mostly david ephgrave

The Proclaimers are a band I've developed a soft spot for (like that patch on the top of a baby's head). And of their music, two songs often make my early-morning playlist: 'On Causewayside' and 'There's a Touch'. While the songs are stark opposites, they both ignite the part of me that loves being in a band and make me tempted to call up some friends to see if we can cobble something together. Playing with other musicians is something I've taken for granted when you consider how often my work has put me in that position in the past, and it's such a distant prospect in the current circumstances. Pandemics and live music make unhappy bedfellows after all. I only stumbled across 'On Causewayside' recently while shuffling Proclaimers music on my household's trusty privacy-infringing Amazon Alexa. It stood out to me for several reasons: firstly, because Causewayside is a part of Edinburgh I've stayed in a few times while on the Fringe, wh...

Imagine the awkwardness if one of The Proclaimers voted for Scottish independence and the other one didn’t. It could be the sort of thing to split the twins in twain. Just because they’re identical doesn’t mean they'll have the same opinion on the strengthening of the Scottish Parliament. That would come from nurture, not nature. Political leanings aren’t formed in the womb. It would make an interesting social experiment. You could expose Charlie (ginger, glasses) solely to the rousing speeches of the soon-to-be-ex-First-Minister-of-Scotland Alex Salmond, and Craig (ginger, glasses) to David Cameron’s five-head-tinged smug-fests, then observe the results. One thing’s for certain: the tension thrown up would play havoc with their trademark call and response singing. It might be worth applying the same test on The Krankies. If you can face the whole wife-playing-their-husband's-son thing without being weirded out, that is. If only they’d swapped ‘YES’ for ‘AYE...