AULD Reekie's desecration continues apace.

The old Royal High School on Calton Hill, it seems, is to be turned into yet another flop-house for tourists. Indeed, it may yet be what a dear friend calls a "premier sin". Back in the last millennium it was hoped that the RHS would become the home of our peedie parliament. When that fell through, my old chum, Graeme Murdoch, tried to transform it into the Scottish National Gallery of Photography, which would have been ideal, not least because it was a stone's throw from where David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, the photographic pioneers, plied their trade. If things continue as they are, Edinburgh will soon have more hotels than Las Vegas has casinos. Meanwhile, yet another dear friend, David Black, is determined to persuade UNESCO, which 20 years ago awarded the capital World Heritage Site status, that it is no longer worthy of it. What, one wonders, will the council numpties make of this, and what can we do to be rid of them?

SO faretheeweel Sir Malky Riffers. Having been double-stung by Channel 4 and the Dodograph, he has stood down as an underemployed EmPee and will have to spend his silver years busking on Musselburgh High Street, probably outside Greggs. The poor fellow is apparently on the breadline, having been unable to make ends meet on his £67,000 parliamentary salary and the 10s of thousands he receives - I nearly said earns! - from various companies for doing who knows what. He was keen, he told a bogus Chinese outfit, to make between £5k and £8k for a few hours work, which would have put him on a par with Wayne Rooney. For this he has been routinely abused and hurtled into limbo by his Dodo chums, including Michael "The Aberdonian Assassin" Gove. Some tubes have attempted to justify Sir Malky's actions by suggesting that EmPees who moonlight know better what life's is like in "the real world". When next I bump into Sir Malky in the queue for sausage rolls I look forward to welcoming him to it.

JAMIE McGrigor, EmSPee, has asked our tribunes to note that they are "aware" of the BBC Teuchter documentary starring my revered amigo, William McIlvanney, and to congratulate all those in the making of the fillum. So rare are such interventions that I am quite frankly dumfoonert. At the Glasgow Film Festival, where William McIlvanney: Living With Words was launched, Oor Wullie received a rapturous reception, by which he was quite overcome. He dedicated the event to his mother, a reader of Omar Khayyam, the Persian polymath, which, as he intimated, may not have been all that common then in Kilmarnock. Then again, you never know.

TO universal astonishment, Ed Balls has been placed higher than Bill Clinton and Vlad the Putin in a poll to discover which politician might be best between the sheets. I must stress that those polled were women. As a man, the idea of sharing a bed with Mr Balls is something I do not care to contemplate. Topping the poll was not my old chum, Silvio Bonkersconi, but Barack Obama, closely followed by Nick Cleggover. Mr Cleggover, you may recall, once told a lads' mag that he had slept with "less than 30 women" when he ought, of course, to have said "fewer". How anyone can vote for such a loose talker beats me. Irn Broon, Kirkcaldy's answer to Heathcliff, came third, usurping Tony Bliar, Boris Johnson and David Moribund. This, says a rag, "caused a big surprise". Not in Cardenden it didn't.

WESTMINSTER says it is going to clamp down on cold callers. The Home Secretary and I receive several a day. The most recent was from a young woman called Carol. "Are you the homeowner?" she asked. I said that depended on who was asking. Carol said she had in her hand a voucher for £500 to spend on doors and windows. Was that something that might set my juices flowing? I said it might. "May I ask," she added, "how old are your windows?" I said I wasn't sure but if she gave me a moment I'd go and ask them. She stifled a giggle. "Seriously, though," she said, "how old are they?" I said one must be near school-leaving age whereas another had recently left university and was looking for a job in the private sector.

"Can I have my £500 now please?" I asked. Carol demurred. Instead she asked me about doors. How many did we have? Off the top of my head, I said I didn't know. Would she like me to go and count? She said she'd rather I stayed where I was. What she was mainly concerned with, she said, was front and back doors. I told her we had one of the former and none of the latter. "Why's that?" asked Carol. I said, it's because we live in flat. "Oh," she said, sounding like she'd been checkmated. At which point I decided that £500 was unlikely to be forthcoming, and hung up. Sorry, Carol.

AN academic, via his computer, has discovered that when it comes to novels there are six basic plots. This is one fewer (or less if you're Nick Cleggover) than was previously thought. The academic, whose name you don't need to know, also says there are really two types of novel which cover most scenarios. In the first, a man is in a hole and has to find a way to dig himself out of it. Or not as the case may be. In the second, he's at the top of a hill and may like to stay there or somehow get to the bottom of it. Fascinating? I don't think so. No mention is made of women, perhaps because they have the good sense not to get into holes or go up hills.

QUOTE of the week: "Right, well, what we're, what we're looking at doing is, is... is basically..." Natalie Bennett, leader of the Greens, struggles to explain how her party will build 500,000 homes for £2.7 billion.