THERE were a few uncomfortable moments for our elected representatives at The Herald's Scottish Politician of the Year award on Thursday.

Not least Fergus Ewing, the SNP energy minister, who was forced to sit through a video package setting out the reasons that his party colleague Joan McAlpine had been nominated as Community MSP of the Year.

Tory MSP Murdo Fraser was only too happy to rub salt into the wound as it was explained that Ms McAlpine was in the running for taking her superior to task in a row over onshore gas, in a dispute that eventually led to a private complaint from the South Scotland MSP about Mr Ewing's gung-ho approach to Nicola Sturgeon.

Mr Ewing was spotted grinning like a Cheshire cat when it was announced that Labour MSP Neil Findlay, and not his SNP comrade, had won the award.

\\

LORD Smith of Kelvin ruffled a few feathers when he said MSPs were not effective in holding ministers to account through Holyrood's committee system.

"The Commons select committees take their own MPs and beat them around, and rightly so," the convenor of the Smith Commission, set up in the wake of the independence referendum, remarked. "It doesn't happen here. I don't know why. It hasn't properly been built into the system."

One backbencher, known to fancy themselves as Holyrood's answer to Margaret Hodge, huffed: "Doesn't Lord Smith read the official reports?"

//

STEWART Maxwell, the convener of Holyrood’s education committee, had an unusually high number of call-offs from fellow MSPs on Tuesday morning and was starting to feel as if he was missing out on something. "We have received apologies this morning from Mary Scanlon, Gordon McDonald and Mark Griffin," he told the rest of the assembled members at the start of business. "Is there something better going on that I don’t know about?"

\\

IT emerged this week that the Shotts-based members of the SNP had attempted to declare independence from their colleagues in Airdrie and form their own official branch. The move was blocked by members in the larger town, who told their neighbours they were "better together".

The Shotts members have not given up on the dream of running their own affairs, and may call another vote at a branch meeting soon. We hear that such is the strength of feeling, they may not even need to cite a "material change in circumstances" as justification.

A new name has even been coined for the breakaway movement - the Shottish National Party.

//

THERE are more pandas than Tory MPs in Scotland, so the tiresome one-liner, that now also applies to Labour and Liberal Democrat parliamentarians, goes.

STV's Colin McKay, who hosted the Scottish Politician the Year Awards, came up with a new take on the gag. There are more Stuart (or should that be Stewart?) McDonalds in the House of Commons than elected Scottish representatives from any of the SNP's rival parties.

Stuart McDonald won the Glasgow South constituency in May, while his near-namesake Stewart McDonald was sweeping up in Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East.