Miami Withnail (Belle)

It wasn’t completely clear whether my new project, being filmed in Miami in a beautiful, bright colour palette, was a documentary or not.

I was following two young American strangers as they took too many drugs and repeatedly failed to show up for work. At one point, they were both so impaired that, as they walked down the street, they simply fell out of their trousers.

This was not their lowest point, though. In the middle of the afternoon, they broke into a mansion and walked into the swimming pool. Here they were joined by a passing bear, and the three of them hugged quietly.

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Abduction on Teesside (Rousse)

I could tell that the police concluded that I knew a little too much about the abduction of the girl from Teesside High School. If I were an innocent bystander, I should not have known the name of the victim.

However, my cast-iron alibis were such that the detective knew for certain that I couldn’t have been involved in the crime. Now I just had to keep to myself that my sister S was the source of my privileged information.

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A timber frame house on the Isle of Skye (Rousse)

TPR was now the proud owner of a beautiful new timber frame house built on a remote coastal spot on the Isle of Skye. I loved the floor to ceiling windows for the fabulous views that they gave out to sea. I also admired a corner of the kitchen that had been decked out in yellow, and decorated with yellow and white ceramic ornaments. This had to be my work.

Less attractive was the house’s white plastic front door. It appeared to have been used by all and sundry to measure and record the heights of each and every visitor to the building.

TPR was also annoyed that a scruffy bearded pipe smoker had taken up residence in his otherwise tidy sitting room.

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A disputed TV quiz champion and Boris Johnson the clown (Rousse)

I was excited that the winner of a top television general knowledge quiz show was keen to meet me – even though I had heard the rumours that he was a cheat.

I was less impressed when Boris Johnson – dressed a clown outfit – appeared next in line to shake my hand.

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Book group dinner ideas (Rousse)

I opened the fridge door looking seeking inspiration for the meal that my book group pals expected me to serve within the hour. Whatever could I concoct from a few parched slices of corned beef, some limp lettuce, and a box of tomatoes on the turn?

And how soon could I prepare the plates? DM was particularly keen to eat quickly because she needed to head up to town for a series of Edinburgh Fringe performances that evening.

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Driving blind (Rousse)

Suddenly everything went completely black. I couldn’t see SM in the passenger seat to the right of me, my hands on the steering wheel, nor – most frightening of all – the road ahead.

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A wet campus nude (Rousse)

While TPR found a parking space for our red Peugeot 205 near the World’s End pub in Edinburgh’s Old Town, I retreated to the Merchiston campus of Edinburgh Napier University.

On arrival in the department, I stripped off all my soaked cycling gear and hung it on the white Aga in the school office. I had made such a stupid mistake when dressing that morning. My outfit for a long road race in Scotland should have taken into account the rainy weather.

TPR walked back across town to campus to find me. Then he scooped me up and we sat in the corridor with some colleagues while we waited for my clothes to dry. It was only when MS and IH started giggling that I realised that wandering around campus stark naked was not a good look.

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A tiny, yellow-eyed baby (Rousse)

What was I supposed to do with a tiny, yellow-eyed baby?

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An orthopaedic surgeon’s cocaine sideline (Rousse)

I checked in at reception at OPD6 at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary for my appointment with Mr T.

The orthopaedic surgeon was much younger than I expected, and his preferred form of treatment for broken limbs most unconventional. He recruited his patients to a team of workers to stuff cocaine baggies. The dust swilling around our workbenches actually did have some therapeutic benefits for the pain of fractured bones, but I couldn’t envisage this  ‘medicine’ as a permanent fix for any of us.

At the end of my shift, the surgeon lifted me on top of a high red and white candy striped pole, then left me there with no safe means of descent. A fellow patient-worker next me suffered the same fate. With the encouragement of a big, burly, bearded man, we eventually found the courage to jump the twelve feet to the ground. Miraculously we made it, unharmed.

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Japanese beauties held captive in the White House (Rousse)

The White House, Hartburn, had been returned to residential use. I owned the upstairs flat, and someone else the ground floor. From their online descriptions, each property looked just like an ordinary Airbnb rental: people came and went, and the owners – myself included – could sometimes be seen sitting in the grounds enjoying the sunshine.

In reality, my downstairs neighbours were using their property as storage for illegal immigrants. Their ‘stock’ came from Japan. It comprised frightened young women, all extremely beautiful with long dark hair, clear pale skin, and ice-blue eyes.

I took it upon myself to rescue them. However, first of all, I had to get the obnoxious teenage friends of my nephew PMcC out of my own property. It seemed that this was a generation that thought that they could turn up at anyone’s house and stay there for as long as they wanted, no questions asked.

I fought with a French woman in my quest to release the hostages. One of her battle strategies was to hide my shoes so that I wouldn’t be able to get out of the building. However, I found a pair of brand-new designer loafers from an up-market Paris boutique in an unopened shoebox. They fitted me perfectly. So I slipped them on, rushed off on my mission, making the bedroom of the sports reporter the first place to look for hidden girls.

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