Features
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Terrible thing, obesity. Ask Michelle Mone. The bra tycoon was yesterday measuring up customers at Debenhams in Glasgow - and finding demand soaring for bigger sizes. Is this another sign that Scotland is losing the battle of the bulge?
"I don't think so," a svelte Miss Mone told the Diary. "I think it's all the vitamins we're taking these days."
Up-front angels
Michelle (latest invention: the, ahem, "frontless" bra) is about to unveil a new face for her Ultimo lingerie brand. "It's going to be somebody bigger than all the other Angels put together," said Michelle, referring to the clutch of skinny lassies who model her underwear. So who is it? Surely Dawn French? Perhaps Beth Ditto? Nah! Word has it that Scary Spice has got the job.
Baptism of ire
One last Chuck chuckle. The late Charlton Heston was a
fine, God-fearing fella. But
even his faith was tested when filming biblical epic The Greatest Story Ever Told. Heston played John the Baptist and had to plunge dozens of Christian converts into what was supposed to be the River Jordan. Only it wasn't. It was the Colorado. In November. Some extras fainted. Others provided a pained look mistaken by millions
of cinemagoers as religious ecstasy.
"If the Jordan had been as cold as the Colorado," Chuck later said, "Christianity would never have gotten off the ground."
Crook books
Our news of JK Rowling's scheme to promote book-worming in jails has sparked a fair few suggestions for suitable reading material. Jim Fearon suggests lags should get stuck in to For Whom the Cell Tolls, while John McInally came up with Far from the Stabbing Crowd. Final mentions for today: Bobby Hendrie's
Silence of the Bams and the anonymous contribution of Schindler's Pi**ed.
Credit crunch
Gail Porter has been hit by inflation. The
TV presenter's six-year-old daughter Honey is losing her teeth and, it seems, is finding the Tooth Fairy increasingly generous. "The going rate these days for the first tooth is a Playstation 3," Gail told the Diary. "By the time they've all fallen out, it'll have gone up to a condo."
Labour pain Gail and Honey were out on their tandem yesterday, limbering up for this June's NSPCC Edinburgh Big Bike Ride, which they are going to do for ChildLine Scotland. The effort reminded Gail of how Honey's dad, Dan Hipgrave, had dragged her around Hampstead when she was heavily pregnant - after lacing her lunch with chilli in an effort to get her into labour.
The hike didn't seem to improve her mood. When Honey eventually arrived, Gail was gently advised to breathe by her midwife. Mum's reaction? She punched the midwife in the belly, shouting: "You breathe!"
"I don't think she'd ever encountered a Scottish woman in labour before," said Gail.
Back to school
Good news. Labour is to do something about the parlous state of Scottish education. Remember the party's disgraced spin doctor, the chap who drunkenly called First Minister Salmond the rudest four-letter word in the English language? Well, The Diary hears Matthew Marr hopes to enter teacher training school: apparently he has a long-standing yearning to be a history master, Let's hope he's learned his own lessons.
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