Here's the latest entry in the diary of Rupert St John-Fontaine, adviser at the Department of Social Affairs....

MONDAY

I RECEIVE a very pleasant invitation from Murdo Fraser, professional trews-wearer and Tory MSP. Murdo is rather admired within Nicola’s inner circle for the work he’s undertaken as one of the Yes movement’s prized assets inside the Unionist camp. Every day he risks discovery and being hounded out of rural Perthshire by Tory lairds brandishing burning crosses. He’s an admirable example of grace under pressure.

We meet at Garrincha’s, the new Brazilian coffee emporium at the foot of Leith Walk. I’m immediately surprised when Murdo walks in looking rather splendid in a fetching pair of tartan trews. “What’s the occasion,” I ask him jauntily.

“There doesn’t have to be an occasion for tartan trews,” he replies somewhat archly. “These are my Monday trews, a modern take on the ancient Clan Donaldy tartan. I have trews for every day of the week.”

The National: Murdo Fraser himself is a man elected only because of the present 'top up list system' he suddenly despises

He’s in an ebullient mood and tells me that he’s making a speech tonight to Scotland in Union in which he’ll say that if Scotland becomes independent all Scots living south of the border be required to take an English nationality test or face deportation.

My admiration grows for this hidden hero of the Nationalist Movement and I hope that one day his deeds will be recognised in his lifetime.

TUESDAY

WE have a problem of a somewhat delicate nature. The Sun have snaps of D------- A--------- the senior Holyrood adviser on Sustainable Growth Outcomes at one of Edinburgh’s more upmarket saunas in London Street. Nought wrong with that, I here you say, so long as the treatment is entirely for therapeutic and relaxation purposes – and you’d be entirely right.

Unfortunately, said civil servant has been caught in flagrante dressed up as PC Murdoch being horsewhipped by both Maggie and Daphne Broon. There is an accompanying recording where he can be heard shouting: “I want you to (inaudible) my truncheon.”

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In normal circumstances we’d simply retire the poor chap on full pension; say that he was suffering from Covid-related stress and get him a visiting professorship at Abertay University. However, he’s threatening to give the names of other Holyrood clients of the sauna complete with eye-watering pictures of them in fancy dress including Desperate Dan, Chief Mickelson from Scot Squad and Nicola Sturgeon as a dominatrix.

I make a quick phone call to my old chum from Magdalene College who’s now a senior intelligence officer at MI5. He’s an efficient sort of chap who specialises in making scrofulous elements of the UK establishment simply disappear or encounter sad outcomes in freak boating accidents. We manage to do a trade-off with The Sun by handing them pix we’ve been sitting on showing a faction of the Scottish Young Conservatives at an alfresco sheep-shearing event in the Borders where there’s precious little shearing happening at all.

WEDNESDAY

MY old chums among the SPADS at Whitehall tell me there’s more trouble brewing regarding the Downing Street Lockdown party scene. You’ll recall I had to beat a hasty retreat from Westminster after I’d exposed the Satanic cult operating at the heart of Downing Street and how the leaked Christmas Parties were a deflection from the monthly Black Masses that were being held in the Rose Garden.

Frustratingly, No 10 successfully covered it up with the help of a number of senior news executives who had also been in attendance.

Now it seems The Daily Telegraph has fresh information of full-on leaving-dos where there was booze and dancing. A shiver rattles my spine when I learn that an unidentified SPAD had even been despatched with a suitcase to a 24/7 off-licence to fetch more drink. That chap was actually me, but the suitcase I was carrying wasn’t booze at all. Rather, it was a consignment of Bob Marley that I had to deliver to a bod at the Chinese Embassy in exchange for the disk belonging to their spy, Christine Lee. The offending hardware had details and pictures of all manner of shady transactions with Tory MPs and military top brass.

THURSDAY

A TOP-PRIORITY memo has been circulated to all Scottish Government personnel. Everyone is required to hand over their diaries for 2021 and account for their whereabouts every minute of every day. In view of the latest Downing Street revelations it seems that Nicola wants to know of any social gatherings that might have breached lockdown restrictions.

She needn’t have worried. The full extent of governmental lockdown jollification extended to a socially-distanced jigsaw puzzle event for six people hosted by John Swinney where one bottle of Bailey’s was half drunk. That and a virtual pyjama party conducted via Zoom by the First Minister, wearing a comely but demure lacy cotton twin-set by Ruben Diaz at Fernandez. Nothing to see here.