From Davos to Darvel it's all plane silly – Ron McKay's Diary

There is, however, a notable increase in the number of private jets transporting the great and not-so-good to Switzerland in a fog of fumes. According to a survey by an air charter firm, 1,500 jets – up 200 on last year – will land and take off from nearby airports. Not only more jets, but bigger and more expensive ones, spewing out even more carbon emissions and nasty particulates.

You might describe all of this jetting in to save the world as hypocrisy, but not so according to the organisers. There are security issues, they point out, these important people couldn’t go by train or on routine flights because of the risks, possibly of coming across opinionated voters.

They also insist they are trying to make the annual forum environmentally sustainable by encouraging the offsetting of carbon emissions, whatever that involves. No, it is breathtaking hypocrisy.

Eck of a cost

Internet posts on the charges against Alex Salmond, shocking in their naked vitriol and rush to a lynching, effectively make the Contempt of Court Act unenforceable, although hopefully police will take action against the main culprits. The Salmond case, unless all or the most serious charges are dropped, will go to the High Court before a calendar year is out.

Unless he has a pro-bono, or no-win no-fee deal, the costs are going to be astronomical. A top QC, and he’ll surely hire one, will cost upwards of £5,000 a day in a trial which could last weeks. So will Eck try another crowdfunding appeal after he successfully raised £100,000 to fund his civil case against the Scottish Government?

Watch this space.

Still on the SNP, just which of their MPs was forced to call on two aides to help him navigate the barrier at Westminster tube station last week? Answers on a postcard please.

A Fab hairdo

You may not have heard of Michael Fabricant, but if you have ever seen him on TV or in the flesh you’ll never forget him. Unfortunately.

He has been the Conservative MP for Lichfield since 1997, a constituency which must either have the most stupid electorate since suffrage was introduced, or a wildly ironic sense of humour.

Fabricant could produce his own book of gaffes. He has compared sex crimes to smoking cannabis. He called for a Tory-Ukip pact. He said of the stars of the classic comedy Rising Damp “They look foreign to me”. And he was forced to grovel, deny he was Islamophobic and recant after he posted an image on social media of an inflatable pig sodomising an inflatable Sadiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London (with a laughing Donald Trump looking on).

Some, or all, of which must have commended him to his party bosses since he was made vice-chair in charge of electoral strategy, until yet another gaffe forced his dismissal.

But it’s the naked bike ride, looking like a Harry Enfield character in a 1960s Beatles wig, and appearances on Have I Got News for You and Celebrity First Dates which manage to transform the offensive into the merely risible.

Last week, he was even the subject of ridicule by members of his own party when he passionately expounded, in Prime Minister’s Questions, about the merits of Birmingham Airport’s masterplan, the unlikely confection on his napper almost bursting into flames.

“It’s a wig,” fellow Tory MP Huw Merriman said to his colleague Kelly Tolhurst behind Fabricant’s back, pointing to the spot where the fake strands merged with the real. Then, looking over, it appeared, to the opposition benches, Merriman reaffirmed: “It’s definitely a wig.”

Fabricant doesn’t confirm or deny he wears a syrup – difficult given the evidence of plain sight – admitting only to some enhancement of the follicular area.

Prince of pies

With all the fuss over Greggs launching a vegan sausage roll I seem to have missed the recent World Championship Scotch Pie awards (or perhaps I was out for a curry?) in what was a triumph for the Little Bakery of Dumfries – Lord of the Pies – which took away the carefully-sculpted trophy, a wooden replica of ... well you’ve guessed it.

It was presented by Carol Smillie, who used to be famous for something – was she paid with a lifetime supply of the product?

The prize for best football pie went, not to Kilmarnock FC as usual, but to humble Darvel Juniors. But there is a Killie connection because the winning one, a steak and gravy confection, was not only made by baker Brownings, which for years made the garlanded Killie pie, but the chairman of Darvel is John Gall, MD of the triumphant firm. “This,” said Gall, “helps highlight the quality matchday experience we are trying to bring to Darvel.” Just don’t mention the football. And he didn’t.

In what you might call a storm in an ashet, Brownings was banished from the senior club over a bitter and long-lasting trademark spat. The baker tried to register its championship winner with the mark “Killie Pie”, but the club objected and after the lawyers involved had feasted on the fees for almost a year, Brownings called it a day – ate humble pie? – and rechristened its pastry “The Kilmarnock Pie”.

As far as I know the firm has no intention of making a vegan one, which is probably good news for Darvel Juniors players.

Cheers, Buddy

Still on the pie theme, but this one with a transatlantic flavour. Next Sunday marks 60 years to the day the music died. It was on February 3, 1959, that a light plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and JP Richardson, the Big Bopper, crashed into a snowy field in Clear Lake, Iowa.

Don McLean immortalised the tragedy a dozen years later in his song American Pie. Holly, or Holley, which was his given name, was only 22 when he died, but he left an amazing body of work which lasts to this day.

In November last year, yet another album was issued, Buddy Holly with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, featuring his posthumous voice and guitar playing to contemporary strings and woodwind.

He also inspired numerous bands, including the Beatles (Paul McCartney owned Holly’s song publishing rights), and, spookily, The Who drummer Keith Moon died of an overdose on what would have been Holly’s birthday, September 7, having celebrated it the previous evening and then gone to watch the screening of The Buddy Holly Story.

There have, of course, been several conspiracies about the crash, as is normal when celebrities perish – including one that a .22 pistol that Holly had with him inadvertently went off – but the truth is that an inexperienced pilot was to blame.

It’s now 60 years on and I guess you could say, it doesn’t matter anymore. I disagree. He’ll not fade away.

Lingo of love

With Valentine’s Day coming up, the dating business has got mighty complicated for young people today (sometimes you’re just glad you aren’t one). It used to be that you might meet a prospective partner at work, in the pub or at the jiggin’ (with pre-applied Clearasil), but apparently the preliminaries are largely carried out online now.

But it gets complicated when you are breaking up. No screaming encounters or hate missives in the post anymore, there are post-modern methods in the spurning. There’s “ghosting”, which is where someone gives you a digital dizzy, and “breadcrumbing”, the slow and painful death of a relationship which involves sending non-committal, but flirtatious messages, keeping you as a backup if other options fail, and now there’s “orbiting”, which seems to involve the ex watching your online posts without making contact – stalking without the risks.

According to the Urban Dictionary, whatever that is, breadcrumbing is when the person who ghosted you continues to observe your life by watching all your social media posts and liking or commenting on them. Reader, I grapple with these cultural matters just so you don’t have to.