GLASGOW Labour councillor Malcolm Cunning had a generous offer on a recent canvassing.

In Castlemilk on a midweek afternoon, he met four pie-eyed blokes surrounded by empty beer cans. "Take a smoke, councillor?" Scenting more than tobacco, Cllr Cunning politely declined. "All lovely guys," he tells the diary. "But unless they open an off licence at the polling station they'll never vote - and they were all Yes."

TALKING of bevvy, Alex Salmond may praise the whisky industry, but out campaigning it seems he prefers a quintessentially English cider to keep going (he won't have Irish Magner's). What next, we wonder? Morris dancing and maypoles?

AS a Yes crowd gathered in Glasgow yesterday under Donald Dewar's statue (a Yes badge on his lapel), one sign stood out in the throng. "Scotland becomes a banana republic," read the card of a No-voting pensioner. After much recent ill-will, the Westminster lobby was struck in admiration at how tolerant the Yes side was of the lady. Alas, the spell did not last long. As one Yesser then came over and told them "foreign press" weren't welcome.

IN Glasgow Labour loyalists held a No rally in Maryhill with Gordon Brown. Unusually, but to underline his Scottishness, the former PM was piped on stage. "He reminded everyone of a giant haggis," a wag reports.