Hacked off

Britain's oldest working journalist, 101-year-old George Fraser, was recently awarded an honorary degree by his alma mater, Aberdeen University. Vice principal Graeme Roberts, giving the laureation address, revealed that Mr Fraser's wife, Peggy, had earned her own niche in literary history. The couple met at the Aberdeen Daily Journal, where Mr Fraser was a sub-editor and Peggy Miller a cashier.

But Mr Fraser was not Miss Miller's first admirer: "She found a love poem on her desk addressed 'To Marguerite', which had been left there by a young night reporter who shortly afterwards left Aberdeen. The poet's name was Leslie Mitchell, later to find fame as the novelist Lewis Grassic Gibbon.''