MONDAY

JIMMY Smurphy, "a big hitter", is Laybore's new leader in Scotland. No surprise there, given that he's been canvassing like a Mormon since September 18.

Like a Miss World contestant, he says he wants to end poverty. His critics, however, have not been slow to show that whenever he has had a chance to do something about it, in regard to tuition fees for instance, he is no abolitionist.

During the referendum campaign he talked himself hoarse by visiting, uninvited, 100 towns in 100 days. In most places, of course, no-one wanted to hear what he had to say and he had to resort to gatecrashing Yes events - "speaking from on top of my own Irn-Bru crates".

At one, he was lucky to have someone throw an egg at him, which landed on his shirt, which he declined to change, principally because he knew it would feed the myth of nasty Gnats.

At the weekend, Mr Smurphy went for a jog along the Clyde waving like a tube for the cameras. What on earth possessed him?

TUESDAY

A dear friend, let's call him Graeme, is in the habit of rising at around 6am and visiting his local outpost of Tesco, where he purchases a paper, possibly because it'll be sold out if he leaves it any later.

He was doing so recently when a posse of young dudes arrived on the scene somewhat the worse for wear. You might say they'd been drinking all night and I would too, had I been able to breathalyse them.

They were in the market for sandwiches. One placed his on the counter while he foraged further. On his return the sandwich was gone, whereupon he accused Graeme of purloining it.

Graeme, who is nearer 70 than 60, protested his innocence but the young man and his mates were not inclined to believe him and invited him to step outside. This is never a good omen. Graeme, however, is the sort of chap who would not look out of character in Reservoir Dogs. He was happy, he said, to do as requested - but first pointed out that the shop had more CCTV cameras than the average bank and that in the circumstances the inebriated hoodlums might like to consider the consequences should they attempt to marmalise a pensioner.

This did the trick and the ne'er-do-wells took off, whereupon the shop's manager offered Graeme a job as a bouncer. He's mulling it over.

WEDNESDAY

KEZIA Dugdale, Mr Smurphy's deputy, has risen without trace. Your diarist's team of crack researchers were told not to return to base without finding at least one interesting fact about her.

None was forthcoming. How can this be? Ms Dugdale - or "Kez" as Mr Smurphy calls her - is 33. She appears to have been born in the conventional manner, schooled, educated at university, watched Ally McBeal on TV and thereafter decided to become a lawyer. And that's about it.

As an MSP, which she has been for three short years, she was in favour of building a new high school at Portobello, thus gobbling up one of the few tracts of common good parkland in a city choking to death on car fumes and in dire of need of spaces for mutts to offload. If anyone has anything more to impart about her, my door is open.

THURSDAY

THE BBC is keen for us to purchase digital radios "for Christmas". What we're supposed to do with them after that I know not. You can get one for as little as £30.

I did so, at the shop where there's never knowingly an assistant on hand to help.

It takes four batteries, which run out faster than Usain Bolt. Nevertheless, the Beeb insists that a digital radio will help spread "much more joy than tea-towels ever did". What has the humble tea towel done to deserve such a slur?

The Home Secretary and I have a drawerful of tea towels that are artworks in their own right and which, for instance, give us much more joy than Thocht For The Day ever did.

Coming shortly, by the by, are tea towels from the Anent Preservation Society, the first of which is embellished with the snappy slogan: The Anent Is Nigh - Stop Wars, Not Words.

FRIDAY

AS his razor scrapes my nape, my Kurdish barber bares his teeth. "What do you think?" he asks. I say I am impressed.

There are a lot of them and they are whiter than the inside of a coconut.

He says George Clooney does not possess a finer collection. "I wouldn't argue with that," I say.

"How much you think they cost?" asks the barber. I know about teeth and the implantation thereof. Three thousand pounds per tooth, I believe, is the going rate.

"How many of them are there?" I ask. "Nineteen," says the barber, baring them again, like a psychopathic Siberian tiger.

I do a quick calculation. Nineteen times three is 57. "£57,000," I say. The barber smiles and I can feel a beam of light as if from a torch warm the back of my head.

"£22,000," he says, "and that includes flights to and from Poland and a hotel for a couple of nights. It's a bargain, no?" The whole operation took three hours, he adds.

Had he wished, he could alternatively have had his jaw bone melted and new teeth stuck into it like rugby posts.

"Technology's incredible," he says. I agree, perhaps too enthusiastically. "I give you a number to call?" I say I'll think about it.

The cost of the haircut, plus the shaving of eyebrows, is £8.

I give him £10 and wish him a merry Christmas.

SATURDAY

I have received at least a dozen ecards, several from national institutions, wishing me "season's greetings" (the National Library), "A Blyth Yule" (the Saltire Society) and "Gude Yule" (the Poetry Library).

All are illustrated irreligiously. On one is a photo of an unidentified plant, on another is an illustration of Greyfriars Bobby wearing a Santa hat.

The heavenly infant is nowhere to be seen. Heathens one and all!