Union Man

ALEX Salmond spoke at the Oxford Union in favour of independence the other day. At one point, his battle with Donald Trump over windfarms cropped up. “I’ve beaten Donald Trump in court three times as he tried to get a wind demonstrator moved,” he bragged. At which an unkind voice shouted: “Why else have you been in court?” As some in the audience clapped and catcalled, Mr Salmond grimaced at this apparent reference to his criminal trial. “Well, perhaps the difference is that every time I’ve been in court I’ve won,” he said. “Hear, hear,” said his Alba party sidekick Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh. Whether it’s good form to call an acquittal winning, others may judge.

Kate and drink

WHAT is it with Kate Forbes and the demon drink? She may be a Wee Free but she’s not shy of the bevvy, launching her campaign in a brewery. But Unspun was even more struck by an old video of her eulogising whisky. Standing up to her waist in a stoney mound like a character from a Samuel Beckett play, she reads a Burns verse about a famed Forbes whisky of old. The mind-boggling effect is like necking a pint of the stuff and going for a jog. Those who don’t believe us can check it out at tinyurl.com/WTForbe

Splash Regan

MEANWHILE, out on the SNP leadership campaign trail, Friday saw long shot Ash Regan talking about renewable energy against the impressive backdrop of FloWave, the world’s biggest circular wave generator at Edinburgh University. Besides testing turbines, it creates highly photogenic water spouts. Alas for Ms Regan, it also led to jokes about ‘Not waving but drowning’ and she was snapped next to a sign saying Rescue Zone.

Haddock Yousaf

THERE was also an aquatic note to Humza Yousaf’s event up the road in Arbroath. The health secretary was pitching his big idea on achieving independence - er, ask the Yes movement, not me - in Webster’s Theatre. One of his aides had gone to the harbour beforehand to pick up some of the town’s famous smokies, then bizarrely left then next to Mr Yousaf’s chair. Everyone did their best to focus, but our mole reports it was a struggle, as “the whole place absolutely honked”.

Dirty Douglas

He wasn’t the first to say it at FMQs, but he was the loudest. Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross turned the Holyrood chamber blue with a weary “f*** sake” on Thursday after yet another eco-protest held up proceedings. He apologised for the “industrial language”. Later, Nicola Sturgeon’s spokesman was asked if the FM had paid Mr Ross the £100 she bet him, after he said she would quit before him. Not yet, he said, before helpfully suggesting: “He could put it in the swear box.”

Das ist gut

AH, the hardships of elected life. Central Ayrshire Nat MP Philippa Whiteford was dragged half-way across the continent for four days in January, according to her register of interests. Almost £740 worth of travel and £1250 of hospitality was pressed upon her in her role as chair of the German All-Party Parliamentary Group. This vital trip’s purpose was to give the Toast to the Immortal Memory at a business burns supper in Frankfurt and meet a bunch of bankers. “O wad some Power the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as ithers see us,” as she doubtless said.