Hare-brained tourist hunt

Hare coursing, once regarded as a noble contest between beasts, is now non-existent in Scotland - officially at least. But Scotland does have its very own Country Sports Tourism Group, formed by an alliance of countryside interests and public sector bodies such as Scottish Enterprise and VisitScotland.

The aim is to promote Scotland abroad as the ideal location for bagging that stag or snaring that salmon.

I can’t help feeling that the Deer Commission Scotland, the government agency that recently sent marksman in helicopters to take out 80 red deer damaging an ancient woodland on environmental grounds, should join in. If deer hunting is your sport, who could resist swooping across the Highlands, Apocalypse Now-style, rifle in hand. There would be plenty of people out there willing to pay handsomely for the privilege and provide a major boost to the rural economy.

Brief encounter

GOOD news: Y-fronts are back - only now they are called hip-briefs. I have never truly felt comfortable with the boxer-short phenomenon and I am heartened that our most fashionable retailers report that sales of manly posing pouches are up by an astonishing 40%.

Harvey Nichols has rippling-torsoed Arsenal midfielder Freddie Ljungberg modelling Calvin Kleins, while classic brand Jockey, which launched Y-fronts in the 1930s, is about to introduce a retro-version.

The key now is not to wear them with boring white piping but with the designer name proudly on show. That means a pair of low-slung jeans.

Happy as Harry

IF ANYTHING was ever to make you reach for your pen and head off to a cafe in search of coffee and inspiration, it was JK Rowling’s ascendancy to the Forbes magazine list of dollar millionaires. Luckily for her, JK, creator of Harry Potter, also had supreme storytelling talent.

But it cannot be psychologically easy earning more than 500m in just four years for something as simple and pleasurable as writing. JK has to face constant attempts to find some new unhappiness in her life.

However, with an apparently happy marriage, two kids, three houses and the bank account of a small country, she seems to be managing nicely.

Call for leading man

LITHESOME Scots actress Daniela Nardini is starring in a new play. How do we know? She has given another interview bemoaning the lack of a man in her life.

"I’m single and there’s no one on the scene," says the actress still best known as sexy lawyer Anna in hit TV series This Life.

"It’s difficult for me to meet someone, because I refuse to go out with actors - they have delicate egos and it would be like having sex with your brother." That just leaves the rest of us then. Expect a male scrum now for front-row seats at the Citizen’s Theatre in Glasgow, where Daniela is starring in Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls.

Coming to grief

IN A Glasgow underpass last week and outside the gates of a city secondary were what are now the routine tributes to those who have died in public places - bunches of flowers tied to lampposts or railings.

So common is this now that think-tank Civitas calls it "Mourning Sickness" - part of a growing culture that is more about being seen to display grief rather than feeling it.

Civitas report author Patrick West is scathing: "We send flowers to deceased celebrities, weep in public over murdered children - but they do not help the poor, diseased, dispossessed or bereaved. Our culture of ostentatious caring concerns, rather, projecting one’s ego and informing others what a deeply caring individual you are."

I thought he had gone too far until I read that a group called Hedgeline had called for a two-minute silence for the ‘victims’ of those whose neighbours had grown towering hedges.