IT is my sad duty to report that my old chum, Bob Wylie, BBC's Scotland's intrepid reporter, has lost his long battle to retain his sanity. Mr Wylie, whose idiosyncratic delivery is the subject of much envy within broadcasting circles, last week turned up for a regular news conference dressed not in his usual apparel - Slater's best - but in a nurse's uniform, looking a dead ringer for Barbara Windsor in Carry On Up The Speculum, including Wonderbra, stockings and suspenders. "The full bhuna, " as the man himself brazenly boasted.

Needless to say, Mr Wylie's boss, Blair Jenkins, who is used to weirdos parading around Queen Margaret Drive, did not bat an eyelid, though surely even he was tempted to call for psychiatric back-up. Mr Wylie claims that it was all in the cause of Children In Need - a likely story. It could, however, conceivably have been worse. It could have been Brian Taylor. Mind you, Taylor himself was spotted - allegedly also in the cause of charity - resplendent in black leather jumpsuit, studs and medallion, and looking not unlike Tom Jones gone to seed.

Level of political debate is pants

WUMMIN'S Hour invited two nearly men on to talk about their underpants. David "HokeyCokey" Cameron and David "Ducky" Davis, who are slogging it out to become leader of the Dodos, were happy to discuss what they had on under their trousers, in the full knowledge that John Major's Y-fronts could not easily be eclipsed in the public's affection. Ducky said he wears briefs, which may be why his face always looks like a chewed caramel. Hokey Cokey, however, owned up to boxers, which is very 20th century.

One would have liked to have heard how Maggie The Handbag would have responded to such tarradiddle. Imagine my old mucker, James Naughtie, quizzing her over whether she wore a thong. I can hear him now: "Prime Minister - ever been tempted to go commando?" She would've told him to do up his zip.

Snapshot of civil service bureaucrats

RARE is the topic on which my dear friend, Sir Merriman Linklater, and I do not see eye to eye. One we most heartily do agree on is the Scottish National Photography Centre (SNPC), whose chief executive, Graeme Murdoch, claims to be a connoisseur of baked beans, simply because he eats a lot of them. Of which, I fear, more anon.

Meanwhile, I am pleased to note that Sir Merriman thinks the SNPC a spiffing idea whose time has come.

Similarly enlightened on this matter is Sir Timorous Cliffhanger, heidbummer at the National Galleries, soon to depart for Umbria.

Both Sir Timorous and Sir Merriman would like the nation's photography hub to be the old Royal High School in Edinburgh, the so-called "nationalist shibboleth" which Donald Dewar vetoed as the home of the peedie parliament because it wouldn't cost enough.

By spooky coincidence, the High School is situated a stone's throw from the studio of Hill and Adamson, two of photography's founding fathers. The SNPC (whose Chairman, Michael Shea, I once granted a knighthood without first consulting HRH) has got to within a whisker of making the dream a reality. In mid-December, the National Lottery will decide whether to back its proposals.

The City Council, Sony, Sir Sean and Jack The Kilt have all given their blessing. You might think, therefore, that the most neglected art form in Scotland would at last be properly catered for. Only if you had no experience of the dead hand of the faceless civil servants in the arts and culture department who, though unelected, anonymous and unaccountable, have the power to kibosh the whole scheme. If they do, they must be named, shamed and deported to wherever is the modern equivalent of van Diemen's Land.

Hacked off about Monteith

WHAT are we to make of the decision by Mayday! Mayday! editor, Iain Martin, to expose Brian Monteith, right, Dodo MSP?

Readers who still have some will to live, may recall that last weekend Mr Martin revealed how Mr Monteith sent him an e-mail, encouraging him to write a leading article calling for McLutchie-at-Straws to fall on his sword. "Happy to speak to you about it, " wrote Mr Monteith, "but cannot afford to be quoted . . ."

You, like me, may think that Mr Monteith's wishes could not have been plainer. Mr Martin, however, blithely ignored the MSP's request and hung him out to dry. Why?

Because, says Mr Martin, he was so struck by Mr Monteith's "rank hypocrisy" following the resignation of McLutchie-at-Straws. Having called privately for him to go, here he was lauding him in public. The man was clearly a bounder and deserved to be fingered.

Nobody can be in any doubt that Mr Monteith acted treacherously.

Inside the Dodos, he has long been suspected of briefing against the leadership. He is a maverick in a party of misfits, numpties and dimwits. If - as one commentator has suggested - he is the brightest of them, the Dodos are in an even more dire situation than one had supposed. Once the e-mail to Mr Martin was in the public domain, he had no option but to resign the whip.

Mr Martin's betrayal of a source has left even the most cynical of hacks gasping. In a profession with the haziest of ethics, one of the few givens is that information supplied in confidence should remain secure. It is to journalism what the confessional is to the priesthood and the Hippocratic oath is to medics.

Heck, hacks have gone to the clink rather than rat on a source. If that bond of trust is broken why risk telling a hack anything?

Surely, it's time for Mayday!

Mayday! to resurrect its Clype column. It need look no further than its editor to write it.

Bean of contention

AND so to baked beans, about which certain insignificant individuals have suggested I am obsessed.

I note with interest that our sister paper, the Evening Times, has been giving away tins of Branston beans lately. One bauchle took his tin into Burger King on Glasgow's Sauchiehall Street and asked if they could be heated up. One really has to admire his chutzpah.

A new book by Russell M Davies, infelicitously titled Egg Bacon Chips & Beans: 50 Great Cafes And The Stuff That Makes Them Great, hymns baked beans because children who would usually turn their noses up at pulses will eat them. Contrary to much received waffle, I do not disagree with this. My beef is with those, such as the above-mentioned Mr Murdoch, who insist on eating beans for breakfast.

Alas, Mr Davies has nothing to say on this critical subject. Instead, he insists that beans will be there when the world ends, "not with a bang, but with insectoid apocalypse survivors trying to open a can of beans".

Be that as it may, I recommend that he seek out establishments serving baked beans bred by Dr Colin Leakey, who has spent the last 35 years in the search for a baked bean which does not have a noxious, knock-on effect.

Pundits haven't got the foggiest

TOGA or not toga? Not, according to the makers of Rome, the BBC's latest costume-free drama which, whenever the action flags, as it frequently does, a naked doxy shoogles her hurdies at a passing legionnaire. Cue houghmagandy.

In the war of the dramas, Bleak House, also on the Beeb, is the clear winner, though, like Philip Hensher, I believe it is no more faithful to Dickens than Bony Prince Charlie was to Diana.

Among missing ingredients is the fog, which Dickens notes is "everywhere"; "creeping into the cabooses of collierbrigs" and "dropping on the gunwales of barges".

As usual, whenever a Dickens novel is adapted for television, witless pundits declared that were he alive now he'd be writing for EastEnders.

But, as Mr Hensher points out, if he was, EastEnders would be worth watching. As it is, it's mince.

Commuters have a beef with Scotrail

FORGET leaves on the line, ever-inventive Scotrail has come up with a new excuse for the tardiness of its service. En route from Edinburgh to Glasgow, the conductor apologised for our late arrival at Queen Street. This was due, he said, doing a Rev IM Jolly impression, to "cattle on the line" between Lenzie and Bishopbriggs.

Judging by the unfazed response of my fellow passengers, this must be an everyday occurrence.

Academy's sweet smell of success

PUKKA Glasgow Academy has made a rare appearance in the Times Literary Supplement, in a letter from one Edwin Moore, in response to a review by Theodore Dalrymple about declining standards of behaviour. "If he, " writes Mr Moore, "wants to see bad behaviour, he should watch Glasgow Academy parents dropping their kids off for school. Here is the Scottish ruling class in all its dour glory: white-faced mums clenching the wheels of Montessori wagons, cologned dads in Merc, s all dominating the road with big cars and big stares." Cologned dads? Cap that for an insult!