WE all have our own way of coping in these fraught times. Reading, walking, gin, badminton, playing badminton while sloshed on gin: choose your own displacement activity. Me? I like to look at dog rescue sites and fantasise about the perfect match out there just waiting to become a forever friend.

There was one candidate recently that seemed ideal, except for one thing. After a list of her many glowing attributes – loving, lively, likes a night on the sofa, desires world peace – was a warning: “So and so (her name wasn’t actually so and so but identities have to be changed to protect the guilty) can NOT live with cats.” Therein lay a tale no doubt.

Having heard Scotland’s Eddie Mair knocking seven bells out of Boris Johnson on the day of the Queen’s Speech, I feel it should be made clear from now on that the host of the BBC’s PM programe can NOT interview the Foreign Secretary. The carnage that ensues is simply too great.

Dundee’s finest, who cut his incisors at BBC Scotland, began by asking BoJo how Theresa May’s programme for government addressed the sort of burning injustices she promised to tackle on becoming PM. How, for example, would it stop the justice system treating black people more harshly than white?

A reasonable enough opener, something that should have been easy-peasy for a chap with a 2:1 from Oxford. A  chap, moreover,  who was sitting round the Cabinet table when the Queen’s Speech was discussed. Alas, no. Boris did not seem to have the first idea what the government of which he was a member intended to do. At one point, Mair told Johnson to answer the questions in the order he was asking them, saying: “It’s not a Two Ronnies sketch. You can’t answer the question before last.”

By now, Boris was probably tempted to tell Mair to fork handles, or four candles, off. “I appreciate your desire to push me around,” gasped the Foreign Secretary, hoping for a break. No chance.  

It was just as well the pair were not in the same studio, close enough to trade actual blows rather than mere verbal ones. There is only so much blood the BBC cleaners can expect to scour from a carpet. 
This is not the first time the two have had a rammy. It was Mair, you may remember, who once put it to Johnson:  “You’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?”

Now, if this was just another handbags at dawn affair between two big personalities it would scarcely be worth dragging you away from your displacement activity, but there is an important issue here. To wit, what is Scotland’s problem with BoJo?

It is not just Mair, you see. In a TV debate during the EU referendum, Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, took every opportunity to attack her fellow Tory. The party north of the border knows his election as leader would be a gift to their opponents. As for the number of visits he made to Scotland during the General Election, one could count them on the fingers of a pigeon’s hand. And who, pray, put the kibosh on Boris’s most recent leadership bid? One Edinburgh-born Michael Gove, that’s who.

This will not do, folks. Scotland is a welcoming country, as it says on some advert somewhere. We must get to the bottom of this antipathy towards a figure who regularly tops UK polls asking who should be the next Prime Minister. Outwith Scotland, everybody loves Boris, his shaggy hairdo, his Have I Got News For You past as a joker, his genial harrumphing and colourful vocabulary. Like some escapee from a lesser known PG Wodehouse, is he not a veritable tonic, a caution in these insufferably stuffy politically correct times?

If I may speak on behalf of the man on the Dennistoun-bound omnibus: naw. Scotland has a particular beef with the Foreign Secretary, you see. So particular we even have our own word for it. BoJo gives us the pip because he comes across as a classic haverer, a steaming pile of piffle trying to pass himself off as a man of substance. And up with that sort of thing Scotland does not like to put.

But as I say, Scotland needs to reconsider. It is not just a reputation for friendliness we must protect. Given Boris’s determination to become prime minister the chances are that he will indeed manage it one day and Scotland will have to do business with him.

I’d like to issue an appeal, therefore, for a good Scottish home to take in Boris for a while. Think of him as the human equivalent of a rescue dog, albeit one possessed of a hugely privileged start in life and a glossier coat. Anyone fancy it? Anyone?

IT is a rare day that the Queen’s fashion choices make the news pages. There is not much of a message that one can convey with a silk day dress and matching coat. But a hat? Now you are talking.

Her Majesty’s headgear at the State Opening of Parliament this week was the talk of the internet steamie. Was her Delphinium-blue number, complete with golden dots, a subversive nod to the flag of the European Union? I doubt it, but she probably had a good giggle about all the fuss when she returned from Ascot that evening.

It must be marvellous to be the Queen and wear a hat every day. Unless one is a monarch, an archbishop, or similar, it is difficult to sport a hat without looking like a right titfer. I once bought a beret in Saks Fifth Avenue and thought I looked the very dab. But on returning to Glasgow, I managed all of five minutes of beret-wearing peace before the first Frank Spencer impersonation arrived, followed by an ‘Allo, ‘Allo skit. 

The Queen has no such problems.  Then again, I’ve never seen her wearing a beret in Glasgow.

HAVE to confess to another sneaky pleasure here. 

This one, like the other, is harmless: it is looking at the soaring summer temperatures in London and giving myself a congratulatory hug that I no longer live there. Last week provided a particular glee as the mercury hit a record 34.5C at Heathrow. Yuk. Imagine travelling on the Tube in plus 30 temperatures. Pounding the pavements. Trying to sleep at night.

Whenever Scotland experiences warm weather there is a noticeable lift in mood. Freed from having a permanent, personal raincloud over their heads, people smile and saunter, living la vida soleada. 

Who are we kidding though? As the song says, there is such a thing as too darn hot. If it was 34.5C here every day for more than three days there would be mass fainting in the streets; the outbreak of sunburn and consequent peeling would lead to mole hills of dead skin everywhere; and as for the strain of maintaining a constantly sunny disposition to match the weather – intolerable. Rubbish Scottish summers, don’t ever change.