WHEN you have lived a long and interesting life it doesn't take much to trigger off memories.

Two very different articles in newspapers recently sent my mind racing back through the years.

The first was about Sarah Palin, the former US vice presidential candidate, making a speech with a close up photograph showing that she was using notes scrawled on the inside of her left hand.

It reminded me of the time I tried something similar in front of the TV cameras — with disastrous results.

It was the early 1960s and we had just launched Midlands Today, in a makeshift studio with primitive equipment. It was all live in those days before videotape recordings, autocues or teleprompts. You had to learn your lines or be seen reading from a script.

I had a fairly long introduction to deliver, some of it behind film, before interviewing two combative councillors at daggers drawn over some local issue. They were both highly irritable and I was terrified I would forget their names. So I inked them on my hands, Joe Bloggs on the left, Bill Smith on the right.

I was so nervous during my opening spiel I folded my arms for comfort. Film completed I glanced at what I thought was my left hand and fired the first question to Cllr Bloggs — who turned out to be Cllr Smith and highly indignant at being misidentified.

Total confusion and embarrassment. Fortunately the viewing public was much more tolerant in those days and I survived.

The other memory clicked in when I read a small paragraph saying that a 25-year-old South Brent man received a police caution for being 'drunk in charge of a pedal cycle.' That reminded me of the one and only time I was offered a bribe to keep something out of the paper.

It was a very long time ago, in the early part of the war. I had left grammar school at the age of 16 to cut my teeth as a reporter on the Berwick Journal and Berwickshire News. With most of the staff away fighting there were three of us with the job of filling all those empty columns.

Each Friday I had to catch an early morning bus and cross the Scottish border to Duns, the county town of Berwickshire, with instructions to return with a full notebook. A full morning in the Sheriff Court followed by a meeting of the district council, chaired in charming avuncular fashion by Lord Home, father of Sir Alex and other famous sons.

In between I toured the little town and made 'all the calls' on regular contacts, people and places that might yield a spot of news.

One was the local High School and I was leaving there one morning before going on to the court when I was pursued by an elderly woman teacher in a state of agitation. She thrust a 10-shilling note into my hand and cried: "Please don't report Dougal's case. He's a fine young man and he'll lose his job if it's in the paper."

Then she ran away in tears.

I caught her up and asked what it was all about. Dougal was a popular fellow teacher and he had been caught by the police on two wheels and much the worse for drink. He had been charged with being drunk in charge of the cycle and his case was due to be heard that morning.

I gave her the money back, explained that I had to report every case that came up, without fear or favour and went on to the Sheriff Court with a troubled heart — where the prayers of Dougal's champion were suddenly answered. The Procurator Fiscal had second thoughts and the young teacher's heinous offence had been removed from the court list. Since he didn't appear in court I had nothing to report.

Minor miracles do happen sometimes.