In Hong Kong the populace is protesting against having their chief executive foisted on them by the big noodles in Beijing.

How spookily like Scotia! I was once in HK where I was asked to choose the fish for dinner. As ever, I said, "breaded haddock will be fine". This was met with a stony stare and an instruction to follow a fella into the restaurant where there were several huge tanks each housing shoals of glum-looking fish. I was told that it was up to me to pick the one that would shortly end up on our plates. I hummed and hawed and possibly even prevaricated, for who among us wants to pronounce sentence of death on one of God's creatures? Time, however, was of the essence and, moreover, my companions were so hungry they were considering eating each other. I studied the fish carefully and chose one that seemed the most miserable. Mere minutes later it was brought to the table and shortly thereafter all there was to show for its existence was a pile of bones. But it left an odd taste in the mouth which, now I come to think of it, may be because it looked like Nigel Farage.

TUESDAY

WHERE do the Dodos get their names? Evelyn Waugh? PG Wodehouse? Those currently in the headlines include one Mark Reckless and a Brooks Newmark. The former has been called many things, including a "fat a***" (by the Pee-Em) and "utterly nuts" (by Borussia Johnson). Talk about pots and kettles! Mr Newmark has resigned as a meenister after sending dodgy photographs of himself to a male hack posing as a dolly bird. As one does. The Sunday Mirror has justified publication of the story, insisting that it was "in the public interest" because father-of-five Mr Newmark founded Women2Win, which is committed "to identifying, training and mentoring female candidates for office". Elastic word, "mentoring".

WEDNESDAY

A man in the United States has been posing as Rod Stewart and blagging his way into parties where he's been helping himself to free drinks. He should have saved himself the bother and become a journalist. Apparently, Mr Stewart is relatively easy to impersonate because he never changes his hairstyle. To which one's riposte is: he is lucky he has still got some hair to style. As readers of this energetically throbbing organ do not need to be reminded, I have often been mistaken for other people. Once, at the London Book Fair, I was asked if I was Martin Amis, to which I replied: "If you say so." Others to whom I have been likened include Nicholas Witchell, Vladimir Putin and - I kid you not! - Harrison Ford, who has been slated to play me as soon as we can find a mogul to back a movie based loosely on the contents of the diary.

THURSDAY

THE fallout from the referendum continues with my dear friend Alexei Salmonella rightly blaming the over-55s - ie, Alistair Dahling and Irn Broon - for the No vote. We held a wake to which the Home Secretary and I invited our good buddies, Todd McEwen and Lucy Ellmann, writers extraordinaire. Hailing from America, they are daily reminded that Edinburgh is a very strange place, nowhere more so than the Noo Toon. Once, at a dinner pairty, a friend of Mr M and Ms E was asked which school his weans attended. He thought he'd got out of jail when he said he had no children. "But," persisted the Torquemada, "which school would you send them to if you did have children?"

FRIDAY

I have called an extraordinary general meeting of the Anent Preservation Society following the big announcement by Theresa Mayhem - t'other Home Secretary - that organisations which "poison young minds" are to be banned. As far as I can tell, this includes the gamut, from those whose members include neo-Nazis to Islamic extremists and the feral wrinklies who flock in their thousands to join other jihadists in the National Trust. I have been asked whether the APS is extremist, which it most certainly and unapologetically is. For example, anenters have zero tolerance for those who use "amount" instead of "number", "less" rather than "fewer", and split infinitives with gay abandon. By the by, my dear friend Dan Gunn tells me that Samuel Beckett, on whom he is an authority, was very keen on "anent". And why not? Name a right-thinking person that isn't!

SATURDAY

ANOTHER week, another giant redwood felled. I refer, alas, to my old chum Karl Miller, arguably the greatest literary editor ever to emerge from Gilmerton. Mr Miller, it has been said, was a great leaver, having in succession left The Spectator, the New Statesman, The Listener and the London Review of Books, the latter of which he founded. He was a bookman through and through and, even as one writes, one imagines him scouring the shelves of the celestial library in the hope of finding something chewy to peruse.

He was also obsessed with doubles and never missed an opportunity to see the dark side of a light character, and vice versa. One of his favourite subjects was James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd - or, as Mr Miller renamed him, the Electric Shepherd, perhaps because he had the capacity to make sparks fly. I had not realised until I read his biography of Hogg - best known today for the novel The Private Memoirs And Confessions Of A Justified Sinner - that, when not tending sheep, the writer was a notable athlete in the mould, say, of Daley Thompson or Jessica Ennis.

He could run, jump, wrestle, heave stones and throw hammers. Not only that, he founded the "Scottish Olympics", sought sponsorship from local toffs and farmers, and ensured that the media was kept apprised of goings-on.

The event ended with a sumptuous and bibulous dinner at Tibbie Shiels Inn on St Mary's Loch where a waiter spilled gravy over the head of one of the contestants.

Aye, happy days …