Charles Bannerman

And Hilton's (previously Laurel Avenue's) most famous resident currently being a guest of Her Majesty renders the place all the more innocuous!

I am sure IHE will remember the Royal Academy production of it in 1973 with Jimmy Chisholm as the Pirate King and Robert Seymour as the Major General.

That must also be quite close to the top of Piggery Hill then?

Was Hugh Crout Sen the boss there for a while? I certainly know that, in 1983, he delivered the very desk I am typing this on and I think that was where I bought it from.

It was also packed out before Royal Academy school dances. 2/4d for a pint of lager and lime was well below the going rate! But it was certainly a dump!

Is that the Thistle team that won the Highland League in 1987 with their only defeat in the final game at Peterhead? I don't think Billy Skinner had crossed the river by then for the £10K (inc VAT) that Jock had sought for him.

You are far too polite IBM since you have omitted the glo'all stop! The final vowel could perhaps also do with a modest alteration. "Righ'eenaaff" maybe?

Apologies Don. I was actually fully aware that the release had been made by the Big Partnership on behalf of the Tulloch Group and can only attribute a definite slip on my part slip to the earliness of the hour (well for a Sunday anyway!). I would possibly take the £6 million to mean the capital value or the rebuild cost (?) of the three structures in question, but that's not wholly clear. We can appreciate that Tullochs of course want to make as much PR mileage out of this as they can and no one could really grudge them that. The £6 million therefore emerges as a helpful and no doubt accurate statistic. There is possibly the other consideration now that this is an actual asset that could be borrowed against SHOULD ANY FUTURE BOARD THINK THAT WAS NECESSARY AND SENSIBLE. However for me one big ongoing benefit is that the rent saving is now an annual, guaranteed windfall which makes balancing the books less dependent on selling a player or a cup run or a high league placing or - in extremis in the absence of any of these - the likes of selling the Social Club. The North and South stands were clearly the creation of Tulloch in 2004-05 but the Main Stand originally went into the equation as being acquired by the ICT Charitable Trust around 2001 as part of the process which included spiriting away a very large debt. It appears to come out at the other end as a transferable asset of Tulloch but hey.... that's the kind of ground I've often covered on here in years gone by, especially with Don before his "conversion"

The ambiguity possibly originates from the original press release issued on behalf of the club on Friday. The title states "Tulloch Homes gift stadium to Inverness Caley Thistle" whereas the opening sentence is "Tulloch Homes, the housebuilder which has a controlling interest in the three stands at Inverness Caley Thistle’s Tulloch Caledonian Stadium, has offered to gift them to the club in a deal worth over £6m." (My bold italics.) But let's not start here on the extensive smoke and mirrors which have been in operation ever since the financial rescue of 2000!

The land owner is the Inverness Common Good Fund which granted the club a 99 year lease in 1994. That transferred to the ICT Trust in approx. 2001. Recent announcements make no reference to any change from the Trust/?Tullochs still holding that - only to ownership of the stands.

Friday's official announcement only makes reference to the three stands and not to the lease which was held by the ICT Trust from which Tullochs may now be arguably indistinguishable??? Information released on Friday seems to tell me nothing at all about any change in arrangements for the lease of the ground which I last thought was held by the Trust/Tullochs.

I blame Westminster.

Ok..... so you seem to be saying that an Investigatory Powers bill has gone through the entire legislative process and passed into law but there is either a blanket ban on the media telling the public about it or a media conspiracy not to reveal its details or even its existence..... except that you know about it?

You are far too refined. It should be "Rabbur Bampursh"

As long as you realise that life has moved on a bit since the days of flares, male perms and the Bay City Rollers.

Happy enough in the final weeks of the season but I have a clear recollection of a draw at Dens early March (after being 2-0 up??) where it looked as if any remote chance of the title and a return to the SPL had well and truly gone. I think the "happiness factor" - intense though it ultimately was - only increased as Caley Thistle put a formidable run together and Dundee progressively bottled it. Apart of course from those who consistently claimed to "Believe"

I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with you but I would be interested to learn the basis on which you come to that conclusion? I suppose what I'm asking you to do is to give a cause and effect indication of what the critical outcome at stake is, possibly by continuing that sentence with "because if not......."

I remember playing in Dalneigh with her brothers Gordy and Andy, both slightly younger than I am, when the family were in St Valery Avenue. All I remember of Ali is that they had this wee sister. Their dad had an electrician's business with premises, I think, in the market. Their older sister Anne was above me in school, married a Maths teacher Jim MacLeod and became a dermatologist.

You are out of order 83 and Old Caley Girl is spot on. There is absolutely nothing to stop Ross County coaching in Inverness if they so wish. I suspect that you have failed to take into account that there are FAR more schools in the Inverness area than there are close to Dingwall. Hence ICT can produce the very full programme (thanks 94 for the comprehensive list) simply by concentrating on schools in their immediate area. It is therefore not clear whether, even by extending their activities into some Inverness schools, Ross County have as full a programme as the extremely committed ICT community operation offers.

Maybe the way round this is to communicate using a code impenetrable to everyone else.

Pun intended?

I'm here and will be the epitome of brevity. Quite frankly the whole survey looks like a tissue of pretentious, unscientific cr*p based on speculation, guesswork, wishful thinking, spin, unreliable anecdote and a totally flawed statistical method. And that's even before you apply the "average £ per week" operation. Average? Across how many players? And how many weeks? The full 52 or some number short of that reflecting when contacts start and finish? The scope for errors is massive. At best, this "study" tells us the long-established bleeding obvious ... the OF pay silly money way above everybody else and fall massively short of getting value for it. So yes, "a lot of money for kicking a bag o wind around on a Saturday afternoon" indeed.... especially when most people would actually pay for the privilege of giving Jim Traynor a good kicking!

Scotty... you must be getting desperate if you are pointing anyone towards the philosophers known as Silver Surfer, Highlandrover, Cabbie et al!!

Looks like you've just made some bad investment choices IBM. Channel Tunnel perhaps? I can also appreciate your desire for a "Brexit BAD" opportunity, but shares, so far, aren't one of these. Since June 23rd, the FTSE has rallied a whopping 11.2%, and that even factors in today's 1.2% fall for technical reasons relating to the sell-off of defensive shares in favour of those which more reflect Trump's apparently well received (sticks in the throat, I know) initial economic statement. The DAX has responded similarly while across the pond, the Dow has hit an all-time high after two very strong post-election days. Not what we expected, nor was the strong post-referendum FTSE rally which, in 4.5 months, has added a post-Brexit annual equivalent of 30% to the index which is the main determinant of our pension funds. This may not be the kind of positive outcome that the S-acronym (see... I've kept them out of it!) wants but this is what has happened. Like it or not, the initial signs are that the stock markets love both Brexit and Trump.

Scotty.... I suspect that Jock may have taken offence at my more global philosophy of current political trends. I could, in my defence, rally the support of one Leo Tolstoy but let's just stick with the Yanks.