NOT a lot of people know this. Michael Caine doesn't, for sure. George IV Bridge, the elevated thoroughfare, built 1829-32, was named after a proper plonker, a waster of the first order.
You're automatically thinking that some of his characteristics have possibly rubbed off on to one or two of today's Royals.
In a poll by English Heritage he has been voted the nation's most useless monarch. The womanising, spendthrift George, born
1762, became king in 1820 and died ten years later of over-indulgence on an outrageous scale.
If you happen to frequently dine, wine or walk the Bridge, nothing to be ashamed of. English Heritage hardly rates up here but instinctively we wonder who of the Edinburgh Town Council of the day suggested "let's name it George IV Bridge".
Buddy warmerBrash, breezy, four-times-married pianist-vocalist Buddy Greco is in town tomorrow night at the Queen's Hall with the Radio 2 Big Band.
He has torn himself away from his club in Cathedral City, California, to launch the Jazzfest. A boy wonder at the keyboard at four, his first pro job was with the Benny Goodman band.
He has made over 60 albums but his biggest hit was a single, his vitality-plus version of The Lady Is a Tramp. Set to raise the Queen's roof tomorrow? Tickets still available at the hall's box office.
Mirren's no saintShe just won't go away, will she? Every other page you turn, there she is in her rosy bikini, Miss Mirren, a 62-year-old picture of sexiness setting the beach on fire in southern Italy's Puglia.
Off I toddled to Silverknowes sands, hoping, against all odds, I might pull a bikini-clad granny. Sad, did you say?
Dame Helen, you're such a tease. Little did you suspect that the entirely spontaneous and unrehearsed holiday snap of you would be plastered all over the place. Polaroid, was it? Anyway, you still have testosterone levels hitting eight on the Richter.
Afterwords . .. . . Joan Collins talking and possibly she had in mind the women who eat for Scotland: "Weight on a person is one of the most ageing and unhealthy things that can happen."
The full article contains 370 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
