I hope Pudsey - the real Pudsey - is looking a bit healthier than the one in this photograph. But that was a big day for the bear in Scotland yesterday. £1.6 million pounds raised by the time we all went to bed last night. Pretty impressive.
The BBC Radio Scotland celebrity jailhouse contributed handsomely to that total. More than thirty thousand pounds was secured the the morning inmates phoning their friends and trying to raise bail. The evening prisoners did even better - more than £60K. Richard Cadey's busking tour brought in more than four thousand pounds. Oh and so many other things happening, just too many to list.
Amazing generosity in hard times... enough to bring a tear to a bear's good eye.
Last Sunday our roving reporter Richard Cadey picked up his guitar and embarked on a busking tour of Scotland. There was, however, a snag. He couldn't actually play the guitar and his singing voice could be described, tactfully, as "untrained". Nevertheless he was determined to raise cash for Children in Need and so he taught himself a few chords and learned the words to 'Rockin' All Over The World'.
I caught up with him today - with minders Dave Flynn and Lindsay Gillies - at the Eastgate Shopping Centre in Inverness. They'd arrived in the city last night and went immediately to the Bjornn Again gig at the Iroworks. Apparently the crowd there was generous and enthusiastic especially when told that the sooner Richard raised five hundred pounds then the sooner he could leave town. After that, the money just poured into the collecting buckets.
But today, I arrived on the scene and Richard was clearly so shocked to see me that he broke his plectrum. That's the third one he's broken this week and so I took him round the corner to The Music Shop where he begged for free replacements in the name of Pudsey.
The manager, Diane, gave us a ffew quizzical glances but finally opened up a little plectrum display cabinet and led Richard have his, er, pick.
It's amazing what people will do when you mention that injured bear. I wonder if I can try the same trick at the supermarket tonight.
I've been dumped by Pudsey! Can you believe it? I was all set to take part in tonight's Staff Talent Show at Pacific Quay but now - just hours before curtain-up - I've been told that I'm "no longer required". Apparently they have just too many younger folk willing to show-off and pretend it's all about raising money for Children in Need. Who are they kidding? They're all hoping this will be their big break. Hoping they'll be spotted by an eagle-eyed TV producer. Hoping they'll be offered their own show within a week.
At least, that's what I was hoping.
Of course last week, when BBC Scotland's Head of Drama sent me a flattering e-mail asking me to take part, I feigned reluctance for a good few minutes before finally caving in. I like to play hard to get, but not too hard to get. Easy to get, in fact.
Then I spent the odd hour or twelve practising my act, refining my script, tweaking my jokes and - most of all - rehearsing my song.
Oh yes, It was all set to be one of those Susan Boyle moments. A slightly overweight Scottish person with unconventinal good looks would take to the stage, bewilder the judges with some left-field remarks and then astonish the audience with a singing voice that no one was really expecting.
I had been working on a special version of the Tom Lehrer classic 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park' only I was going to replace the word 'pigeons' with "Pudseys". Topical, you see. Topical and ever so slightly tasteless. Edgy stuff. I even had a little dance to go with it. Nothing fancy, just a few body-pops. I had ruled out belly-dancing in case I took someone's eye out.
But now that song and dance routine will never see the light of day.
I'm not bitter. It's all about what's best for the charity, after all. Tonight I plan to bake some special Pudsey cakes and sell them to my colleagues tomorrow.
I write so often about rail journeys on this blog that people often accuse me of being a train-spotter. Not that there's anything wrong with spotting trains, but I'm not that way inclined. I like show-tunes, though, so you can read into that whatever you like. Why else do you think I keep re-commissioning Dress Circle? Surely I'm allowed one or two indulgences?
Oh I know, I know. It's that kind of remark that keeps getting me into trouble. I can hear the complaints already...
"Hey Fatso, you are running Radio Scotland like it's your own personal train set. Quit it."
And that's just the staff meetings.
But this morning I realised that I do actually own an actual railway company. Well, part of it.
And so do you if you live in the U.K. and pay your taxes.
Yes the East Coast service from Inverness to London has been nationalised. It used to be run by National Express and before that by some other private company. But this morning, when I boarded the 0755 to Kings Cross (changing at Stirling en route to Glasgow) I noticed the coach livery had changed. The East Coast logo was vaguley similar to pseudo-Soviet branding. That's either deliberate, a designer's in-joke or else an indication that the job had to be done in a hurry.
I had some misgivings as I climbed aboard. I had come to like the National Express way of doing things. The coaches were always clean and fresh (in the mornings) and you got free wi-fi even in standard class. What, I wondered, would nationalisation mean? Would they be dusting off those old British Rail sandwiches from the 'seventies? Would the carriages be patrolled by a squad of commissars demanding to check our papers? Would they be executing the posh folk in Business Class?
No. Nothing revolutionary at all. It all seemed the same, really. Apart from the posters telling us that this is "Your Railway" .
So it's true. I own a railway and that's not a wind-up.
There's a Canadian theme to this week's History Zone and I'm warning you now that you had better have the tissues ready.
CBC Presenter, Terry MacLeod is your host for five and a half hours of programmes which explore the links between Scotland and Canada. Included in that is a special edition of CBC's Vinyl Cafe and the story of a Canadian family searching for Scottish links in a quest that takes to the war cemeteries of France.
Lizzy Clark, our Zones supremo, has strong links with Canada herself. They began ten years ago when she took part in a job-swap with a producer at CBC Radio in Winnipeg. That's also when she became aware that Winnipeg had been one of the main destinations for settlers from Kildonan and Selkirk. The city streets have many Scottish place names - Nairn, Douglas, McGregor, MacDougal and so on.
Lizzy tells me that it during that period that she first met Terry MacLeod and it was also when she developed a real taste for single malt whisky.
I've really enjoyed listening to Susan Calman present the MacAulay & Co show this week. She's witty, clever, warm and seems to have a natural talent for radio. I tell you, if I were commissioning programmes on BBC Radio Scotland I would snap her up and offer her a regular gig. Oh, hang on...those nice folk in BBC contracts hate me talking out loud about that kind of stuff. Sorry.
Susan was on top form this morning as she interviewed comedy pal Ed Byrne and got to talking about that new book in which celebrities have written a letter to their sixteen year old selves. Most of the advice was about not worrying about silly stuff like how you look and how you dress (something that has never given me a single fret - obviously) and about how every experience in life can turn out to be useful.
Susan, who qualified to practise law, said she has never regretted that course of study, even though she eventually gave it all up to become a stand-up comedian. She's been on the comedy scene for a good wee while but this past year she seems to be in demand from all sorts of people. I was discussing this with Comedy Unit producer Gus Beattie recently and I suggested that Susan would be on my list of top ten Scottish comedians guaranteed to be even more successful in 2010. Kevin Bridges is another.
I've seen Susan in a live sketch show in Glasgow and she's a brilliant visual perfomer as well as being a great writer and teller of funny stories. Her blogs entries on Facebook are just a treat to read. Recently she came up with the brilliantly funny idea of shortening horror films by ensuring the central characters don't make those cliched stupid mistakes early on in the story. You know, don't explore the old ruined house, don't go back for a handbag etc.
The photograph below shows Susan taking command of BBC Radio Scotland's Topical & Events team. She's the one at the front.
Martin Stepek clearly recalls the moment when he realised he was a bit Polish.
It was at a Scotland-Poland international at Hampden. He'd been invited to the match alongside a group of his father's friends and many of them were old soldiers or sailors.
"A few of them were wearing their military medals, " Martin explains, "and they stood to attention as the Polish national anthem was played. Some had tears in their eyes."
It made Martin think of the families - brothers, sisters, parents - that many of them had left behind during the Second World War. He remembered one man describing how he had buried his dead brother in shallow earth in a Siberian labour camp.
"Until then I had always thought of myself as completely Scottish...but that was the blip."
Martin came in to see me tonight at Pacific Quay and told me how he had spent the last eight years researching his own family history. He produced a huge lever-arch file stuffed with old photographs, letters, maps and postcards...many dating back to the early years of the twentieth century. There were documents too. We tend to think of wartime Europe as a place of chaos and yet the bureaucracy of governments functioned well enough to record the movement of entire populations - even those being sent to their deaths.
The story of Martin's father is remarkably similar to my own father's experiences. As young men, both were imprisoned in Siberia until the Soviet Union sided with the Allies and allowed the Poles to join the free army or navy. Both joined the navy and both settled in Scotland after the war after marrying Scottish girls.
Mister Stepek Snr. started a chain of electrical stores that were well known in Lanarkshire and the east end of Glasgow. Martin now runs the Scottish Family Business Association and lectures on the strengths and weaknesses of such business models.
But our meeting tonight was like encountering a kindred spirit. We discovered we both wish we could speak fluent Polish. We talked about that slight sense of feeling like an 'outsider' when people talk about Scottish ancestry, although both our mothers were of Scots-Irish descent.
One year ago I embarked on this plan to take a photograph of Inverness from exactly the same spot every month. Well, another November has come around and, as you can see, not much has changed although the weather is a lot milder today than it was twelve months ago. Not much colour on the trees and no snow on the hills either.
Luckily we're not experiencing anything like the rain and flooding that they've been enduring along the Moray coast and Aberdeenshire.
I'll take one more photograph next month and then I might (finally) get around to that moving slideshow I promised.
Neil Oliver presents the television series - A History of Scotland - and he's also fronting the new series of audio walks - Walking Through History - which we produce in partnership with the Open University. The walks can be heard on BBC Radio Scotland on Monday morning at 1130 (starting next week) and are also available to download on to your MP3 player.
On Thursday morning our biography series - In The Footsteps.. also returns and each programme will focus on a character that features in the television series.
There's a logic behind all of this and it involves the research we conducted after the first few months of Scotland's History at the start of the year. Viewers and listeners told us that they wanted programmes that offered more information about the events described in the TV series. Previously the radio programmes had offered tales and information about aspects of Scottish history that hadn't been mentioned in the TV programmes.
On Sunday 29th Novemember there's an added treat as we broadcast the History of Scotland concert from the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. The BBC SSO will be performing music from the series and Eddie Reader will be among a great line up of guests. Tickets are now available.
Then on Monday 7th December there will be a special debate on Scottish History in the Investigation slot.
Meanwhile we have other history programmes which aren't part of the official season.
Look out for Billy Kay's programme The Dundee Ripper next Friday morning and the The Spies Who Knew Too Much a week later and in December Susan Morrison explore the history of Edinburgh prostitution in The Ladies of Pleasure.
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