She needs the stamina for this job!

But May Paton, Fingers’ owner, will be. Also from 2 to 5am for singer/guitarist Blecker. It’s as well May is blessed with remarkable stamina because afternoons the bar’s doing seven different performances of cabaret, comedy and music till 10pm.

She’ll be around through the nights to August 27. Hardly an easy life but, yes sweetheart, somebody’s got to do it.

Thrills ‘n’ spills

He’d have been my man for Prime Minister. A supreme thriller writer of our time, John le Carre, whose Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was adapted for television in seven episodes, has a good feeling about the upcoming film treatment.

Meantime, he is highly sceptical about the spying game in the States. “In Washington DC there are now nearly a million people with security clearance to view top-secret material. What the hell is going on?”

He rants further, about the CIA: “It looks good at the moment because it found Osama bin Laden. But you might reasonably ask yourself why it takes six years to discover where a man’s living when you own Pakistan.”

We could use somebody of le Carre’s calibre in the House. He’d destroy wee Bercow at a stroke. And, for that matter, a practising U-turner in Cameron.

Afterwords . .

. . . Edinburgh is not an ashtray, says the city council slogan. You’d never believe it, seeing the streets littered with fag ends, not to mention the pizza wrappings. You don’t read this in the “Beautiful Capital” brochures.