Aidan Smith
The Scotsman
United Kingdom
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Past articles by Aidan:
12 sports books gift ideas this Christmas
Ideal sport reading stocking fillers or something to treat yourself to over the festive season as recommended by Scotsman sports writers. → Read More
Aidan Smith's TV week: Brian Cox: How the Other Half Live (C5), Imagine ... Douglas Stuart (BBC1), 1899 (Netflix)
Two celebrated Scots, at the top of their respective games, have been back to the old country to reflect on how they made it all the way to New York from the most unpromising of beginnings. → Read More
Aidan Smith's TV week: Industry (BBC1), Inside Man (BBC1), Karen Pirie (ITV)
Financial traders, possibly acting on insider information about the contents of “Kami-Kwasi” Kwarteng’s mini-budget, have been making small fortunes by betting against the pound. City watchdogs are being urged to investigate and I think I know where the probe should start. → Read More
TV review: Sky Atlantic's This England: 'Carry On' former prime minister Boris Johnson will not want to watch this chilling Covid drama
Cripes, cripes and triple cripes, he’s going to hate it. But what will make Boris Johnson cringe the most? → Read More
Queen's funeral on TV: "Honestly, you will be blown away," said Huw, and he was right
The day before, the former Archbishop of York had revealed what Queen Elizabeth absolutely didn’t want it to be - indeed strictly forbade this. Her funeral wasn’t to be long, said the Right Rev and Right Hon the Lord Sentamu, and it wasn’t to be boring. → Read More
Shetland TV review: Perez gets his man
There’s lots of rocky headland in the detective drama Shetland - craggy, jutting and storm-bashed with fissures holding many mournful tales. But has there been a promontory more dramatic than Douglas Henshall in side profile, staring down a voe? → Read More
Scottish fans can't be trusted, Tynecastle proved that, so the football's off
In our house, gathered round the TV as the news unfolded, we must have resembled one of those families in archive photographs from the Queen’s coronation when the goggle-box was a new-fangled thing. Here the technology was, proving it hadn’t lost its power to unite the nation, and nor indeed at her life’s end, had Her Majesty. → Read More
Aidan Smith: Don’t be Middle of the Road about this, send Eurovision to Glasgow
Seven UK cities are in contention, all believing they should win, but really, it’s obvious. Glasgow should host the next Eurovision Song Contest. → Read More
Aidan Smith's TV week: Line of Duty's Adrian Dunbar as the singing detective, plus Aidan Turner in The Suspect and techno-chills in The Capture
Three years ago in the fifth series of Line of Duty Ted Hastings wore a brown leather blouson. It was hugely dramatic. Ted was suspended from operations and he was being interrogated. The cop who investigates cops was looking very much like Superintendent Bad Apple. But I wasn’t bothered about any of that. What really worried me was the jacket. → Read More
TV reviews: Marriage (BBC1), The Secrets She Keeps (BBC1), High Heat (Netflix)
The comedy W1A, which sent up the inner workings of TV, was at its funniest when ideas were being pitched for new shows. Invariably these would be mad, desperate or insulting to us viewers, inferring we’d watch just about anything. → Read More
Aidan Smith's TV week: Man vs Bee (Netflix), Suspect (Channel 4), McDonald & Dodds (ITV)
Excruciating - but in a good way. Unwatchable - the best kind. Rowan Atkinson’s new comedy will have you gnawing at the furniture but, like me, you might then find yourself Googling “Notable battles in the year 1513”. → Read More
Scotland v Ukraine: The eyes of the world are on Scotland and they all want us to lose
It’s a word I tend to avoid because sportsmen can’t resist it. Every success, every event and very possibly every bowl of cereal on the morning of competition is “surreal”. → Read More
Aidan Smith's TV week: The return of The Split, a noir-ish thriller on Channel 5 and a brush with Jimmy Savile
I’m not in favour of women hitting women, obviously, but it doesn’t half leave its mark on a telly drama. The single most memorable moment in Dynasty? No contest: the catfight between Alexis and Krystle. → Read More
Peaky Blinders series six, episode one review: It's peak Peaky in the last-ever series
Right at the start of the new series of Peaky Blinders, when Tommy Shelby got up off the ground having failed to shoot himself, one side of his face was daubed in mud. → Read More
TV review: Pools of sorrow, waves of joy
The longest, tensest wait of my young life wasn’t for Christmas. It was for my mother to come back from the shops having successfully purchased The Beatles Monthly. → Read More
TV review: Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers (BBC1)
Anyone who has ever had an appointment with royalty will have rehearsed and rehearsed and then suffered a sleepless night worrying they will drop the bouquet, the curtain concealing the plaque won’t open or the sword-dancing display will leave three toes unaccounted for. → Read More
Vigil episode one review: Explosive new BBC1 drama keeps us guessing
You wouldn’t catch me in a submarine. Not a yellow one with the Beatles as the cabaret, not one jam-packed with the Tartan Army bound for a World Cup far across the oceans - not even with Suranne Jones along for the journey. → Read More
Olympics 2020: Jemma Reekie’s medal hopes dashed on the line in Tokyo
They were billed almost as superheroes - three women who were going to “save” Team GB after an underwhelming showing on the track. → Read More
Aidan Smith: If we have to start paying for Rangers players to speak to us, will they say something interesting?
Earlier this year, after the third or fourth stunning team goal in almost as many weeks, I wrote a column in praise of Rangers, asking the question: were Steven Gerrard’s side playing the best football of any to come out of Govan in recent memory? → Read More
David Wilkie on Olympic glory, his ‘pal’ Elton John, boarding school woes, blaming Warrender for losing his hair and why he prefers Duncan Scott to Adam Peaty
Because so much sport now seems to commence at primetime for TV, it’s politics nerds who get to boast about going all night. “Were you still up for Portillo?” was the challenge during the 1997 General Election - referring to Michael of that ilk losing his seat - and it’s been re-worked a few times since. Twenty-one years previously, however, the vital inquiry was: “Did you stay awake for Wilkie?” → Read More