NO stranger to this column, Alex "Happy" Howden is mentioned again, herewith. I've been his best publicist (unpaid). In return he has fed me with gags and one-liners. That's been his lucrative living, he was the last of the professional club comics in these parts.
And, by Jove, he's raising a titter again. He celebrates his golden wedding with a family gathering at the Norton House Hotel on Sunday.
You turn him on, just like the radio, and predictably find him in every-line-a-laugh mode. "When Freda and I h
ad been married 14 years I remember breaking two mirrors. We've had three children – one of each. Two of our children are actors. Our youngest daughter is normal."
Two are, indeed, actors. Kathryn, recently at the Lyceum, will be involved at the Traverse next week and Lewis has been at the Glasgow Citizens after extensive touring in Macbeth.
"Their mum and dad are extremely proud of them. Make sure you say so," says Happy.
He and Freda have already celebrated their blissful 50 years with a Caribbean cruise and he's been flashing holiday snaps of him sporting his sun hat.
They were married on June 21 in Leith. Quips Happy, who can't help himself: "It was the Longest Day."
Lukewarm gossip from Marina's Cockburn Street tables . . . Halfway House, the pub round the corner and Edinburgh's smallest (smaller, even, than the New Town's Wally Dug?), is still on the market after four months. Rumoured John Ward and wife Christie are asking £350K but realistically would settle for half a million.
"It's a wee gold mine," a regular assures me. Sobering prospect, purchasing a pub these austere days. Come to think of it, who'd build a tramway system these days?
Norrie in the pinkFunster Norrie Rowan, who keeps a life-size cow's backside flatulating outside his nearby hostelry, changed the smoke to pink to put the wind up the ladies in their pink bras as they passed by in that charity Moonwalk for breast cancer. Nice gesture.
Seniors at Marina's were mourning the passing of jazz guitarist Pete Chilver at 83. Latterly a hotelier, Pete to his eternal credit introduced the memorable West End Cafe to Edinburgh in Shandwick Place.
The full article contains 379 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
