Contains: QVC White House — Trump pushes product. Plus,pipe down bagpiping robots, Star Wars — may the course be with you, is Debbie Harry scottish? And toupee,or not toupee — the real question is why we’re embarrassed by the things we all face
A version of this appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail on February 14th 2017
WHEN customers aren’t interested in buying something, you drop the brand.
That’s a business decision anyone can understand, unless you are President of the United States.
Donald Trump has taken to Twitter to complain after an American department store dropped his daughter Ivanka’s clothing line. His White House Press secretary called it ‘an attack on the president’.
Is it weird that someone who spent his presidential campaign boasting that he was great at deals now spends most of his time making threats rather than agreements?
Not as weird as being a dad who feels he has to bolster his grown-up daughter’s business, or giving her the accolade of announcing that he’d be happy to date her.
The President’s counsellor, Kellyanne Conway, even did an advert for Ivanka on Fox News, telling viewers: ‘Go buy Ivanka’s stuff.’
She added: ‘I own some of it. I’m going to give a free commercial here: Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.’
This is an interesting development in politics. By interesting, of course, I mean “against the federal law which prohibits government employees from using public office to endorse products”.
So if Trump gets away with this, then watch out for a few more exciting new products potentially in the shops this year:
Stewart Hosie all-purpose cleaner. Is your MP involved in a love triangle that invites you to picture him in his underpants? This cleaner is guaranteed to bleach your mind’s’ eye.
Kezia Dugdale spatula: Ideal for flip-flopping on the Yes/No issue depending on your polls/mood/the weather.
Nicola Sturgeon’s all-new referendum gift set: May contain old and recycled items.
Today is Valentine’s Day. And if you have just found this out, that’s why you’re sleeping in the garage tonight
GLASGOW University is to teach philosophy based on Star Wars — may the course be with you.
But non-believers who struggled to stay alert during Star Wars: The Force Awakens, or who suffered the ridiculously bleak Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, might be more inclined to sign up for the Tao of Han Solo: ‘Let’s blow this thing and go home.’
IF you need further proof of the impending apocalypse, look no farther than a bagpipe-playing robot.
The inventor, John Dingley, has given his mechanical pal a chanter, 3-D printed hands and a repertoire to rival any piper, pictured, which includes Amazing Grace, AC/DC and Star Wars’ Imperial March.
This brings us a step closer to the dystopian cybernetics of The Terminator. I once spent several hours in a very hot hotel room packed with members of the international press, waiting for an interview. During this time, we were entertained by a bagpiper practising in a room next door to such an extent that one man from American TV offered a member of staff £50 to shoot him.
‘You don’t have to kill him,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘Just hit him in a lung.’
DEBBIE Harry, claims her ancestors were from the Mackenzie clan, so One Way Or Another, she’s ‘totally Scottish’.
Of course she is: no Blondie gig is complete without a couple of choruses of Denis Denis (Law), The Tide Is Falkirk High, Eat to the Beath, Heart of Glasgow and the Wee Free favourite, Never on a Sunday Girl.
JANE Park, one of Scotland’s youngest lottery winners, is thinking of suing EuroMillions firm Camelot because someone her age should not be able to win a lifechanging sum.
Sounds like lawyers have agreed to relieve her of a financial burden.
SOME years back, a friend of mine followed a rugby tour around New Zealand for a season of exhibition matches.
Teaming up with another sports pal, they pooled their resources to find accommodation on the North and South Islands.
The South proved tricky but they finally found lodgings for a week in the last bed and breakfast before hitting the Tasman Sea.
Alas, said the landlady, she had only one twin room left. They would have to share.
This was no hardship. They had known each other for years and fell into an easy pattern of watching games by day, dining together, then reading and gossiping in their room until midnight and lights out.
In the morning however, there was another quieter regime, when one man feigned sleep with eyes tight shut until his old pal had scrabbled around on the bedside table for his toupee and taped it on, ready to face the day, and his companion.
Showers were a delicate matter because steam loosened the glue, so if the owner of the hair system scratched his head, his hairpiece went up and down like a pedal bin.
FOR seven days they talked sport, family, and work. Yet ‘do you need help securing that hair sculpture’ never came up.
In an age when Pele advertises Viagra, when celebrities own up to having plastic surgery and a French woman goes ski-ing then discusses incontinence pads during ad breaks, toupees still remain undiscussable.
Jimmy Stewart, Ted Danson, Humphrey Bogart, Frankie Howerd, Burt Reynolds and Terry Wogan all wore them, but never sat down and talked openly about their everlasting hairpieces — and celebrities will do anything.
The notion that this is an embarrassment albatross remains, deepening the great unsolved mystery of how mankind can design a probe to explore alien life on Mars, but cannot create convincing fake hair.
There have been all sorts of unmentionables in history, besides the loss of hair.
Cancer, sexuality, the frustrations (rather than rewards) of childcare, all used to be tricky topics. This Thursday on BBC Two Scotland, Kirsty Wark will spend an hour exploring one of the most closeted subjects — the menopause.
There’s nothing shameful about the menopause, so why am I getting hot flushes even writing about it? Perhaps because it’s become code for a loss of allure and decline.
Never mind the hormonal shifts and insomnia, or that this unique health issue is all but ignored in the workplace. The most debilitating side-effect of the menopause is being regarded as a tottery old crone.
So I hope The Insiders’ Guide to the Menopause is funny and frank, but also helps to reframe how we treat a stage of a woman’s life that is almost entirely written out of our culture, and is barely represented in film or the media.
There should be no shame in this sort of thing. The human body is a complicated, interesting, amazing ecosystem where things crank up and wind down.
It’s a proper wide-scale tragedy that thoughts of ignominy and humiliation prevent anyone from seeking advice, understanding or living a proud and happy life regardless.
If there is shame in anything, it would be that.
LAST week at Glasgow’s King’s Theatre, I was charmed by the flappertapper exuberance of Strictly Come Dancing star Joanne Clifton
We’ve seen her legwork with this year’s Strictly winner, Ore Oduba, but she’s a singing, dancing, dippy delight in the stage version of Thoroughly Modern Millie Loosely based on the 1967 movie starring Julie Andrews, the show is best for audiences who never saw the film, or can’t remember much about it.
Coming off Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, Julie was hotter than steam. So the studio bought up a wisp of a story about a small town girl determined to marry a big time boss in New York, and bulked it up into a fat two-hour blockbuster by adding Mary Tyler Moore as her best gal pal, a lift that only moves to tapdancing feet, the love of a humble paper clip salesman, plus a hotel landlady who kidnaps single women to sell them into slavery.
The stage version is nimbler and, best of all, shorter than the film. If you don’t have a daft streak, steer clear — but if you’re tough enough for fluff, Millie is more honest than the indulgently pretentious La La Land, which pulled in five Baftas at the weekend.
Film industry voters may go gaga over La La’s jazz bore hero but I’d rather have silly Millie.
