Mondays Are Flaming Good In My Book

Not one to take issue with Boomtown Rats but I Do Like Mondays if yesterday was anything to go by. Started off the week and the New Year by securing three new PR clients, one each in Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh. More of them later but looking forward to working with each of them in raising their respective profiles.
I was at lunch with the MD and a director of the new Edinburgh client when I bumped in to an old mate or more accurately he bumped in to me. I moved my chair and said "sorry" and the reply came back: "You will be". It was Charlie McKinlay Esquire, who can safely be described as an Edinburgh character. The long arm of the law had just caught up with Chas, again - he had been stopped for speaking on a mobile phone while driving. He didn't endear himself to the boys in blue when asked if he knew why he had been stopped and replied to the PC: "Because you saw this good looking bloke behind the wheel and you fancied me, so gave me a pull."
Charlie has a bit of a reputation for, shall we say, illuminating the Edinburgh pub scene. Years ago one of his enterprises, Uptowns, went up in flames in a mysterious blaze. But he pointed out the press (me included) always get it wrong and he had sold his East Claremont Street property which housed a gay sauna long before it met a similar fate. Still, he hardly dispels the myth when he introduces himself to strangers as: "Charlies's the name, flames the game".
And then I finished off the evening over a few pints with two hairy arsed ex-detective pals who I hadn't seen for some time. I'm looking forward to the new Life on Mars spin off, Ashes to Ashes, featuring DCI Gene Hunt but to be honest these two guys can recall many Hunt-esque encounters in Edinburgh that are just as funny and unfortunately nowawdays unacceptable in our PC-gone-mad world.
Also much laughter over yesterday's Scotsman splash, which was lying on the bar, reporting how crime in Edinburgh is drastically down after more cops had been put back on the beat. It contained this little gem: "The same officers work the same beats, so they get to know the local business people and residents – as well the main troublemakers." (no shit, Sherlock!)
I've reported often on the shambolic Operation Capital which changed the face of policing in Edinburgh, caused chaos, remomed hundreds of officers from frontline policing and made it nigh impossible to get a police officer to attend a crime scene. And where are the architects of this wonderful new policing strategy which cost Lothian taxpayers millions? Er, former Chief Constable Paddy Tomkins (it was his baby) is now Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland (policing our eight police forces). Meanwhile, former Lothian and Borders Police head of CID, Douglas Watson, who headed up a team of 24 senior officers and spent a year preparing the blueprint for Operation Capital, was last week appointed to the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission which has been set up to investigate complaints against laywers. As one of the ex-cops remarked: "I bet Scotland's legal profession are shitting themselves."
I dread to think what DCI Gene Hunt would make of it all.