Weegies v Edinbuggers: Any Problems You Have are Not Likely to be Centered in Sex - Why Glasgow Smiles Better Than Edingburgh/Why Edingburgh is Slightly Superior to Glasgow - Tapa blanda

There's a slogan that Glaswegians use when talking about Edinburgh's world-famous joie de vivre: 'Edinburgh! A castle, a smile and a song...One out of three isn't bad.' Edinburghers retaliate by talking of why all the Wise Men come from the East and all the cowboys from the West. So we have the Far East, the Wild West and an apparently unbridgeable gulf in between, usually called Falkirk. These are the jokes, the songs and the stories of why citizens of these two great cities would rather take Osama bin Laden home for tea than a Weegie or an Edinbugger, citizens of no mean cities though they be. Except, of course, traditionally, there is no request to tea in Edinburgh, more of a statement delivered without a question mark, as in 'You'll have had your tea.' And 'pal' is the unfriendliest word there is in Glasgow. When a Glaswegian asks, 'Ur you lookin' at me, pal?', you would be very naive indeed to think of it as a question or that the deliverer is intent on making friends. It is, in fact, a statement meaning something like, 'Unless you come up with a smart reply sharpish, I'm going to attempt to remove your head from your shoulders with any weapon that comes to hand. Or my teeth.' There's nothing rational about it. Weegies know that all Edinburghers are just poncing about all day pretending to be flowers and waiting for dark to get up Calton Hill because, without exception, they like their vice versa. And Edinbuggers know that, in Weegie families, father, mother and sister often don't add up to three, but that they do keep their chibs sharp, whatever a chib might be. There are hard hits from both sides, sharp jibes and bludgeoning diatribes, but it's just friendly rivalry really. To use the double positive negative, a figure of speech unique to Scotland, 'Aye, right.'

IAN BLACK is fat, wee and extremely nippy when the reputations of the two biggest cities in Scotland are freely impugned by people who know nothing of the subject. He, on the other hand, is trying to make a living out of it. An author, playwright, journalist and broadcaster, he has compiled the best-selling quiz book, Who Wants to be a Glaswegian?, a book of stories about the peregrinations of Scotland's fanatical and loyal supporters, Tales of the Tartan Army, and two volumes of football songs, Two Andy Gorams: The Funniest Scottish Football Songs Ever! and The (Completely Unofficial) Tartan Army Songbook.