Following on from reader Trevor Clydesdale’s list of the tunes submitted for the Grade 1 1970 ‘Medley’ Worlds, reader Ian Forbes asked for a programme from yesteryear showing the MSRs bands played back then. Within a few hours another reader, who asked not to be named, sent us in the 1968 Cowal programme. It makes interesting reading, writes the Editor. Notice the iconic cover which was used for many years…

Braemar Gathering staged a sort of kid on games on Saturday, crowdless but with participants filmed in each discipline, the whole to be broadcast online later this month. Aberdeen piper John MacDonald did the needful at the piping bench with an MSR and a rendition of the Glen is Mine. I am not sure what the purpose was, probably just to keep everyone’s interest in the old gathering alive. Those…

Shotts at the 2019 British. Will there be a return in May 2021? Who would disagree with yesterday’s comments by Gilbert Cromie that we need some forward planning if we are to save the 2021 pipe band season? I would go further and ask that the RSPBA form a ‘Task Force 21’ to examine all of the potentail problems, to offer solutions and to do so from a positive, ‘can…

Listening to BBC Alba’s ‘Crunluath’ programme on Saturday you realised what you had been missing by way of live music. Host Catriona MacNeill played excerpts from the 2019 Northern Meeting, and like her predecessor Cailean Maclean, let the music do the talking. Two full piobaireachd, three six-tune MSRs and a hornpipe & jig made for an hour or so of absorbing piping with terrific performances from Jack Lee (pictured), Bruce…

We are grateful to reader Patrick Larkin for forwarding the above picture. Patrick writes: ‘With regard to the recent post of P/M Joe Wilson, Calum Campbell, James Robertson and Farewell to the Creeks, you will be interested to see the above picture of the Drums and Pipes of the Gordon Highlanders taken in Celle, West Germany, in 1960. ‘The pipe major on the right of the picture is Calum Campbell. To…