Scotland c.55BC–2007AD

Scotland, that mighty nation located inconveniently to the north of England, which gave the world whisky, a fair legal system, an excellent education system, the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, Billy Connolly and Gordon Brown, has taken the high road for the last time, following the publication of reports by the Federation of Small Businesses and the OECD showing Scotland is the worst performing small country in Western Europe thanks to its terrible health record and appalling life expectancy.

The conception of Scotland is, like so many other conceptions, clouded in a haze (though not, unusually, of alcohol). Doubtless it had been around for many millennia, quietly getting on with whatever it was doing, before it first came to the world's notice in about 55BC when Julius Caesar's forces successfully invaded Britain (shortly before successfully leaving as quickly as they could the moment they realised what a cold, damp and dark little island it was). It was with the Emperor Claudius's decision to invade again in 44AD (thus proving himself to be the drooling idiot his critics accused him of being), that Scotland really began to make itself known - largely by its habit of sweeping down into England for a bit of looting and pillaging. By 121 AD this habit had become so irritating to the Romans that the Emperor Hadrian decided to build a wall from Northumberland to Cumbria to contain the loosely affiliated tribes to the north thus provoking one of the world's longest neighbourhood boundary disputes and inadvertently providing the spark for Scottish nationhood.

Over the following centuries relations between Scotland and its southern neighbour would prove fractious, with England constantly sidling up to Hadrian's wall and peering jealously over it to eye up Scotland's beautiful glens… and bonnie morags. Down the centuries, the two countries would frequently come to blows, each invading the other repeatedly. In 1296, England's Edward I even succeeded in stealing the sacred Stone of Scone, not only depriving the nation of the artefact on which each of its kings had been crowned but also denying the Scots the recipe for one of their most exquisite items of patisserie.

Despite such incursions, the Scots busied themselves with becoming a powerful small nation. As a sign of their pride, the people dressed themselves in the favourite accessory of the British traveller, the long tartan rug, thus signifying their deep desire to proclaim the greatness of the nation across the globe, while oppressing all the locals and never, ever returning home.

Although the Act of Union with the Auld Enemy in 1707 failed to halt Scotland’s flowering, as philosophers, scientists and artists made their country the cradle of the Enlightenment, the first signs of strain in Scotland’s health were to show when Bonnie Prince Charlie failed to wrestle control back from the English – leading directly to the Highland clearances as Scottish mountains were offered at knock-down prices to English landlords. But, for the next two centuries, though subjugated, Scotland continued to extract its revenge on the English by exporting its shortbread, Rabbie Burns and prime ministers.

By the 1970s the years of struggle had begun to weigh heavily. When North Sea oil was discovered off the coast of Norway Scotland, it was wickedly siphoned off by the English, denying the Scots vital revenues to maintain their infrastructure and access to the premium grade oil necessary to maintain their world-renowned cuisine. Soon, unscrupulous establishments sprang up offering traditional Scottish fare deep-fried in inferior oils (and sometimes even whisky). A daring retaliatory raid at Wembley during the Home International against England, saw a squad of crack Scots reclaim some English soil (and turf and goalposts) in retaliation for the theft of their oil, but it was too little too late. The annual invasion of Edinburgh every summer by English comedians drained the country of vital resources (mostly whisky and accomodation), and a desperate attempt by the Scottish Health Board to reverse the decline in public health drastically backfired when their drama-documentary series Rab C Nesbitt failed to appal right-minded Scots.

A last gasp attempt to wrestle Scotland away from the English gave Scotland some hope in its dying moments when the SNP swept to an indecisive victory in the Scottish elections. But even the ban on smoking in enclosed public places failed to halt the decline of the nation’s health as plucky Scots huddled together in doorways for warmth (in June) as they stoically puffed their way through a packet of 20 whilst preparing to roll themselves back haim to an evening drinking lager on the sofa while tucking into a vegetable, fruit and indeed food-free 20,000 calorie meal and the prospect of a premature grave.

Scotland will be buried at the High Kirk of Irvine Welsh, the service will be conducted by the Reverend Begbie and the congregation will sing “Lager, Lager, Lager, Lager, Lager”.

100,000 Scottish Votes May 3 2007-May 4 2007

100,000 Scottish Votes have been cast into the Great Polling Station in the Sky after massed ranks of Scottish ballot papers were spoiled in a debacle on a scale rivalled only by Jeb Bush’s “Hanging Chads 2000” Tour of Florida.

Scottish Votes were born amidst a fanfare of nationalist triumphalism from SNP leader Alex Salmond who predicted a bold new future for Scottish votes, a future in which Scots would determine their own political future and no longer migrate to Westminster to bugger things up for the English (a phenomenon believed to be the Scots' revenge for the decades when English votes buggered things up for Scotland with things like the Poll Tax, not to mention all those jokes about deep-fried Mars Bars).

Within minutes of the polling stations being opened, however, Scottish voters were thrown into confusion by multiple ballot papers whose complexity was on a par with the Schleswig-Holstein question and whose incomprehensibility was on a par with the popularity of Noel Edmonds. Matters were made yet worse for the Scottish Votes when they found themselves faced by a new method of electronic counting. The new counting machines were to prove disastrous – particularly in the Highlands and Islands where electricity only reaches the communities sporadically, chiefly during lightning strikes.

Meanwhile in the Western Isles the count was delayed by fog, which grounded the helicopter carrying the ballot boxes to Stornoway. Ballots will now have to be transported in the traditional manner, each vote placed in a bottle and thrown in to the sea. All islanders are being urged to empty suitable bottles as quickly as possible and cast their votes into one of the two wobbly Atlantic Oceans in front of them.

With initial returns suggesting Boris McYeltsin's election as the Scottish Socialist MSP for the constituency of Tommy Sheridan (South) and Nessie being returned as First Minister for Bournemouth, it quickly became apparent that the new system made the calculation of how many votes had been cast and for whom - hitherto understood to be the purpose of elections - even more difficult to add up than the cost of the Scottish Parliament Building.

Less than 24 hours after their birth, 100,000 Scottish Votes were found dead, bludgeoned by electoral incompetence. Following a lengthy court process they will be folded (incorrectly) and marked “spoiled” before being buried at a place of worship and in a service which has not yet been determined, thanks to a funeral ballot form modelled on a national lottery scratchcard.

100,000 Scottish Votes are survived by a Labour victory in the Scottish Parliament, an SNP victory, an SNP led-coalition, a Labour-led coalition and none of the above... all at the same time.

Those Who Knew Them: Magnus Magnusson 1929-2007

For the latest in our series of personal tributes from those closest to the recently deceased, we at As A Dodo are honoured to have been granted an audience by one of Magnus Magnusson's most famous co-workers, the Mastermind Chair.

I doubt there can be anyone in Britain over the age of 20 for whom the death of Magnus Magnusson will not cause a moment's pause as they ponder the passing away of a significant period in their past. As host of Mastermind - a programme in which I am proud to have played a significant, though non-speaking, role for 25 years - his was one of the faces that stared out from the screen at a whole nation. He was a significant star in the televisual firmament at a time when all of us would gather before it to gaze at its wonder. As host of Mastermind throughout the seventies and eighties he belonged to that curious pantheon of on-screen figures - Morecambe and Wise, Tom Baker as Doctor Who, The Two Ronnies, Jack Warner's George Dixon, newsreader Kenneth Baker - who were worshipped by families sitting on their sofas on dark winter evenings, tucking into tea and biscuits as they bathed in the glow from the cathode-ray tube. Such was his fame that he was even to stand alongside Harold Wilson, Frank Spencer and assorted members of the cast of Coronation Street as one of the people 1970s comedians really couldn't do an impression of.

What was he like? Ask any of the Mastermind contestants and they will tell you he was charming, courteous, humorous, kind. It was a side, I regret to say, I was not to see myself until our joint retirement from the programme in 1997. Before that I could only sit opposite him - usually more than a little encumbered by the bottom of some obsessive tax-office worker, local council accountant or other person with too much time on their hands and too few social skills in their personality - and watch his magnificent performance as the programme's quiz master. Introduced by the lumbering, threatening tones of "Approaching Menace", Magnus asked his questions in a manner more usually associated with Laurence Olivier plunging a dentist's drill into Dustin Hoffman's premolars. As inquisitor he was dour, unsmiling, intolerant of error and more than a little surly, somehow succeeding in giving the impression of being beyond such petty human concepts as pity or mercy. Not only did this brilliant charade help to give the programme its bite and attract an audience of up to 22 million, it was also to prove the inspiration for Gordon Brown's on-screen appearances.

It was as the programme came to a (thankfully temporary) end on terrestrial television in 1997 that I was finally united with the man I had for so long admired from a distance, when he freed me from my BBC shackles and allowed me to join him in Scotland. Over the years I have been sat on by many rears, the rears of winners and losers, brewing technology supervisors and polytechnic lecturers, barristers and bus conductors, but out of all of them there has only been one set of buttocks by which it has been a pleasure to have been graced.

40 Trident Missile Warheads 1990-2006

40 of Britain’s Trident Missile Warheads were found dead this morning at Faslane naval base in Scotland. Police believe they took their own lives before receiving a death sentence this afternoon from Prime Minister Tony Blair as he announces the white paper on replacing Britain’s nuclear deterrent.

The Trident Missile Warheads were born in 1990. Despite massive public interest in the infant warheads, they were kept from the public gaze by their reclusive parents, British Nuclear Fuels and the Ministry of Defence in a PR coup said to have inspired Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.

Acutely aware of the threat the warheads posed to peace, the British government spent billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on a secure underground silo near Loch Lomond for the warheads. They were allowed out on educational trips across the Atlantic, but only under armed guard aboard Vanguard class submarines.

Ever under the vigilant gaze of their attendants, the young warheads quickly became frustrated at not being allowed to roam unhindered or to achieve their optimum speed of 12,000 mph ... despite repeated requests to the Royal Navy from Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, not to mention some of the tabloids' more bellicose feature writers. Eventually the Warhead's frustration turned to anger and they began to spend much of their time with the Vanguards muttering “what you looking at?” to Russian subs, Argentinean fishing smacks and amorous whales.

With the collapse of the Soviet threat in the 90s, many started to feel that Britain no longer needed an expensive nuclear deterrent, and anyway, that job was done far more cheaply by allowing Sellafield to keep leaking radioactive isotopes into the Irish Sea. With calls for decommissioning growing, the Trident Missile Warheads became increasingly withdrawn. Depression sank in as they realised that, despite their ability to make the sky light up brighter than a thousand suns, they would spend the rest of their lives in darkness.

The warheads will be buried in a lead-lined casket at a top secret service attended by close friends and family including George Bush, Tony Blair and Dr Strangelove.

They are survived by Russian, American, North Korean, Israeli, Indian, Pakistani and Iranian warheads, and hundreds of little warheads back at Faslane asking "When's Daddy coming home?"