MW IS not one to gush, but plaudits are due to BBC Scotland for making top-quality hay with the Bendy Wendy story. Glenn Campbell started it all off (albeit on an inaccurate cue from the Sunday Mirror) by prompting Wendy to blurt out a potentially union-busting U-turn on his Sunday sofa. Then there was Gordon Brewer's merciless harrowing of the lady and her colleagues on Newsnight Scotland from Tuesday through to Thursday. Our highlight was Brewer's silencing of the normally glib Iain Gray MSP, expertly skewered on the prongs of the Brown-Alexander referendum contradiction. When Brewer suggested that the Labour Party was having problems understanding English and that another language might be preferable, Gray said, wackily, that he actually spoke Portuguese. MW feels compelled to ask: até que ponto um militante, do Partido Trabalhista, se sente inútil para pedir a sua demissão? (Translation: how useless do you have to be in the Labour Party before you have to resign?) Jenny Percival, one of Scotland On Sunday's star signings last year, leaves this week for a job on The Guardian's news website. The SOS's Westminster correspondent, Percival - formerly a political correspondent for The Scotsman and Sky News - will not be immediately replaced, and chief political correspondent Eddie Barnes is expected to wear two hats in the meantime. As for the longer term, watch this space ...

AT The Scotsman, which still boasts online readership in excess of four million, MediaWatch hears of problems in its online department. A spate of recruitment drives from other media companies has left the paper with a lot of fancy hi-tech web gear and a shortage of staff who know how to get the best out of it. A quick scan through the classifieds shows the paper is seeking no fewer then three multimedia robo-hacks, the Evening News another. Our source tells us some senior figures at the paper will have to be more positive about the net's role in the group's future if they are to retain cybertalent.

A misleading story on The Guardian's website frayed tempers at XFM Scotland this week. The indie music station, which controversially replaced daytime DJs with a computer programme last year, was said to be replacing Scottish presenters with more shows imported from London. Not true, says XFM man Stuart Barrie, who told Mediawatch that presenters Susan Hay and Fraser Thomson will be replacing the computers in the near future. MW wishes both DJs the best of luck.

WITH friends like the Daily Telegraph's Alan Cochrane, left, who needs enemies? "Cocky" was appearing on a panel last week to defend the BBC's Scottish coverage on the network news. Although ostensibly allied with Mark Byford, the BBC's head of journalism, who was also on the panel, the Telegraph's Scotland editor spent much of the debate giggling and throwing bits of paper at Byford's head. Bring back the belt, we say.