'The Sheikh and the Dustbin' Trivia Quiz

Answer: No - you look conspicuous in mottled grey brogues and a bald, smoking sporran

McAuslan had dropped the sporran on the floor, accidentally trampled on it, decided that it needed rewashing and then tried to dry it over the cookhouse stove while the master-gyppo's (cook-sergeant's) back was turned. ('They got the blaze under control and probably only the gourmets noticed that the evening meal tasted of burned horse-hair'). McAuslan escaped undiscovered through the smoke and went back to Dand's billet and tried to repair the damage by scraping the sporran with Dand's sgian dubh (pronounced skean doo - Gaelic for black knife - a small dirk worn in hose top) and snapped the blade in the process.

He then tried daubing the stubble with white blanco (stuff you used to put on your tennis shoes, plimsolls or daps) and then dripped that on Dand's best black shoes, which he rendered permanently two-tone when he rubbed them with his sleeve. McAuslan then tried to steal Second-Lieutenant Keith's sporran, was chased by Keith's batman, hit Keith's batman with Dand's ashplant (cane), breaking it and 'the Jeeves of 12 Platoon' was then arrested. Before Dand could tell him what he thought of him, McAuslan resigned as batman - "if Ah'm lookin' after you, Ah hivnae time tae look efter mysel'".

Answer: Dand has to darn Chick's socks for him

Fletcher, the platoon dandy, was the one who wore Dand's kit, Daft Bob Brown took naps and Riach was a Wee Free. All the men (apart from Chick) had to know how to darn in those days - if you couldn't darn, you got holes in your sock and then blisters and you couldn't march.

Some eccentrics dispensed with socks and filled their boots with tallow (wax) but Dand wouldn't have that 'within fifty yards of his perfumed bower', and I don't blame him!

Answer: No' a' there

"No' a' there" (not all there) was Private McAuslan's opinion of the debonair Captain Errol. The Senior Major thought him "an insufferable young pup", the Padre considered him a "very interesting chentleman" (gentleman) and the second-in-command felt he was "too dam' sure of himself by half". Captain Errol had been commissioned in the Territorials in 1939, he had escaped from the regiment's capture in St. Valery and earned a Military Cross with the Chindits in the Far East.

However, he was then broken to Private after threatening to shoot a jobsworth.

He then fought in the Balkans and, after winning the Military Medal and various Balkan medals with the partisans and being kissed by Tito, was recommissioned and, doing undercover work in Palestine, became Dand's unit's Intelligence man.

The last Dand saw of Errol was in a wire picture taken many years after the war - as a mercenary in the Congo. As the narrator says - there is 'no place for people like Errol in a normal peacetime world; they just don't belong.

Their time lay between the years 1939 and 1945 - and even then they sometimes didn't fit too comfortably. But I wonder if we'd have won the war without them'.

Answer: A stand-up fight over the fate of some ancient martyr called the Blessed John Ogilvie, in which Private Forbes butted a Catholic comrade under the chin

This is why they're not allowed to discuss religion and sport in education periods. Religion and sport are inextricably bound up in the Glasgow mind, hence the fight - though as Dand says, he 'wouldn't have thought either of them cared that much, but there you are.' I would go as far as to say you shouldn't should never discuss three things in public - religion, sport and the right way to pronounce 'scone' - and it's the last of these that I saw lead to fisticuffs and a thrown table.

Answer: Biting a rifle in two

Don't forget it was an army compass and supposed to be squaddie (soldier) proof! Ripping a telephone book in half is a well-known strongman feat and where I come from the other two expressions are added to 'couldn't' to denote weaklings. For those wondering about 'The Constipation of O'Brien' as a title, this was McAuslan's interpretation of the famous star group containing Betelgeuse.

Answer: They were all military prisons

The glazed roof of Aldershot is reputed to have inspired the name for military prisons - glasshouse. At Heliopolis, prisoners were made to run up and down an infamous hill and at Trimulghari, wells had to be filled and emptied again and again and again.

The dustbin at Sowerby Bridge, an ordinary household bin had been polished so highly you could have shaved in it, which convinced the young Dand that come what may, he'd be a good little soldier!

Answer: An Arab dagger which, on sight, you wouldn't have given two ackers for on a bazaar stall

Ibn Aziz did try to escape twice, once being recaptured and once falling over McAuslan on jankers outside the cell. He gave the regiment a dagger that looked unprepossessing - 'unless you had laid it across your finger and noted the perfect balance, or lowered its edge on to a piece of paper and watched it slice through of its own weight'.

The Colonel insisted it should be sterilised and put among the mess silver, commenting 'If some cavalry regiment can use Napoleon's brother's chamber-pot as a punchbowl, I see no reason you shouldn't cut your cheese on a knife that's been through the Riff Rebellion'. I am indebted to StrategyPage.com for tracking down the Colonel's reference to the 18th Hussars (now "consolidated" with the 13th, 15th, and 19th Royal Hussars), who use a silver punch bowl on formal occasions, which Joseph Bonaparte (the "King of Spain" by courtesy of his brother Napoleon), used as a chamber-pot.

The Hussars captured it at the Battle of Vitoria (June 21, 1813).

Answer: Because of 'Because'

'Because', sung by Richard Tauber, was apparently McAuslan's favourite song and he was hogging the gramophone, playing it again and again, and Chisholm objected because he wanted to play Chamber Music and called 'Because' "Cheap Syrup". The scene where Dand tries to find out why McAuslan was fighting and McAuslan is saying things like 'Because that's whit it wis aboot. Because' is hysterical and makes Dand feel like he was in the famous 'Who's on first' sketch of Abbot and Costello.

In this story, the mischievious Captain Errol, egged on by a passing Brigadier, promotes McAuslan to acting Lance Corporal, nearly causing Private Fletcher to hit him.

He is eventually demoted again after hitting MacGonagal (for one wild moment Dand thinks McAuslan has taken up fisticuffs over poetry!) - a Glaswegian recently arrived from the Highland Light Infantry - over the battalion's giant painting of Waterloo, depicting their regiment holding onto the cavalry's stirrups to get to the battle at speed.

This picture is Stanley Berkeley's "Gordons and Greys to the Front."

Answer: With all good wishes, George MacDonald Vulture

George MacDonald Fraser had often regretted the blanket disclaimer he had put in the first two books in this series, 'The General Danced at Dawn' and 'McAuslan in the Rough' - "The Highland battalion in this book never existed, insamuch as the people in the stories are fictitious...and the incidents have been made up from a wide variety of sources, including my imagination..." He had never regretted it more than that day, when one of the 'fictitious' people turned up! He was very glad to find out that the Colonel had loved the books and they hit the Glenfiddich together and reminisced.

The Colonel said gruffly "You've been far too dam' kind to that old Colonel". George MacDonald Fraser looked at his glass and replied "Not half as kind as we was to me".

This reader then bursts into tears.

Answer: All of these

The Colonel eventually died, 'in Erskine Hospital above the Clyde, where old Scottish soldiers' and the book is inscribed to him:

'Lieutenant-Colonel R. G. (Reggie) Lees
2nd Battalion, Gordon Highlanders
"Ninety-twa, no' deid yet"'

Unfortunately, the Gordon Highlanders are now dead. On 17 September 1994 they were amalgamated with Queen's Own Highlanders (Seaforth and Camerons), to form
The Highlanders (Seaforth, Gordons and Camerons). If you've enjoyed these three quizzes, you will probably be as sad as me to learn this.