Every election has losers and they will always get my vote

THERE now follows a public service information column about the forthcoming Holyrood elections. Walk briskly to the polling station. Do not dawdle. Do not bring a musical instrument. Wear smart or, at worst, smart but casual clothing.

You will not be admitted if wearing trainers. Think about the greater good, not about yourself. Think not what your country doody-doo, but doody-doo what your country do.

God save the First Minister!

I should add that I have no intention of lecturing you about who to vote for. That is between you and your accountant. I would like, however, to discuss the procedure of voting, as it has long fascinated me and is one of the few occasions when I take part in social events.

Going to the polling station for me is like going to the discotheque is for you. It’s a chance to let it all hang out, enjoy yourself, have a few drinks and perhaps even find a wife if you stick around for a few hours.

In the past, if there has been a queue, I have often had interesting discussions with members of the public. Some will try to find out which way you’re voting, and I say: “D’you know, I still haven’t made my mind up yet.

“Usually, I vote for any candidate beginning with ‘B’, but there don’t seem to be any of those this time. Is there any of them who would outlaw baseball caps?”

When I was better known in the past, people would say: “You’re that Andrew McNeil, aren’t you? I must say you look much better in the flesh. Nothing wrong with your hair at all.”

Nowadays, I pass unremarked, apart from by the candidates at times. They say: “Please don’t vote for me, Rab. I want to win!” They know I’m a loser. In elections, I’m always on the losing side. It’s all of a piece with my life.

Often, there’ll be party activists standing outside, wearing rosettes and looking uncomfortable. As I understand it, they’re not allowed to hector the lieges. But there’s nothing to stop the lieges hectoring them.

Usually, I like to have a quiet word: “Very brave of you standing here, where everybody hates you.”

“Still cutting your own hair, I see.” “Your trousers, sir, are a disgrace.” I’ve done that duty myself in the past, when I was a youthful idealist before becoming a journalist. It taught me a lesson in life: politeness always wins against belligerence. Everyone else was perfectly civil in the face of my threats.

I particularly like voting in old church halls, with their aged, dark wood and their sense of the communitarian. There’s something Dad’s Army about them.

The procedures inside are peculiarly retro: very early 20th century. Pencils on string!

You give them your name, and they can never find it: “There’s no Andrew O’Neil here.” “I didn’t say Andrew O’Neil,

you pillock! It’s … oh, lordy, now I’ve forgotten it.” You get a brief origami lecture and are then directed to your booth.

Here, you’re left alone with your private grief. You have last-minute doubts. The pencil wavers.

A devil on your shoulder tries getting you to vote Conservative or Liberal Democrat: just for the badness of it.

It’s a good idea to take a bottle or container of some kind with you in case you need to micturate, perhaps after drinking from your hip flask and eating your sandwiches. After a few hours, you emerge from the booth and announce proudly, “I’ve done it!”, as if you’d been donating sperm.

This year, for the first time, I was tempted to ask for a postal vote.

In the privacy of your own home, you could vote while completely squiffy.

But there’s a slightly sly tinge to postal voting, and it has ever been prey to suspicions of jiggery-pokery.

No, once more I shall march determinedly to the polling station. I shall do my duty. I shall vote for the least worst candidate.

And they shall lose.

Take your Pict

THE Picts are never out of the news these days. You ask: “What have they done now?” Well, nothing. They’re a’ deid, or perhaps surviving in many a Fife, Perthshire, Orcadian or northeastern Scot’s DNA.

But archaeological findings have been coming thick and also fast, usually involving hillforts. Oddly enough, as I write, I can reach down and grasp a tome from my nearby bookshelves called The Problem of the Picts. I confess that I’ve never read it, but I would never part with it.

The essay collection was published in 1955, during the Decade of Decency, when Sir Anthony Eden sat on the throne and crime was as rare as a modern cyclist’s hand-signal or banter with the woke.

In The P of the Ps, FT Wainwright, BA, PhD, FSA, FRHistS, notes that we don’t even know what the Picts called themselves, Picti being the Roman name for “painted people”. That was “painted”, as in “tattooed”. If you have, or yearn for, tattoos today, you are probably a Pict. You are part of the problem.