Duncan Harley

Known locally as ‘The Mannie’, Oldmeldrum’s  Sailor Boy Statue  is a well-travelled life-size stone sculpture of a mariner clad in period costume, which nowadays lies proudly outside the Meldrum Arms Hotel on South Road.  Rumours abound regarding his provenance. Few know his true origins and some even claim that Spanish gold lies buried beneath his feet. Originally, he held a clay pipe in one hand and a small anchor in the other. Clad in the style of a 19th-century French sailor, he is sculpted from Portland Stone - the same material that Whitehall’s Cenotaph is made from. Mysteriously and many years ago  The Mannie  is said to have been purchased by Alford’s Postie Lawson - inventor of the steam-powered Craigievar Express - at a local farm sale for just five shillings. A factoid confirmed by Grampian Transport Museum who state that the statue stood outside Lawson’s house, at Craigievar until 1938, when it was relocated to Oldmeldrum. If the Portland...

This seasonal image from the 1930's, courtesy of Peter Donaldson of Grampian Transport Museum, was taken by Postie Lawson of Craigievar Express fame in the days before the statue took up his stance in Meldrum town centre. Known locally as ‘The Mannie’, Oldmeldrum’s Sailor Boy Statue is a well-travelled life-size stone sculpture of a mariner clad in period costume, which nowadays stands proudly outside the Meldrum Arms Hotel on South Road. Rumours abound regarding his provenance. Few know his true origins and some even claim that Spanish gold lies buried beneath his feet. Originally, he held a clay pipe in one hand and a small anchor in the other. Clad in the style of a 19th-century French sailor, he is sculpted from Portland Stone - the same material that Whitehall’s Cenotaph is made from. Mysteriously and many years ago The Mannie is said to have been purchased by Alford’s Postie Lawson - inventor of the steam-powered Craigievar Express - at a local farm sale for jus...

According to last Sundays Observer Magazine the very-third-time-ever that the word fuck was broadcast live on the UK airwaves was on 1 December 1976. How do they know this? Well, seemingly the Sex Pistols appeared on the Bill Grundy Show and uttered the immortal words “Bill Grundy is a fuckin’ rotter”. That’s probably on record somewhere in the depths of the BBC archives but what about the first two utterances, of which writer Juliana Piskorz makes no mention whatsoever. I may have an answer . The art of swearing upon the airwaves goes back a fair wee bit beyond those heady seventies. Broadcaster Richard Dimbleby was a close friend and colleague of Robin Duff, the 32nd and last laird of Oldmeldrum. Aberdeenshire-born Duff inherited both his lairdship and Meldrum House, the family ancestral home, from his uncle in 1954. A Cambridge graduate, he worked as a presenter then as a radio journalist for the BBC. During World War 2 Robin famously stood on London rooftops during the Blitz de...