Jonathan Brocklebank

People have started calling him a 'low energy' minister - 'complacent', 'asleep at the wheel'. Even Angus Robertson's own party privately accepts it's true, they're saying.

Licorice McKechnie's mesmerising performance with The Incredible String Band at the most celebrated concert of the decade turned her into a sixties icon

Certain barbed remarks live long in the memory. It must be 25 years ago that a female friend chided me for still dressing exactly as I did when we first met at university.

Her face may not be instantly familiar to many of BBC Scotland's audience of millions, but her decisions certainly are. For the past year, Hayley Valentine has controlled its broadcasts and taken the heat - or credit - from those of us with opinions on them.

IT is 100 years since the ­publication of Franz Kafka's seminal work The Trial, a novel which irritates readers throughout until, in the final few pages, it chills them.

JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK: It's a lonely Christmas - but I'm having a ball

On the last day of 2025 I had an enthralling viewing experience in the early evening and, in the minutes before the Bells, another one which threatened to send me to snoozeland before they arrived.

If I had to choose a Scot who represented my polar opposite it would be hard to see past the actor Alan Cumming.

A few weeks ago my television told me I should retune it and, fearing the alternative may be worse, I ­complied. It is a smart TV, see, and I am an ageing viewer losing confidence in my dominion over household technology.

The prolific crime novelist Val McDermid, who has sold more than 19million books, should need no introduction to most Scots.