COMMONWEALTH COMMANDO training
AT last, something to cheer from China, where the Olympic Games are to be held shortly. Rightly worried what sports hacks might think critically of the way their citizens dress and behave, the authorities in Beijing have issued guidelines to four million households. Men, for instance, have been told they should not wear pyjamas in the street, bare their chests or wear white socks with black shoes. Women, meanwhile, must wear black socks to cover up their thick ankles, assuming they have them of course, eschew see-through garments and don short skirts only if their legs are up to it. Both sexes must go easy on the garlic, refrain from spitting in the street, and shave daily. I jest. The last applies only to men.

I do hope my dear friend Alexei Salmonella is paying heed, especially with the Commonwealth Games in the offing. For a start, he could tell men that if they do go commando when wearing a kilt, it is not necessary to advertise the fact or volunteer to show off their hairy hunkers to passers‑by. He could also hand out spot fines to gum-discarders, dug walkers who don't pick up Rover's deposits and those nyaffs who roam Glesca's streets in the wee sma' hours, bellowing like bulls in heat. Another problem is shorts. Global warming has made the wearing of these items universal. Sometimes one sees them in offices, even ours. With T-shirts and sandals. Ugh! They must go. Thus Mr Alexei must appoint a fashion czar as a matter of priority. May I humbly suggest he consider his fragrant wife Moira, Strichen's answer to Carla Bruni?

Statue-removing fools take the biscuit
AS you will see elsewhere in this throbbing organ, I have been promenading along Embra's George Street with my new dear friend Sandy Stoddart, a sculptor from Paisley. No, that does not mean he is handy with a Stanley knife. Mr Stoddart makes sculptures of famous men. As yet, wummin have not figured significantly in his oeuvre. His subjects have included Robert Louis Stevenson, David Hume and Adam Smith. In general, he is happier with deid folk than living.

His latest monument is to James Clerk Maxwell, the physicist, which is due to be unveiled in George Street in November. Not so long ago, said Mr Stoddart, there were philistines who wanted to clear the statues away in order to allow cars to flow more freely. Mercifully, wiser counsels prevailed. But one must be ever-vigilant. Destroying, defacing and sticking traffic cones on statues, said Mr Stoddart, is a very, very dangerous business, and addictive.

I can well imagine, therefore, what his response might be to the news that in Italy a movement is gathering pace that aims to remove statues of Garibaldi, whom previous generations championed for his efforts to unite Italy and who, generously, lent his name to a biscuit. In Sicily, which is full of nitwits, a mayor has torn down a sign bearing The Biscuit's name, and denounced him as "a ferocious murderer in the service of Freemasonry and the British."

This wanton act of municipal vandalism has spurred on similarly ignorant others - including numpties in the Northern League, which Silvio Barmysconi takes seriously - who would like to split Italy in two, thus divesting the prosperous north of the Mafia-riven crooks in the south. What to add? Nowt. Except to observe that among Garibaldi's foes were the Bourbons, which, were it a war between biscuits, I'd be inclined to prefer.

It's the drivers, not the roads
ANOTHER week, and more deaths on the roads. The latest were on the A9, on which four people died eight days ago. These are usually termed "road accidents". We do not yet know the full circumstances surrounding these deaths but I am often confused when "road accidents" are blamed on the roads themselves. Roads do not cause crashes and deaths: reckless, incompetent, criminal drivers do. This seems not to occur to the Powers That Be. After last weekend's deaths, Fergus Ewing EmSPee predicted his chums in the Gnats would upgrade the killer road, as if it were a serial murderer. He found an ally in Neil Greig, director of the IAM Motoring Trust, who said: "We need to do more, particularly, on the design of roads in rural areas, which are so unforgiving." What he really means is that where people drive like lunatics on country roads with blind bends, they are likely to come a cropper. I agree. What I do not agree with is the solution. You can tinker with roads until they're all dual carriageways or motorways, but you'll never stop bampots causing horrendous accidents. That, though, is not such an easy problem for our tribunes to solve.

Tracey, when I'm with you ...
TO the Gallery of Modern Art and "the first major UK retrospective" of work by Tracey Eminem. I know what you're thinking: why? There are, alas, some questions for which even I do not have an answer. As I arrive, a man is touching up Ms Eminem's bum, which is clad in black knickers. Before you, dear reader, get yours in a twist, may I hasten to add that this is not Ms Eminem's actual bum, merely a photo of it, albeit of a humungous size. It also appears on the front cover of the catalogue of the exhibition, which says it all, really.

For this exhibition is not so much of work by Ms Eminem but work about her. Across several rooms, she is omnipresent: legs spreadeagled, pubic triangle exposed, in a black bra, nude, dancing (embarrassingly badly) on a video, talking to her mum, stuffing banknotes up her Cheddar Gorge. Her drawings remind me not of Picasso, Hockney or Egon Schiele but of the graffiti in public lavvies.

For instance, there, displayed in frames, like Fabergé eggs, are the shoes she wore as a wean. There are also pages what she wrote, detailing how she was refused admittance to a party because she didn't have an invitation. "Mum," she asked when she got home, "what's an invitation?"

In another room is an unmade bed, one of Ms Eminem's most famous works. It looks like something worthy of inspection by Rentokil. You may have one just like it. On a wall is a neon sign that says: "My c*** is wet with fear". Me! Me! Me! Me! That's what this exhibition shrieks.

I am ushered into a room full of reverential hacks, celebrity gawpers and my dear friend Ricardo Demarco. Ms Eminem has kindly agreed to answer a few questions. On the walls are blankets, decorated with words and other stuff, sewn crudely together like patchwork. One says: "Every time I feel love I think Christ I'm going to be crucified." Asked to explain this "wonderful" piece by Mr Ricardo, Ms Eminem says she doesn't want to offend anyone, but whenever she's "having sex or being f***** I feel like I'm being crucified."

She talks about her famous tent, in which she remembered everyone with whom she'd ever slept with. Is Scotland ready for Tracey Eminem?, asks the man from the Hootsmon. You bet, says Ms Eminem, citing the welcoming staff in the hotel where she's staying and an assistant in a shoe shop. She really must try to get out more.

The mark of an innocent man
SUCH, however, is modern art. Another typical example may be found at the Ingleby Gallery. At the Ingleby is a billboard, to be filled every three months by a different artist. First up is Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger, who has come up with "Mark Wallinger is Innocent". This is debatable. It refers to a campaign to free an armed robber who was in fact guilty. Says Mr Wallaby: "Who could ever claim they were innocent? And when? It's like one of these signs on a shop: Back in five minutes'. I'm sorry, but five minutes from when? ... maybe I was innocent on May 25, 1959 his date of birth. But in most senses, it's not something I can boast about." One can see why.