Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 15 on 18/7/2004.

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My kinda town...

Roddy Martin talks...

So what were my New York Moments during Tartan Week 2004? Sky scrapers, tartan taxi cabs, diminutive Highland dancers, Scotty dogs wearing tartan waistcoats, and Gutty Slippers, a wacky bagpipe and drums rock band from Glasgow.

Then there was the Tartan Day Parade down 6th Avenue with Bob Currie of the Clan Currie Society dispersing Walker’s Shortbread to cheering onlookers on the sidewalk.

What a buzz. I now fully understand why presidents and the Royal Family do it.

What else? Helping to hump boxes of tartan cloth through Central Park with Lana and Melanie from Visit Scotland for the Scottish Executive’s reception party. The Lord Provosts (Mayors) of Edinburgh and Glasgow, both of the female gender, cheering at the finishing line for the kilted run through Central Park.

Sharing a late night bevy in the Algonquin Bar with Iain Clark and his wife, the designer Jilli Blackwood, and being told to keep the noise level down.

Eat your heart out Dorothy Parker!

Being invited to judge at the Dressed to Kilt Fashion Show held at Sotheby’s on 72 and York, and finding myself walking down a catwalk in front of 800 New York luvvies. Sir Sean Connery with a cold, gruffly sorting out the back-stage confusion. Hollywood actor Kyle McLachlan in a Vivienne Westwood tartan suit and television’s Monarch of the Glen star Alistair Mackenzie in a corduroy kilt. The Earl of Caithness, chief of Clan Sinclair, wearing the three feathers of a Scottish clan chief, and Scotland’s First Minister Ja.....

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By Roddy Martine

Section : Roddy Martine's World

Page number : 7