one too many Burns Suppers and Orange Lodge marches for this Scotsman columnist--

"Concerns, as expressed in this newspaper yesterday, that young people are put off by the formality of Burns suppers have nothing to do with it. It's the fear of yet another rendering of one or both of those poems, a fear that also afflicts the not quite so young, including a writer near you.

Nothing, or not very much, against the performers. Most renditions I've heard - and I've heard a puckle over the years - have been well done, some with the Holy Willie works of nightgown, nightcap and candle, Tam with a bunnet and once a cameo appearance by Cutty Sark.

It is simply that custom does stale their infinite variety. How those enthusiasts who attend a string of suppers each year manage without screaming I don't know. It can only be that, like judges at a gymnastic competition, they pass the time by awarding points: "A good "chosen sample" but only a moderate "ne'er lift a lawless leg" and fell apart on " 'a the glory shall be thine"- 5.3. Next!"

And a next there will be. They only have to wait until the next supper where, let us not forget, there will be yet one more address to the ubiquitous chieftain o' the pudden race, abune them a' taking its place, gushing its entrails and with some over-enthusiastic declaimer clapping a blade in his walie nieve and making it wissle to risk of throats and fingers. Haud me back. "