My grandfather was given away as a baby. Otherwise things might have been different. He was born in Australia to a Scottish couple who ran a pub. They were told to either give up the pub or give up the baby so guess what they did.
To those who knew him, he was called Frederick Hawkesworth. By a strange coincidence (or is it genetic?) he ran a pub in Staffordshire until he eventually drank himself to death.
But that wasn't his real name. He added an 'e' to his surname to try and sound posher - he was on the council, during which time the local authority built a bus stop outside his pub (where, handily, the buses terminated) and got a phone box built outside too, in the days when none of the homes had a phone.
This meant that to use the phone, people had to come outside the pub and, if it was cold, would usually pop in too.
But even this minor change to his name wasn't the first. He was, in fact, born Robert Atwood Norton Taylor, in Perth, Australia.
His parents, with the rather actor-sounding names of Robert and Elizabeth Taylor, were Scottish and emigrated just before WWI to Oz where they ran a pub-come-social club.
The rules of the tenancy was that there could not be any children. So when they had RANT they gave him away to an English couple, called Hawksworth, who returned to Blighty and brought him up as Frederick.
All families are mixed up. Mine as much as anyone else's. But it's a great tale. He died when I was six, in the pub of course. It was only after my mum died a few years ago that her sister revealed to me that my grandad was an alcoholic who drank himself to death. I guess running a pub wasn't a good idea.
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I'm in a Scottish kind of mood, having just returned from a week in the far North West of the country where I had a blinding time. I even got a tan. I kid you not, we spent three days on the most glorious and deserted beaches soaking up the sun in a part of the world where it is supposed to rain every three hours on average.
We saw dolphins - tons of them. At times it seemed we were knee deep in cetaceans as seals and whales surrounded us.
I saw a Golden Eagle, though it was on the way home. Plus birds you just don't see that often round my way like twites and divers and mergansers and warblers and all sorts.
And, to keep in with the locals, I tried a different malt or two every night. I recommend Glenkinchie and Jura and Talisker and one with no name that was 104 per cent proof. But just one of those at a time, eh?
I don't want to sound like a tourist board advert. Chances are we could go another 100 times and not get weather like that. But if the setting and the experience had been in, say, Canada or New Zealand, everyone would be raving. So why not Scotland? I've converted. The clan McSolly is now open for membership.
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For me, it was the perfect break. No phone signal, no internet, no newspapers and very little TV. I come back to find what remains of Fleet Street in chaos.
There are even stories that former NoW deputy ed Neil Wallis may be in a bit of trouble. I worked with Neil at The Currant Bun. Well, I say 'worked with'. I'm not sure anyone, ever, has actually worked 'with' him. You tend to feel lucky if he isn't working against you. Machiavellian doesn't cover it.
If he is in trouble because someone has grassed him up over something, then my guess is that there will be at least 1,259 possible suspects!
Those with a long enough memory will recall Neil used to have the title 'world's greatest reporter.' However there are also those who remember the nickname given to him by one of The Sun's most respected veteran reporters who dubbed him 'the rasp voiced fuckwit'.
I'm far too diplomatic to comment.
See you Jimmy...McSolly
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