A noticeable ‘missing person’ from AgriScot this week was the West of Scotland’s John Deere ‘king’, Jim Hood, from J and S Montgomery, Beith.

The reason is quite simple, Jim’s recovering from a hip operation and wasn’t quite mobile enough to make the trip.

Insiders say this is a long-term legacy from his days of playing Young Farmers football for Beith YFC, where, in the words of one of his contemporaries, he was ‘deceptively slow about the park’ and ‘a very good footballer as long as nobody gave him the ball!