Douglas Ross

As imagined by Brian Beacom

DID you hear what Anas Sarwar, the new Labour kid on the block, had the nerve to say to me this week?

“Grow up!” he yelled, seething about my election priorities.

Honestly, just because I’ve spent my adult life at weekends wearing short trousers, a tight little black top and waving my arms in the air like a Second World War schoolboy learning semaphore, doesn’t mean I’m immature.

Grow up? You grow up, Anas, or I’ll tell my twin sister what you said about me and she’ll be really cross.

OK, as a linesman I’m a little power crazed. Sure, I love the thrill of hearing hard pea vibrate against metal. But doesn’t Scottish politics need a blow hard?

After buying off the nurses, this week our First Minister offers up a free laptop to schoolchildren. Now, as the pandemic leaves us. And just before the election. Honestly, why didn’t she offer up free Cadbury’s Easter Eggs as well? And tickets to the next Belladrum?

Yes, you may ask why I didn’t blow foul on Dominic Cummings when he wandered off for an eye test. Or David Cameron, given claims he has been lobbying Rishi Sunak on behalf of his banker chum? But a man has to work – his biography sold even less than that of John Major and he’s as likely to get back into politics as I am of understanding the anagrams in Line of Duty.

But before you say I’m an unprincipled toff supporter let me explain my politics. I grew up on a Moray farm and I’ve always felt that people are like cows. I learned that certain cows always had to be the first ones milked in the morning and you had other cows who always had to be chased.

That’s why, the financially needy, the David Camerons of this world, should be milked first, and the Alex Salmonds and the Nicola Sturgeons should be chased.

You may ask where I stand on Boris Johnson? Well, at times I would like to stand on his fingers. With my boots on. But as for discovering he recited Macbeth to Ms Arcuri as foreplay? Don’t The Scottish Play quotations merely reinforce his connection and commitment to Scotland?

As for the dancer’s overseas trips? Well, I once took pelters when I ran the line for a Barcelona match in Europe. Honestly, would you miss out on meeting Lionel Messi for a vote on Tory benefit cuts?

OK, like Boris, I too can suffer from foot-in-mouth disease. I once rubbed the studs down the legs of gypsy travellers. But I’d argue that comment was taken out of context, the context being I don’t particularly grasp concepts of human rights.

So, I’d say to Anas, you had a good game on telly the other night, but I’m not the opposition. If Nicola is unassailable in parliament it could prove more costly than Carrie Symonds’ wallpaper.

And I’ve been to agricultural college. I can smell bull****at 100 yards. Especially my own.