Why can’t James Bond or Meghan Muckle simply wear an anorak?

PEOPLE often shout at me: “Hey, big nose, what kind of journalism do you do?” And I mumble: “Well, you know how papers have political correspondents, health correspondents an’ a’ that?” “Aye.” “Well, I’m The Herald’s nonsense correspondent.” “I see. And what does that entail?” “It entails, my good serf, a lot of moaning.”

I shall now demonstrate the art to you with a moan about a right lot of nonsense: inequality. Telling you: I get right fed up with it sometimes. Don’t you? You do? We should do something about it. Well, not me. You. I’m on this planet merely to observe.

However, I can at least highlight the phenomenon by focusing this week on one aspect of it: claes. It has been flabbergasting, if that’s a word, to read about the cost of clothes worn by two of the world’s biggest movers and shooglers: Meghan Muckle and James Bond.

Muckle is married to that Prince Harry, and the pair are forever droning on about poverty and the environment, while living in an £11.5 million mansion and being ferried aboot in SUVs and planes.

In and around an event dubbed Wokestock in yonder Manhattan, Muckle wore a succession of costumes with a price tag that could feed the Third World and other parts of England.

Her outfits, according to yon Daily Mail, included a £4,274 or £3,850

(two articles on the same day had different prices) Loro Piana cashmere coat with matching £1,300 trousers and £425 Manolo Blahnik stilettos – worn while visiting a school for underprivileged kids in Harlem.

At the UN, she reportedly sported a £4,084 (£3,199) cashmere coat and camel wool troosers costing £470.

This is Marie Antoinette levels of trolling. Bond (a film character, Your Honour): that’s another one at it. True, he doesn’t bleat on about poverty, but why does he need a £3,690 Tom Ford wool silk suit and a Brunello

Cucinelli shirt costing £742 – inbelievable! (as a Moomin would say) – to go around punching people oan the heid? I have my own confession. While researching this article, I found I had nine anoraks, 10 if you include my Kag in a Bag (foldaway cagoule). But one of these has lasted me 26 years. I’d put the average price at £30-35.

Why can’t Bond or Muckle wear an anorak? And who the hell needs 10 anoraks? It’s disgraceful. All this in a week when the biggest pension increase in yonks was announced: £5.95 a week.

That’s £309.40 a year: Bond paid more than twice that for a shirt. Muckle wore a £566 belt to keep her troosers up. She and Child Harold drank £22 martinis (shoogled not stirred) in an £8,000-a-night (for a suite) hotel. At the UN, Muckle carried a £2,499 Valextra bag. My bag costs £7.99 on eBay. And it’s got a Kag in it!

What is all this, readers? Correct. It’s a load of nonsense. And, using reports by other journalists, I shall never stop tirelessly exposing

it.

Well out of it

NOT all my life is miserable. Occasionally, a ray of sunshine breaches the clouds. Actually, that’s over-egging the pudding, but here it is anyway: every Wednesday, for Thursday’s paper, I write a sketch from Prime Minister’s Questions at yonder Hoose o’ Commons, when in session. I watch online. It’s awkward not being there but has advantages.

For many years, I did a sketch from Holyrood, and my counterpart from another paper – living over an hour’s drive away – did his off the telly. I doubted the wisdom of this, as you might miss the atmosphere or something happening off-camera.

On the other hand, sometimes I went to the Parlie but ended up watching proceedings off a telly in a nearby room.

Fact is it’s better for close-ups of facial expressions and dubious clothing accessories, and also – at Westminster – for being tellt which backbencher from the 600-odd strong mob is havering.

I still have a slight bias for being there, but I’m not moving to London, selling my village bungalow in exchange for an airing cupboard in the English capital, just for the sake of half an hour’s nonsense 40 weeks of the year.

My point – if that’s not too strong a word – is that, a couple of hours after immersing myself online in the hullabaloo from doon yonder, I take myself to a lonely beach near the house, and enjoy the sweet feeling of being hundreds of miles from the democratic hubbub.

I do the same thing every time, at least when the tide’s out: give my favourite tree a pally slap on the trunk then walk out on a spit of pebbly beach, right to the water’s edge, where I stand for 10 minutes, staring glaikitly at the sea and the mountains. The sights soothe my worries about whether I’ve made a mistake or missed the mark writingwise.

I say “lonely beach” but, last time, a heron and a gull were also on the premises. The heron usually flies away, croaking in irritation. But I think he’s getting used to me now: “Och, it’s just Rab.”

The three of us just stand there, staring out to sea, far from the madding crowd of MPs.