I heard Alisdair Gray talk recently and thought what a weird guy. His manner was so eccentric, his timing so bad, his awkwardness making me feel uncomfortable.

I also heard Susan Boyle being interviewed and had to put the thing off after a few minutes. She was excruciating to listen to, inarticulate with one word, single sentence remarks, punctuated with lame attempts at humour. And still everybody laughed!

Perhaps these two were just nervous performers. You couldn’t say that Gray is without intellect, quite the opposite. Reading an interview with him in The Skinny he reads much better than he talks. Susan Boyle? Freak show!

I saw a documentary about the poet Norman McCaig and he was weird too. He exuded a Scottish mischievousness, full of smoke and mirrors. I found him plain annoying. The film was presented by Ally Bain accompanied by Billy Connolly. They joked around, probably a bit too much like Scotsmen do, but at least Billy was relaxed and funny. Where many Scots are uncomfortable in their skin and suffer from performance anxiety, Billy represents the complete and exquisite triumph over this national affliction. That is one of the many reasons I like him so much.

Perhaps it is only me who is too much bothered by the manner of the Scots. What strikes me as deficient seems to be accepted by others as just character, maybe even loveable.