On the plus side, I got some free toilet rolls, and ended up with a short news piece in Convenience Store – the fortnightly for neighbourhood retailers.

Bevis O’Neill was rake-thin, with big kind eyes and a penchant for waistcoats. Never far removed from a pint of lager and a packet of fags...

It was early 1988 and for the first time in my life, I was sitting in a proper restaurant. Furthermore, I was in a right old panic.

Could it be the “comforting texture” and “uplifting flavour” promised on the cans?

The pro-slavery, anti-Catholic artist grabbed all the glory for himself

The 1963 single Puff The Magic Dragon received radio bans for drug references

Last month I turned up at a Glasgow nightclub at 9am on a Wednesday morning, and the place was rammed with chartered accountants... The last time I'd visited the famous Arches club in Glasgow, was a couple of decades ago, when I was slimmer, nimbler and occasionally open to chancing my luck on the dancefloor – invariably with disastrous consequences. But now The Arches is called Platform, and it made an intriguing venue for this year's ICAS Practice Conference. My in-depth re

"We're going back to dust."

I explored the extraordinary surge in sales of Scotch Whisky in Türkiye in recent years – despite years of high taxes and a ban on alcohol.

Issue 11 of IQ has arrived on my desk, again offering rich pickings for curious minds. Highlights include physicist Jim Al-Khalili and...

Even more entertaining was the story behind Fitba, featuring Hibs casuals, pots of stovies, Rod Stewart, and a chain-smoking Scotty dog.

Russell Napier: "People are surprised when things go wrong and oblivious to the fact that these mistakes are made over and over again."

I was tickled pink to collect the PPA Scotland award for Best Member Magazine for IQ, the magazine for Mensa members in the UK & Ireland.

When each story was finished, I slammed a carbon copy through the metal spike on my desk. Health & safety hadn't really caught on in 1988.