JINGS, crivvens, help ma boab ... what’s the world coming to when we hear that we are now ‘importing’ haggis from the very south of England!

As we approach the bard’s birthday, next weekend – and with kilts, whisky and woefae wummen everywhere from Annan to Unst (is there even a Burns Supper in Unst?) – the breaking wind is that our national dish is sneaking over the Border and in the wrong direction.

In a coals to Newcastle and sand to the Arabs move, Simon Broadribb’s version of the haggi, from his Uptons of Bassett shop in Southampton, is so highly regarded that some Scots are making a round trip of 850 miles from Glasgow and Edinburgh to get a hold of his interpretation of the Burns favourite.

But there is a Scots connection. His colleague, Adrian McLaughlin, who collaborated on the production of the southern haggis, was acting on information received via his Scottish grandfather, George. So that probably makes it just about acceptable!

Pac’ing them in at the hustings

WHILE those who lead NFU Scotland might be accused of fumbling around with new technology in a social sense, it seems that things are looking up.

This week, the gauntlet of gamesmanship – and a computer game at that – was thrown down to the three vice-presidential candidates prior to their ‘hustings’ meeting at Carfraemill, in the Borders. The candidates were induced to play a game of Pac Man (don’t ask me!) to determine who spoke first.

It seems that it all got a bit feisty at times, but the only thing to come out of it was that we’ve discovered that Martin Kennedy had a miss-spent youth, as he was streets ahead of Ian Sands, with Charlie Adams limping along in third! Even the chief exec’, Scott Walker couldn’t resist showing off his gaming skills.

We’re sure the real thing at the agm in February will be a hot contest too and one which might need gamesmanship of a different kind.