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The monied middle class, designer dogs, pretentiously named children, expensive coffee and wild swimming are just a few of the topics tackled in a parody by new author and former Portobello resident Kevan Christie. The ex-journalist’s first novel, To Be Frank, proved so popular that the town’s Portobello Bookshop sold out of its initial run and a reprint had to be ordered. Central character Frank Savage is a fifty-something newspaper columnist who pens a controversial piece c

This converts a normal desk into a standing desk After joining the standing desk revolution, Kevan Christie enjoys looking down on his colleagues, is in bed at 7.30pm and reckons it feels right. Stunning news from the workplace this week folks as I have taken charge of a standing desk and now tower over slouched colleagues like a journalistic Goliath to their Davids or Davinas if you prefer. The installation took seconds and the winged chariot on the fifth floor of Orchard Br

As the Orange Order prepares a virtual parade ‘a bit like watching Sky Sports’, Kevan Christie flips the channel to a fascinating documentary about Hillary Clinton. The Apollo 11 spaceflight that allowed Neil Armstrong to take his first small step for man, giant leap for mankind, had on board a computer with 2048 words of memory which could be used to store ‘temporary results’. This type of memory is referred to as RAM (random-access memory) and the Apollo Guidance Computer h

Eamonn Holmes, with wife and co-presenter Ruth Langsford on ITV’s This Morning, dismissed the media’s dismissal of a ‘not true and incredibly stupid’ idea about coronavirus (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock) | Copyright (c) 2019 Shutterstock. No use without permission. As a broadcaster with decades of experience, including host of the 1985 Miss Northern Ireland gala special, Eamonn Holmes doesn’t need lectures from so-called experts about coronavirus, writes Kevan Christie

Kinghorn Pettycur Bay and Beach in Fife The phrase ‘Edinburgh is a village’ will resonate with anyone who grew up there and either still lives in Scotland’s capital city or have bettered themselves and moved on to sunnier climes. It’s a standard trope based on the belief that half a million folk are but six degrees of separation from knowing someone whose granny had her milk delivered by Sean Connery . Like many cities, the Burgh is just a collection of little villages each w

Boris Johnson’s special adviser Dominic Cummings’ can be funny, as his description of David Cameron showed, and some think he’s both a maverick and a genius. But it’s lies like the ‘£350 million a week’ Brexit bus slogan that define him, writes Kevan Christie. Boris Johnson’s special adviser Dominic Cummings  is a genius. I know this because Tories, others in the Westminster bubble and lazy journalists are throwing their knickers at him in the hope he sprinkles some magic gen

So what would Tony Soprano do? Picture: AP They say an Englishman’s home is his castle. Well I can attest that this well-worn maxim applies to the good people of Scotland  as well dear readers after a week spent power washing the driveway leading up to the grounds of my Fife  estate during an early summer ‘holiday’. I say a week but it was really four hours split over two days but it definitely felt like a fortnight if you follow me. Granted, I had a ‘nice bit of kit’ for thi

Kevan Christie calls for a public inquiry – or something – into people who leave on main light in the sitting room. Hot on the heels of last week’s ‘fireworks are for eejits’ column, which looks like being adopted as official Scottish Government  policy, a new and worrying issue has risen to the top of my busy in-tray. As the clocks fall back and the dark nights of the winter apocalypse draw in – the time has come to shine a light on the monsters that lurk within our family h

On the plus side, no one ever threw a dead mouse at me and journalism has been better than real work, says Kevan Christie.

Kevan Christie returns to his old childhood haunt of Portobello and discovers it remains as edgy and bohemian as ever.

Former Scotsman journalist Kevan Christie opens up on penning his debut novel Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay” is a line attributed to the late, great Christopher Hitchens. I am reminded of this, dear readers, in a fleeting moment of joy as I make a triumphant return to column writing to punt my recently published opus, the crime comedy To Be Frank. The variation of this quote I encountered on the two-year journey from compute