LIBDEM Alex Cole-Hamilton was delighted winning the One to Watch gong at the Politician of the Year Awards, but nothing could match his ecstasy on Thursday over a pumpkin. A skilled carver, the Edinburgh MSP tweeted a snap of his latest Hallowe’en creation - a terrifyingly lifelike Donald Trump ‘Trumpkin’ - and it was picked up by NBC in the US. If the police probe into his election expenses gets sweaty, at least Alex has a fall-back career in the arts waiting.

ALWAYS a lively night, the awards were also greatly enjoyed by one thirsty MSP, we hear. Staff found the bewildered tribune in the toilets at the end of the night and had to pour her into a taxi. “To Holyrood!” she shlurred, when asked her destination. If only the voters knew...

ANOTHER tradition was the needle between rival politicians on Twitter. After SNP MP Pete Wishart whined about the lack of SNP winners, Labour MSP Neil Findlay mocked him with a (near) anagram of his name, dubbing him ‘Wee rat pish’. Stay classy, lads.

TRANSPORT minister Humza Yousaf copped some flak this week after admitting he wasn’t an expert on transport. But at least he wasn’t alone in the gaffe stakes. Finance Secretary Derek Mackay stunned MSPs by admitting he hadn’t heard of the Laffer curve, the famous economic theory about high taxes depressing the overall tax take. “You will have to educate me,” he told Tory Murdo Fraser. At which Murdo gleefully took him to school.

TIN-FOIL Nats have been rushing to fund a new project slagging off the BBC. The Inform Scotland group crowdsourced £8500 within days to erect billboards about the propaganda being transmitted into Scottish brains by Unionist devils in London. Oddly, their website is registered in Northern Ireland to one Brenda Enright, the wife of Down District councillor Cadogan Enright. What was all that about external influences and Scottish politics again?

WITH Nicola Sturgeon promising to make education her top priority, Unspun suggests she begins with arithmetic. On Thursday she started a great ballyhoo by claiming Brexit secretary David Davis took 36 hours to answer his “Brexit hotline” when Edinburgh rang. The wait, she said, ran from noon on Tuesday to 6pm Wednesday. Which is, of course, only 30 hours.

GOD bless the East Renfrewshire Conservatives. They may have helped get Jackson Carlaw elected earlier this year, but social media still eludes them. Unspun hears they are enthusiastic retweeters of the former Political Editor of the Scottish Daily Mail, Alan Roden. No one seems to have told them Red Roddo is now Scottish Labour’s top spin doctor, and thus the East Ren Tories have been unwittingly promoting lefty propaganda.

NOT everything about Roddo’s stint at the Mail was a pose, though. A tumescent monarchist, his office in the Holyrood press tower was proudly decked in Union Jack bunting. Now Unspun hears he keeps a picture of the Queen on his desk at Labour HQ. Unsigned. For now.

THE Scottish LibDems have picked up a new recruit for their Holyrood press operation, Unspun hears. Max Sefton used to be president of Glasgow University’s Queen Margaret Union in between doing a politics degree. But perhaps he should stop telling hacks the content of his dissertation - how an independent Scotland could have kept the pound.