Barfly: Hard to swallow

PLENTIFUL wine, dainty food and conversation are just some of the pleasures to be had at the annual Sbaat (Scottish Business Achievement Awards Trust) lunch, but one table got more chat than it bargained for when one guest started talking bollocks. Literally.

The outspoken Aberdonian entrepreneur (who will remain nameless) regaled fellow guests with a tale about the time he castrated over 130 lambs in record time. Not so unusual for those in the farming industry perhaps, except he boasted of his method - he bit them off. With his teeth. His listeners gasped, and some crossed their legs. It was certainly a tale that was hard to swallow.

This mayor makes money, unlike Boris

ALDERMAN Michael Bear, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, is often quizzed on the difference between his job and that of Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London.

But instead of going into a long-winded answer about how he is an unpaid, non-political "ambassador" for the UK's financial services centres, Bear, below, had a much more simple explanation up his sleeve during a trip to Scotland on Friday.

"The difference is we make the money and Boris spends it," he told a gathering of business people at Edinburgh's Balmoral Hotel on Friday.

Record row is oar-inspiring

GIVEN its recent travails you may not be shocked to learn of a long, unprecedented and heated row taking place at Aegon's offices in Edinburgh last week. Far from stressed out actuaries yelling well-calculated obscenities at each other, however, the reception area at the UK headquarters in the Gyle was the setting for a world-record breaking endurance challenge.

In a 24-hour row-athon that finished at 9am on Friday, Phil Craze, an IT manager at Aegon, broke the overall world record for 24 hour indoor rowing, the world record for the 30-40 age group and the British record. Phil, 36, took on the gruelling challenge to raise money for Stroke Association Scotland and Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society Scotland and received a message of support from five-time Olympic gold medallist rower Sir Steve Redgrave, who claimed he would never even have considered embarking on a 24-hour solo row.

Phil said: "I am absolutely thrilled. I aimed to break my age group world record but it's amazing that I have broken the overall world record. It has been an exhausting but exhilarating 24 hours."