Diary

BY Alba

Birthday boy Kenny's dilemma

WHEN you are cracking down on Scotland's binge-drinking culture, you have to be careful to keep up appearances. As a result, Kenny MacAskill, justice secretary and generally decent chap, was confronted by a dilemma as his 50th birthday approached recently. He was planning a big night in with the boys and clearly a six-pack of warm lager and a bottle of Liebfraumilch was not going to suffice.

When he went to the supermarket to stock up, how was he to get it to the car without some chancer snapping him on their mobile phone and flogging the picture to the tabloid press? MacAskill could see the headlines: "So this is how you crack down on binge drinking, Kenny?" or perhaps: "Kenny nae do that."

So Mr Justice sneaked out of a side door of the supermarket to get the carry-out home – and indulged in typically, ahem, moderate birthday celebrations with his friends. Mr Mac, of course, has no problem with sensible drinking and has lanced the boil of his well-publicised session (and brush with the law) ahead of the England-Scotland European Championship play-off game in 2000.

Next time Kenny is faced with such a dilemma, Alba has a suggestion – perhaps like the teenagers who swig their vodka and cider on street corners, he could send someone in to buy his big carry-oot for him.

No bull from this architect

AN ARCHITECT'S sarcastic replies on a planning form have made him a champion for all those exasperated by bureaucracy. John Jessop filled in a "design access statement" for a farm shed with: "The density is like on a farm, the social context a farm in the country, the economic context farming." Under the section Context Analysis, he said: "The use is compatible with a farm because it is a farm building. It is located where it is as it is in the most convenient place, on the farm."

Irony + stereotyping > insult

A SCURRILOUS e-mail doing the rounds offers an alternative modern maths exam for Glasgow: "Wee Davie reckons he'll get £42.50 extra marriage allowance a week if he ties the knot with Fat Alice. Even if he steals the ring, the wedding will cost £587 and he'll have to buy two fish suppers at £3.95 a night, not one. How long before he wishes he'd stayed single?"

Come on, give the guy a bake

"YOU can't beat plagiarism for a good headline," says John Thomson, "especially after some half-baked driver decides to reverse into Gregg's window." He refers to yesterday's diary item that praised Food Manufacture mag for a "Baking and Entering" headline. A sub-editor overheard this as he was working on a story about a car crashing through the window of Gregg's, Glasgow – hence the headline "A case of baking and entering as car ploughs into city shops" on the page after Alba's diary.