WE'VE missed Alex Salmond at the diary.

Not the airbrushed media-trained Dr Jekyll of recent weeks, but the authentic sneering Mr Hyde. So what a joy yesterday when the latter made a surprise appearance at a press conference for the foreign press and got into a slanging match with the BBC's Nick Robinson. No snide was too petty, no sarcasm too undignified, no chuckle too superfluous. It made Kate Bush's comeback look like the testcard. And just as swooning aficionados thought it couldn't get better, the First Minister topped it off with: "We have approached this campaign with humility." Ah, vintage stuff!

ALSO spotted at the event was actor Brian Cox. The Dundonian once played Hannibal Lecter on screen, but is best remembered among the press corps for a rambling rant at the launch of Yes Scotland. As one hack recalled with a shudder at the sight: "I preferred him as a cannibal."

THE event of the day, however was undoubtedly the crazed BBC debate with 8,000 noisy teens at Glasgow Hydro, which lit up Twitter under the #BigBigDebate hashtag. The incisive comments of new voters included: "Think Nicola might fancy me", "@RuthDavidsonMSP talks a power of s***e" and, to George Galloway: "Get that hat aff ya daft p****." And those were the clean ones.

LABOUR peer Lord Robertson tells the diary not every Yes poster implies a Yes household. In Stirling's Raploch a woman demanded a No poster from him so she could put it in the window next to the Yes poster raised by her husband. While another woman voting No allegedly told canvassers she only had a Yes poster up "to keep these b******s away from the house." Which b******s, however, remains unclear.