does. @CCBobS