Maxwell Irvine, principal of Aberdeen University, may be moving to a larger institution when he becomes vice chancellor of Birmingham University next year, but will he be such a celebrated local figure? Aberdeen boasts a comic trio, Scotland The What?, currently on a farewell tour which pays tribute to Professor Irvine in the programme notes. The principal is revealed to have been in the north-east of Scotland long enough to have acquired a working knowledge of the F-word. The notes hastily explain that this refers to "Fit like?", Aberdonian for "What like?", translated into English as "How are you?"