SO what do award-winning actresses do between films? If you are Glasgow's Kathleen McDermott, who returns to the telly this month with Irvine Welsh's very funny, but very outrageous, Channel 4 film Wedding Belles, you sing karaoke. Three nights a week she leads the sing-song in Glasgow's karaoke Chinese restaurant Shanghai Shuffle.

"People say, I can't believe it's you' but I love singing and it's better than just sitting in watching the telly," says Kathleen, whose role in Wedding Belles includes spanking a Catholic priest with a table tennis bat.

"Brendan, the actor, and myself are both Catholics so it did feel a bit strange. But he wanted to make it as realistic as possible, so he kept on telling me really to go for it. By the end of the third take his backside was purple."

But smacking backsides with bats will be one request she'll politely decline back at the Shuffle.


Lick that
COMMENTING that it's what he would have wanted, Mark Johnston directs us to the BBC news webpage which states: "The founder of the famous Morelli ice-cream brand in Portstewart, Angelo Morelli, has died. He was 99."

  • Andrew Lederer contacts us from New York, worried about the Oscar given to former presidential candidate Al Gore for his documentary on global warming.

"I hear," says Andrew, "that the Supreme Court has decided to give Al Gore's Oscar to George Bush."


Dented pride
SCOTS author Iain Banks, who has sold all his gas-guzzling cars to help the environment, included in the sale his Land-Rover Defender. Not that Iain used it much for cross-country terrain - it was for going to the supermarket. We read in Arena magazine Iain's explanation: "Because it's tall I could see it in the car park from three miles away. Plus, if it got hit by a shopping trolley, the trolley always came off worse. And anyway, Defenders always look better with dents in them. It's embarrassing if they're all clean and spotless."


Sixes and sevens
TRYING to put a brave face on taking his eight-year-old sons to the Scotland-Italy Six Nations international where Italy trounced Scotland, scoring three converted tries in the first seven minutes, reader David McLaughlin argues: "Well, at least they know their seven times table inside out now."


Healthy glow
OUR story of how often men wash their hands after going to the loo reminds Ken Thomson at Gourock Rotary Club of the party of Argentinian businessmen that they took on a tour of the nuclear power station at Hunterston.

Says Ken: "All the warnings on the tour of the dangers of radiation obviously affected one of the Argentinians - he washed his hands BEFORE going to the toilet."


Priceless
TRIP down memory lane alert. Our story about the supermarket bill coming to £13.14 but the checkout assistant saying he was too young to remember the Battle of Bannockburn, reminds Alison Spring in East Kilbride of her aunt in the sixties giving over her Co-op dividend number of 1066, and the person in the queue behind her commenting: "Oh, aye, that must be an easy one to remember - the Battle of Bannockburn."


Long-term loan
WE don't know if this is a reflection on Glasgow's Partick but reader Dougie Timmins was in a Partick bar raving to a pal about how good Ian Pattison's novel Looking at the Stars was, when his pal suggested that, as Ian lived nearby, perhaps he could get it autographed.

When Dougie replied that wasn't possible as he had borrowed the book from Partick Library, a wee chap standing at the bar beside them decided to butt in by declaring: "If it's that good you're not taking it back to the library are you?"


Future happiness
A HELENSBURGH reader with a crystal ball tells us about the chap, a year from today, going to Downing Street and asking if that is where Prime Minister Tony Blair stays.

The police officer on duty points out to him that, no, Tony Blair is no longer the Prime Minister.

The following day the same chap arrives again and asks the same question.

"I told you yesterday that Mr Blair is no longer the Prime Minister."

"I know, the chap replies, "I just like hearing you say it."