Colin Goes Out In A Blaze Of Glory
I joined the Sardine Set in a packed train from Glasgow to Edinburgh last night, in time to meet fellow radio anorak and former rival Colin Paterson. The plan was to have dinner and catch-up on industry gossip, but it turned into something of a celebration. Colin, who stepped down as the programme controller of Talk 107 a few months ago, has just secured a new job with a commercial music station in Northampton.
So there we were in a candle-lit restaurant in George Street, clinking glasses and working our way through two rib-eye steaks and an enormous basket of chips. Suddenly I had a bit of a hot flush and looked down to see that the greasy serviette under the chips had caught light from the candle. I tried to smother the blaze with my napkin, but found I was just fanning the flames. Soon we had a small inferno in front of us.
Colin, it has to be said, just stared at me throughout this incident. Clearly he was frozen with fear. Either that or he wanted to know if I was flammable. The restaurant staff just looked over at our table with bored expressions. I was about to call 999 when the fire dwindled to an orange glow and a cloud of smoke billowed from the basket.
The waitress was a little quicker to react when, after coffee, Colin deposited a paltry collection of coins on his side plate. This was his idea of a tip, but the waitress - who was Spanish - didn't agree.
"and what ees this?" she asked, pointing at the cash in a way that suggested she was unfamiliar with such small denominations of currency. Red-faced again we had to add more coins to the collection until the waitress was happy enough to remove the plate.
Oh aye, we're a tough lot us radio guys.
