Mr Jeremy Paxman, That Irksome Scunner Of The Scots, Drives A Battered Vauxhall Astra Into The War On Neds

   Further evidence - as if any were needed - of the ineffectiveness of the War on Neds has been provided by BBC2's Newsnight. The programme drove a Vauxhall Astra around Scotland festooned with the flag of St George, as part of a serious investigation into the problem of anti-English racism. (Translation for readers in Caledonia: In an attempt to have some knockabout fun with the Jocks, a reporter was sent North with a mission to be abused).
The experiment was successful. Somewhere in the East End of Glasgow, a gang of neds set upon the parked Astra, tearing its flags off, jumping on the bonnet, and smashing the windscreen.
Last night, in Newsnight's second report into this incident, that Scunner of the Scots, Mr Jeremy Paxman, asked one of the people in the SNP who is not Mr Alex Salmond whether the car would have been vandalised if it had been decorated with the flag of Trinidad and Tobago. I would like to be able to report the reply of the SNP chump, but I decided that my life would be more fulfilled if I turned off the television and took an overdose of Lithium instead.
But what, really, did the report prove? At most, it showed that if a television crew drives past a colony of neds in a ridiculous vehicle and then leaves said vehicle abandoned in the street, it will be attacked. One does not need to be Sir David Attenborough to predict this; a similar effect could be observed by leaving a banana wagon untended in the middle of Blair Drummond safari park, if the park has gibbons, which I suspect it does not. But the link with racism is tenuous. The violence is territorial.
I had a similar experience several years ago, when working on a community drama Mr James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner. The dress-rehearsal was almost complete - we were working our way through the final scene, in which Mr Hogg's death by hiccups was rendered as a honky tonk anthem, complete with yodeling and pedal steel guitar - when I became aware of a commotion in the street. Naturally, I waited until the final chorus was sung before venturing outside the Pilton Triangle to investigate. At first I could see nothing wrong. The scheme was dark and quiet, apart from the pack of dogs running round a burning police car. I drove home relieved, allowing myself a small yodel of satisfaction as I motored past the Rizla Garage at Crewe Toll. But in the morning, as I clambered into my vehicle, I noticed that someone had drawn on the bonnet a cartoon of an erect male member in the moment of ejaculation.
It is difficult to say what was more embarrassing: ignoring the graffito, or trying to scrub it off. But I do know that I got some funny looks at the traffic lights, and that if I had parked my obscenely-decorated Morris Minor anywhere in the New Town it would have towed away, crushed, and sold to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art as a symbol of moral depravity.