A zombie obsession that's hard to fathom

The urban chase game 2.8 Hours Later involves players leaving the relative sanity of an asylum to find much-needed supplies. However, zombies - actors in full costume and make-up - are out to get them. And when they do they, er, mark them with invisible ink. Well, I've heard of worse fates, particularly in Glasgow on a Saturday night.

Reading this intelligence, you might turn back to your pint of sherry thinking, "Good luck with that. Takes all sorts, I suppose." But these all sorts amount to 2,000 souls, who will conclude their jerky shenanigans with a zombie disco.

Then there was the curious case of Kieran Parker and Arabella Croft, who remortgaged their West End home to finance a zombie film in Govan. I am aware that Celtic supporters refer jocularly to their unfortunate, Govan-based rivals Rangers as zombies. As I understand it, this is something to do with the dead being brought back to life.

It's just the sort of outrageous thing that football fans say about each other and which has prompted the Scottish Government's Sarcastic Behaviour at Football (Scotland) Act.

But Kieran and Arabella were not footing the bill for a film about footer. They were financing Outpost, a film about Nazi zombies. I wonder who the bad guys were in that? According to reports, Outpost became a cult success, both as movie release and DVD.

Why Glasgow has become an outpost for zombies is anybody's guess. Just one of those things, I suppose. Our sister paper, the Evening Times, noted: "Glasgow has had a love affair with zombies stretching back years."

Perhaps it's the weather. According to my researchers, zombies aren't big on sunbathing, and their property magazines frequently advocate a move to the city, particularly for those on 300-year mortgages (which is what mine feels like).

Glasgow has welcomed many types of immigrant to the city over the years, and their contribution has been immense. But - and I hate to say this - I'm really not sure about these zombies. They come here taking all our souls.

What's to like about them? I don't want to sound prejudiced, but I just don't get it. I'm a big fan of director Joss Whedon (Firefly, Dollhouse, The Avengers) but I never got into his Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which made heavy use of zombies. Like the over-protested patriotism of a Scotch Unionist, there was something ersatz about them. They just seemed, like LibDem leader Willie Rennie at First Minister's Questions, to turn up for a doing.

Technically, a zombie is an animated corpse, which may bring to mind the Better No' campaign's weary soul Alistair Darling, who recently awoke from his comatose state to drip saliva copiously in a Scottish Television studio.

His opponent, First Minister Alex Salmond, had no wish to die, merely to diet, seeing himself perhaps as Bluffy the Spare Tyre Slayer. Or perhaps Puffy the Empire Slayer. Sadly, the night belonged to the forces of darkness, and Alistair is still dining out on his victory, dipping his eyeballs into his soup, slurping noisily on Prawn of the Dead, and cooling the heat of his porkie pies with a gust of halitosis.

However, I'm reliably informed the next course will see the First Eck making a proper pudding - a veritable flan B - out of Darling's sugar-coated whortleberries. Reliably informed by prayer.

According to some unreliable historians, Alistair and his roguish predecessors have kept Scotland as a zombie nation - not quite dead but hardly living either - since 1707. Only a Yes vote will banish the cobwebs of the crypt and bring the country blinking back into the sunshine to resume a normal life.

Well, we can hope. For let's face it, zombiedom is rubbish. Nobody got very far by shuffling. Instead, let's all put on our Buffy cheerleader outfits and dance about with placards proclaiming "Yes!"

Hang on, I'm getting a message in my earpiece. OK, I think I'll leave that there.