Light relief in the heat of politics

"Most Scots might be able to identify six vegetables – but only two MSPs," said the comic Rory Bremner on BBC2 last week.

Ho hum...

Some years ago I was invited to a posh dinner in Glasgow where the after-dinner speech was given by Rory Bremner. He was absolutely brilliant.

His take-off of Charles Kennedy was quite perfect. If I shut my eyes, he was Charles – which was very slightly embarrassing, because sitting beside me at the table was my hostess for the evening, Charles’s wife Sarah Gurling. She had the good grace to roar with laughter.

In view of the fact that the hour would be late to catch the last train back across to Edinburgh, Heather in my Tain office had very sensibly booked me a room in the hotel where the dinner was.

Accordingly, having enjoyed a glass or two the night before, the following morning I was slightly late in rising, and by the time I got down to the dining room all the breakfast tables were taken.

The waitress told me to wait while she went to see what she could do. Would I mind sharing a table? Of course not. So she led me over to one in the window where a solitary gentleman was reading a newspaper.

As I sat down opposite him, he lowered the paper and wished me a good morning. My goodness, it was Rory Bremner!

"Here on business?" No no, I hastily explained that I was an MSP. His eyes narrowed, and then he smiled and there and then, over the corn flakes, did an impersonation of Gordon Brown.

It was quite simply the most memorable breakfast of my life. As he ate his bacon and eggs he was Tony Blair; the toast was buttered by the Prince of Wales, and the coffee sipped by the afore-mentioned Charles Kennedy. I laughed and laughed. I can’t imagine what the other tables thought of it all.

But you know, he was actually a really nice guy. Sometimes with fame comes arrogance – but that was absolutely not the case with Rory Bremner. He asked me about the Scottish Parliament, confessed that he had never visited it – and that this might be a poor show as he himself was a Scot. Cheekily, I asked him what became of the accent?

"Oh, I dumped that at Penrith!" he replied gaily. And then the eyes narrowed again – and in went the stiletto "Do you know, you sound uncommonly like Lesley Phillips..."

Lesley Phillips, the English actor who played a lecherous upper-class twit in the Carry On films, the man with the catchphrases "I say, Ding Dong!" and "Lumme!" – Good Lord, did I really sound like that? I was startled to say the least. And that is why, these days at any rate, I tend not to comment on other peoples’ accents. I learnt my lesson over the coffee.

So to return to where I started – Rory Bremner’s thoughts on vegetables and Scottish politicians.

Not that a debating chamber is supposed to be a series of gags, a continuous running farce, but are there many jokes in Holyrood? Good question.

The former Scottish Conservative leader, David McLetchie (who has just received a well-deserved CBE in the birthday honours) is a man with a sense of humour. His witticisms and polished put-downs are quality.

So too Roseanna Cunningham, a minister in the present SNP government, can be highly amusing in public and private. I would say that she doesn’t miss much. Donald Dewar was a man of dry wit too; his untimely death will always remain one of the great sadnesses of the Scottish Parliament’s early days.

And as for today’s First Minister, Alex Salmond?

He can dish out the humour – or what he thinks is humour – if going for your opponent’s jugular qualifies as humour – but can he take it? Well...

Once I bumped into him on the corner of George IV Bridge and the Royal Mile. He was wearing a new suit.

"Nice bit of cloth, Mr Salmond, must have cost a bob or two," I murmured, stroking his lapel.

"Take your hands off me!" he replied. And he wasn’t joking at all.

It would have so easy to have said "Thank you", or even "Smarter than your shabby old jacket!", but he didn’t. Strange.