The latest topical insights from Aberdeen musical sketch comedy team, The Flying Pigs, written by Andrew Brebner and Simon Fogiel.
J Fergus Lamont, arts correspondent
The old year just past has brought us many cultural delights, but local artistic collective The Aberdeen City Council really outdid themselves as we ushered in the new year and saw out the old in spectacular style.
You may not have heard of it, for it has fittingly received no publicity, but I speak, of course, of the Hogmanay celebration held in the city centre of Aberdeen to mark the end of 2023. It was, perhaps, the apex of such events, one which will forever eclipse all others, and I include in that the previous high-water mark of Liberty X at the Castlegate.
Those of us who were there this Hogmanay were lucky enough to experience a uniquely moving delight. I ensured I was ensconced just before the bells across the road from His Majesty’s Theatre – from where fireworks have been launched in previous years - amidst like minded revellers stotting aimlessly from one eye-wateringly expensive bar to the next – and thrilled with anticipation as midnight struck.
And, as it did so – in an act of audacious brilliance, vehemently rejecting the bombast of Edinburgh’s noisy cannonades, Glasgow’s cacophonous musical melee, or even Stonehaven’s incendiary attention-seeking – we Aberdonians were presented with a strikingly minimalist celebration, clearly inspired by the works of Marina Abramović, or John Cage’s 4’33”.
My ear thrilled as I listened closely to the glorious absence of any stimulus. My eyes looked to the sky to behold absolute blackness, eschewing pyrotechnic insolence.
Instead, in the stillness, I was moved to detect, within the quietude, a whole range of micro-tonalities, truly ringing out the old – the sound of vomiting on Belmont Street, a distant fox yowling in the shell of Woolmanhill Hospital, a fight kicking off behind the bins in Back Wynd.
But, before us there in Union Terrace, all was stillness and perfection. All was peace, for a peaceful New Year.
I wept.
Cava Kenny Cordiner, the football pundit who always listens to Tony
As the bells chimed to signalify the end of 2023 and, at almost exactly the same time, the start of 2024, Old Kenny was sipping on a dram, smoking a cigar and feeling all neuralgic. It’s at times like that you take stalks, and remonstrate about your life so far.
I’ve had a great life, playing, managing and then speaking or writing about the game I love, ever since I left Kincorth Academy at 16. I was busting with pride when I got my first ever contract as a footballer, and it felt like I had just got my desserts for all the hours I’d spent freezing my chuckies off training in the rain and mud.
But, then, I seen 16-year-old darts pheromone Luke Littler getting to the World Championship final, and I wondered if I hadn’t not misspent my misspent youth.
Whilst Young Kenny was sliding around the pitches at Inverdee, prematurely ending the careers of a generation of promising young footballers and going head-and-shoulders to shoulder with lads who had their name shaved into their hair, Luke “The Nuke” Littler was down the pub chucking arras at double tops. Talk about a cushy number!
Fair play to the lad, though. He done amazingly well to reach the final, and is surely a world champion in the making. But I wonder if his real legacy will be in the number of dads who stop spending their Saturdays shivering by a touchline and shouting abuse at a volunteer ref and start taking their kids to the pub with them for a quick game of 501 instead.
My throwing style meant I was always less likely to hit the bullseye than to have someone’s eye out
I can see it now – instead of loading up the car to take their youngsters for training with their shin pads and Lucozade, they’ll be setting off with a pair of giant foam fingers and a pint of shandy in their water bottles.
But, on refraction, the darts was never my game. I used to play a bit, back when I was a republican, at Inverurie’s foremost sports-themed nightspot, Enforcer’s Wine Bar. But my throwing style meant I was always less likely to hit the bullseye than to have someone’s eye out.
In fact, I don’t think I’ve chucked a dart in anger since Hogmanay 1994, when Enforcer’s mysteriously burned to the ground shortly after the bells. There was a lot of ugly rumours flying around at the time about who might have been reprehensible but, thankfully, I’d just taken out a massive insurance policy, so that helped soften the blow.
My solicitor, he says to me, he says: “For God’s sake, Kenny – don’t mention any of that in your column!” So I won’t.
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