Grovelling to 'The Donald' par for the course

HEAVEN knows what the notoriously publicity-shy, quite rich person Donald Trump will have made of the mass outbreak of fawning and scraping that has greeted his arrival on these shores, although there must be a strong suspicion he will have loved every minute of it.

Trump, a virtual recluse apart from weekly appearances on his own network television show in the US, flew into Aberdeen in his liveried private jet for the weekend to the kind of welcoming party normally reserved for visiting royalty, specifically Prince Charles.

So, as he stepped from the plane all cameras were trained on the great man's spectacular comb-over barnet to see how it would behave in the wind. As it turned out, half of it flapped gently in the breeze in a single piece, while the other half stuck somewhat unnaturally to the side of his head.

He was piped off his craft by, funnily enough, a piper, while local dignitaries queued up to ingratiate themselves with the property developer, who is charitably offering to invest some £300m in the area to help alleviate Scotland's chronic shortage of golf courses.

Trump, with characteristic modesty, says his planned new course, which still requires planning permission, will be the best in the world. In a typically open-hearted and generous gesture, he is also offering to build an unobtrusive five-star hotel.

So why did The Donald, as he likes to be known, pick this spot on the north-east coast of Scotland? First, there is potentially huge profit, I mean family connection. As he revealed in a recent rare interview, his mum, Mary McLeod, was from nearby Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis, that well-known suburb of Aberdeen.

But the most important factor was the area's tough natural beauty. "When I saw this piece of land I was overwhelmed by the imposing dunes and rugged coastline," he says. "I have never seen such an unspoilt and dramatic seaside landscape." And nor will the rest of us for much longer if he gets his way, I fear.

Added to this was the "hard work" of Jack McConnell who has done everything in his power, apart from mention the words Aberdeen, golf course, development and don't worry I'll swing it for you, to bring this project to Scotland.

It is fair to say that the normally taciturn and hard-to-impress locals have also completely lost the plot over the prospect of getting their grubby mits on some Trump gold.

Jennifer Craw, head of the local enterprise company, said the golf development was the biggest thing to happen to Aberdeen since the discovery of North Sea oil, and that it could "change the economic landscape of the region".

If that is the case then it will have to be a slightly bigger course than the one currently envisaged. Since its discovery, North Sea oil has sucked in some £340bn of investment into the area, and currently provides employment for around 80,000 Scots. That's an awful lot of caddies.

Now £300m is a lot of money to most of us, if not to Trump, who is currently pursuing one journalist through the courts for suggesting that he is worth around that figure rather than the £2bn valuation that he claims.

But does it really justify all this unseemly grovelling to an egomaniacal property developer over what is, after all, nothing more than a glorified private park, rather than a serious inward investment project?

Sadly, the answer these days appears to be yes.

How Dave the Spy used a keen eye

NEWS that MI6 has started openly advertising for recruits reminds me of an encounter I had with the secret service whistle-blower David Shayler some years back, before he had blown any whistles.

Shayler was a friend of a friend at the newspaper where I then worked. He was often up from London at weekends and I would see him down the pub.

To give you some idea of the level of discretion he maintained about his employment he was known to all as "Dave the Spy".

Anyway, I soon learned that Dave the Spy had got his job through a newspaper advert, only in those days they were a little more cryptic.

He sent in his application to an address which appeared in a box under the headline "Are you waiting for Godot?" and nothing else.

Alas, for the spooks, he was.

Burger-bashing served up with a side order of the blindingly obvious

SHOCK revelations this week about well-known salad retailer McDonald's. Apparently the country's best-known purveyor of lettuce leaves to the health conscious is not all it is cracked up to be.

According to an explosive new book, perhaps best not read over the dinner table, McDonald's is not the health food haven we have all come to know and love.

Nope, according to author Eric Schlosser the company sells largely prefabricated food which is cooked on a Henry Ford-style production line. No kidding.

Other revelations include the fact that almost all of the company's advertising is aimed at children, and that McDonald's gives away free toys with its products to drag in more of the little blighters.

Maybe I am getting a tad cynical but the revelation that McDonald's spends large amounts of time and money trying to get kids to eat its stuff does not strike me as much of a revelation at all.

Interestingly Schlosser's latest work, the snappily titled Chew On This, appears to be a largely regurgitated version of his previous best-selling adult exposé of the burger world, Fast Food Nation.

This time though he's marketing his ideas at a different demographic.

Yep, it's aimed at kids.

Exotic dancer tears a strip off creepy MSPs

DONALD Trump's arrival has not gone unnoticed by Veronica Deneuve, an exotic dancer from round these parts, and self-styled "well-respected stripper".

According to her website, Ms Deneuve is "raging" at the Executive's somewhat creepy determination to micro-manage every aspect of our lives, which has now extended, or shrunk depending on your point of view, to the distance lap dancers must keep between themselves and their clients.

Anyway Ms Deneuve, perhaps not her real name, says the one metre exclusion zone will undermine self-employed dancers' ability to earn a living, and points out that one of the Executive's other main obsessions, besides telling us all how to behave, is encouraging more people to go into business on their own.

"Young entrepreneurs? Look no further, these women have intelligence and drive that would impress even Donald Trump," she says. That and a number of other talents, no doubt.

For a women who takes her clothes off for a living, Ms Deneuve is a bit coy. Her website does not contain a picture of herself and when I e-mail to ask for a chat she is reluctant to talk on the phone. Eventually I get a call from a Veronica, if not the Veronica, and the offer of a free dance.

Uppermost in her concerns is the patronising attitude of the Executive which wishes to save her from herself, and her annoyance that under the Executive's proposals theatre artists may still disrobe where they like, but not strip-tease artistes like her.

Any attempts to restrict how she dances for her clients will be challenged in the European Court as a breach of her human right to self-expression, she thunders. Scotland's pathetic smokers may have been easily stubbed out by the Executive, but rest assured - the nation's strippers are not going to take this one lying down.