STEVE Bell is a cartoonist who works for the English broadsheet known in our house as the North London Trumpet but more usually referred to as The Guardian by the BBC executives and Hampstead socialists who flick through it daily on their iPads.

He normally sticks to his own patch, though lately he's discovered Scotland.

Today's cartoon shows the First Minister as a mono-browed Elaine C Smith lookalike in a strip which has her demanding incest and country dancing in return for supporting a putative Labour government. A predictable twitter storm soon erupts, with the cartoon being slammed as xenophonic and racist, even by people who don't remember the White Heather Club.

I don't feel it is racist, but I don't get the joke either. Is it because I'm too stupid or because it just isn't funny? If it's the second, then I am offended: the satirist needs to bite, not splash ink onto paper pointlessly while his dentures sit in a pint mug beside him.

I once had occasion to telephone Steve Bell, back when I worked for the Scottish newspaper known in our house as the New Town Bugle but more usually referred to as The Scotsman. When I told him who I was and where I was calling from, the first words out of his mouth were: "Do you work for that c*** Andrew Neil?". He had his gnashers in that day, to be sure.

After weeks of anticipation I finally head for Edinburgh's King's Theatre to take my seat under John Byrne's wonderful ceiling mural and watch his equally masterful play, The Slab Boys, which has transferred to the capital from a successful run at the Citizens, Glasgow.

As expected, it's excellent. Here is a tale about three ne'er-do-wells with big dreams and even bigger mouths, who dress oddly, love to bait authority figures, have some rather out-dated attitudes towards the distaff side and are partial to the odd bit of fisticuffs in the workplace, particularly when the tea trolley is due.

I've never seen the play before, but as I'm watching I get a strange feeling of deja vu. At the interval, over ice cream, the penny finally drops: swap the drainpipes, brothel creepers and quiffs for high-waisted jeans, ill-advised ethnic jewellery and lank collar-length hair and you have not the Slab Boys but the Top Gear Lads, one of whose number - Jeremy Clarkson - is in the news today for an alleged incident involving a dust-up over food.

There is one more potential comparison worth noting: at the end of The Slab Boys, the trio is broken up and one of them gets his jotters.

What are the rules of rock'n'roll exactly? If you believe Jason Mumford of Grammy Award-winning folk rockers Mumford & Sons, number one is: "Do what you want." He reveals this in an Radio One interview about the band's new album, Milder Wind. Or as it Wilder Mind? I forget.

Anyway, the other big news is there are no banjos on this record. Perhaps, then, Mumford's second rule of rock'n'roll is: "Avoid any instrument that looks like a bedpan." If so he is a poor, deluded fool: where would Come On Eileen be without its banjo part?

So what are the other rules? Clearly opinions vary though most people agree that "Die at 27" should be in there. Mind you, rules are made to be broken so lots of musicians ignore that one, especially those with decent property portfolios and efficient tax avoidance schemes.

One of the most entertaining lists of rock'n'roll rules was written by the Australian musician Robert Forster of The Go-Betweens. I'm particularly fond of rules number two, five and 10, which state that: the second-last song on every album is the weakest (Only Love in the case of Milder Wind); the band with the most tattoos has the worst songs (also works for football teams); and the three-piece band is "the purest form of rock'n'roll expression" (case in point: The Bee Gees).

Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Riot Grrrl act Sleater Kinney and now the co-writer and star of hipster-baiting US sitcom Portlandia, is another who has drafted a list. Most notable are numbers three ("No cowbells") and five ("It's not 'Deh-Po' it's 'Dee-Po', when saying Home Depot"). That second one is oddly specific, I admit, but I like it nonetheless.

I join my more high-minded colleagues from the Fourth Estate at a sneak preview of the new Roy Lichtenstein exhibition at Edinburgh's Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The pop art pioneer died in 1997 but his widow Dorothy is on hand to represent him and such is the lustre attached to his name that there's a fair old scrum around her as she poses for photographs in front of his iconic 1962 painting, In The Car.

I take refuge in a nearby room which, as luck would have it, is where she heads to escape the flashbulbs. One minute I'm watching her being interviewed on a documentary about the painter, the next she's standing beside me. And so we talk. Yes, Edinburgh is beautiful. Yes, the Scottish weather is maddeningly changeable. No, she didn't realise there used to be a station right next door to her hotel.

I'm about to ask her if she's heard of Dr Beeching when she's whisked away to talk to a representative from The New Town Bugle - ironic given that just yards away is a display cabinet holding cuttings from that same blatt complaining about the £100,000 spent on acquiring Lichtenstein's iconic In The Car for the nation in 1980. "Is this your idea of great art?" hisses one headline. There's also a letter from a government factotum to a Mr Jeans of Leith who has written, presumably in green ink, to complain about this terrible waste of money. I find myself reflecting that in sales of postcards alone, the nation has surely more than recouped that £100,000 outlay.

Thanks to the fact that Iceland sells a six-pack of Tunnock's Caramel Wafers for £1, my daily Monday-to-Friday biscuit bill is under 20p. Bought in bulk, my teabags are cheap too. City of Edinburgh Council isn't quite so frugal. It's revealed today that the chief executive's office alone spends £28 a day on biscuits, tea and coffee, and that the council's overall refreshment costs are £48,000. Let's hope nobody tells them about the Wee Tea Company's Dalreoch Estate Smoked White Tea, which is produced in Perthshire by a man known as Tetley Tam and which is today crowned the finest tea in the world at a ceremony in Paris. Its cost? A cool £35 per 15g. It's safe to say they don't sell it in Iceland - but it will add a couple of noughts to that refreshment bill if the councillors ever develop a taste for it.

The owner of a hotel in America is giving it away to the person who most convinces her they should have it. No, really. Janice Sage, who's clearly not honouring her surname, will hand over the keys to Maine's Center Lovell Inn and Restaurant to whoever writes the best 200-word essay. Inspired, here's my 61-word effort.

"Dear Janice, I'd like to be given your hotel for the following reasons. Because I fancy a change of scene. Because Top Gear will be boring without Jeremy Clarkson. Because cartoonists are poking fun at Fearless Leader. Because Mumford & Sons are coming. Again. Because I'm getting fat from too many Caramel Wafers. And because I can spell 'Centre' better than you. Lots of love, Barry. PS: Do you say 'Dee-Po' or 'De-Poh' in Maine?"