At a meeting of Glasgow City Council yesterday, a large barrel full of holes was brought out of a cupboard, and councillors began scraping at the bottom of its insides to try and find famous people connected with their city.
After hours they managed to find Sir Alex Ferguson, a very average Rangers player, but the minute he left Glasgow his relief at leaving the place turned him into one of the world's greatest football managers, firstly at Aberdeen and then at Manchester United.
Then out came architect Charles Rennie MacIntosh, who designed some large buildings, as architects do, but after that the councillors really had to get scraping hard to find even a third Glaswegian celebrity.
When they finally had to give up, Councillor X. Penses-Fiddler, Labour, suddenly shouted 'Look! Right at the bottom! There's an old man with a beard, can't make anything else out.' 'Well, we'll just have to make do with the old duffer', Council Leader I.R.A. Fundraiser said, 'let's see, how can we make him connected to Glasgow?'
'We could say he's Jesus, as people don't really know where Jesus was exactly from - could have been Nazareth or Caesarea, then again could have been Partick.' 'Nah, we've too many problems with religion in this city already', Penses-Fiddler muttered, 'how about ... Viking legend Lief Erikson?'
'Don't be daft, he was from Norway or somewhere, not Scotland, ya numpty!' 'OK ... got it! Let's take a British legend that has an unknown background, and is probably fictional, then say he's from here! Nobody can prove he wasn't.'
'Like who?' 'King Arthur.' 'If he had anything to do with Scotland it would have been at Edinburgh. People have been living there for thousands of years, and Arthur's Seat is right in the city centre.'
'OK', X. Penses-Fiddler said, 'someone connected to King Arthur, but who could have been a mysterious sort of travelling type ... Sir Lancelot!' 'Lancelot was Arthur's brother, eejit.'
'How about the wizard Merlin, then?' 'Brilliant! He might have come from Glasgow, as he might have come from Wales or Gloucester, or Macclesfield. Even though Glasgow was still a village in the 1700s.'
And so the Glasgow Tourist Guide - the smallest book in the world - will give prominence to Sir Alex Ferguson, Charles Rennie MacIntosh, Merlin, and a statue of a man with a traffic cone on his head.
Oh, and one of a third-rate Labour politician, who was (surprise, surprise) caught fiddling his expenses, and whose statue was vandalised within hours of being erected. And of course the book will highlight Glasgow's finest feature - the M8 motorway to Edinburgh.
'GLASGOW - IT'S ONLY 43 MILES AWAY FROM EDINBURGH!'
