Gullane.

I did some rehearsals last week in a beautiful village on the east coast of Scotland called Gullane; it's about 20 miles from Edinburgh and could probably qualify as a small town.

I have a cousin who lives there, Patrick Tuite, and spent time there in my youth with my brother and Pat's mother and father; Tom and Peggy Tuite.

It's a wonderful village and we bought some meat in the local butchers which came from local farmers; we also bought some black pudding and white pudding and I had some for breakfast this morning with a sausage and egg. I have to say it's not as good as the white pudding you get in Ireland but I would, chauvinistically, say that wouldn't I?

I must have been about 16 when I was there as a youth with my brother – also named Pat – and we managed to get a job at a visiting fairground. We collected the money on the dodgem cars; this involved going from car to car, standing on the bumpers and leaning across to the young girls, trying to impress them and taking their money. Then we would jump, very dramatically, to the next car trying to impress those girls too; if they were girls.

We would hold that bar at the back, the bar that took the power to the ceiling of the structure which pumped the power into the cars. The bars were quite safe to hold onto but if you went from car to car and held the bar an both cars at the same time you got a nasty shock down your arm and up the other. When you're feeling this sensation you are trying to look sexy as the girls can see you leaping from car to car like Tarzan and they probably mistook that yell of pain from the electricity for a Tarzan yell and probably looked at us with a whatareyoudoing look on their faces.

The people who worked full time at the fairground tried to teach us how to give the punters the wrong change.

The idea was that the people in the cars gave you their money; the cars are ready to go as everything has to be quick so you give them the change quickly after showing them the correct amount in your hand – when you turn your hand over, you keep a tanner between two fingers, and they will just dump the change into their pockets and drive away without checking it.

A tanner by the way for anybody under about 50 was a sixpence.

We didn't swindle anybody a) because we were honest and b) because we couldn't do the act of prestidigitation even if we had wanted to.

Our cousin Pat, by the way, and I'll call him Part to distinguish him from my brother Pat, as that is what his name sounds like in a Scottish accent was even tempered, tall and always wore a black mac which was double breasted and belted. In fact from a distance he looked like a cop.

When the day came for us to get paid we went up to the boss for our money and we were sent on a wild goose chase from one person to the other.

Then we reached Mister Big – the boss - and he said that "ye're no' getting paid today; come back tomorrow!"

We knew that they would not be there 'tomorrow' as the fair was moving on – and we told them that.

"Och!! ye thank we gonna make off wicha bliddy muney do ye? Eh? See you - wicha blidy money . . ."

Pat and I then realised we either had to go and forget about it or stay for a kicking!

A shout “Hey Christy – Pat?”

We turned around and it was Part; dressed in his copper's mac.

"Who's thart?" said Mister Big "the blidy polis??”

"That's our cousin."

He took a queer look at Part.

" Yer cousin!! Yer blidy cousins . . . Here!"he said "here's your blidy money."

And he gave us the money.

Off we went with Part.

He is still in the village and we bumped into him in the street before we even went around to knock on his door.

His mother Peggy, our aunt Peggy, used to be Ronnie Corbet's housekeeper as he lives in Gullane.

Her husband Tom was from Dublin, my mother's younger brother – they died within a day of each other – joined the Royal Air Force as a lad and retired, with Peggy, to Gullane. He worked at Muirfield golf course and Part worked at the other golf course in Gullane. The whole place is crazy about golf.

When you see young kids with a basketball in Los Angeles or a football in London, in Scotland you see them with golf clubs; they play golf on waste ground, parks and anywhere they can hit a ball.

I don't know if many golf champions are Scottish but it surely is the national sport of Scotland.

After we met Part in the street the other day we walked up to where the fairground used to be – and there, lo and behold, was the visiting fair once again (above).