Duncan Harley

Well that’s Dennis Nilson dead and about time perhaps. A serial killer trapped by a plumbing problem as I recall. I penned an article on the town of Fraserburgh a good few years ago for Leopard’s Our Town series as I recall; but conspicuously failed to mention the man described in the Press & Journal as a ‘ Fraserburgh born serial killer’. Not a headline I personally would use about the place, but each to his own I suppose. In fact, if I were trying to flog a few newspapers in those far-flung fisher-towns at the very tip of Aberdeenshire’s circulation wars I might have chosen to ignore the association just in case of invasion by The Northern Scot or some similarly robust publication intent on taking full advantage of the slur that Fraserburgh is guilty of murder by association. My column that month focused much more on the positives of the town. Bill Gibb, Thomas Blake Glover, the local heritage centre and Marconi – yes Marconi – featured but certainly not Nilsen. Dennis of...

Well, that’s the so-called author questionnaire filled out ahead of the proposed next book. I can’t tell you what it is about just yet since I’d have to kill you if I let the proverbial cat out of the bag, but it should be a cracker. Well, I would say that wouldn’t I. What is the author questionnaire I hear you ask. Well, it’s a sort of collection of proposals intended to draw out ideas for both the substance of the tome and reassure the publisher that the author has at least a semblance of sanity and some idea of what they are proposing to write. I recall early days promoting a few web sites on Google. The rules were a bit draconian and unless you actually paid the internet giant some readies – in which case they generally left you to simply get on with it – website marketeers were in constant danger of breaking unknown rules leading to outright bans or in most cases demotion from the safety of the early algorithms. In short, break the Google-law and absolutely no-one, even the...

Alongside the penning of books – and yes, there is yet another on the way – I have aspired to be a feature writer on occasion. As an avid reader of the weekend papers I have long admired the Observer Magazine’s ‘A Brush with Greatness’ column. Typical topics are ‘The day Van Morrison remembered me’, ‘The day Keith Richard joined us at the Test Match’ and ‘Back in my early 20s, I was a camera assistant for a photographer named Jeff Riedel.’ All good and all really interesting. I got to thinking that I too must have brushed against some greatness. I have briefly met some Royals, but not intimately, and can claim to have chatted with Russel Grant in the basement of an Aberdeen hotel. Then there was that day when Margaret Thatcher’s limo almost ran me off the road on a return trip from the Isle of Skye. Which to use? Then it hit me: I had met the Dalai Lama – or at least, I thought that I had met him. For reasons which completely escape me, the Observer Magazine have never used the pi...