HARDEEP SINGH KOHLI

Last week I wrote about my immigration check/terrorist hijinks at Madeira airport. My refusal to remove my turban seemed to be on the verge of becoming an international incident. I was e-mailed via the SoS website and roundly chastised by a reader who accused me of being uncooperative and of "exacerbating racial tensions" during these trying and febrile times. Just let me be clear about this: I, the innocent, slightly overweight Glaswegian Sikh, have exacerbated racial tensions because I refused to remove my turban? What else am I guilty of? Maybe I should come clean. It was me who suggested that Scotland forgo its independence and sign the Treaty of Union in 1707. It was me who decided invading Iraq was a good idea. And it was me who hurdled the barrier at Celtic Park and cuffed the Milan keeper on Wednesday night.

Keeping it together for India's Partition

I got a call from my son's school in July. A phone call from the school is rarely a good thing. But this was one of those rare occasions when it was. His history teacher had heard a wee documentary series I had made for the wireless looking back on 60 years of the partitioning of India and he wondered whether I might just pop in and have a wee chat about it. No worries, I thought. A wee chat with what I imagined to be half a dozen A-Level history students; there'd probably be a glass of wine and a curly sandwich.

All was well and good until I checked out the school website a few days before the chat to find out that it was in fact billed as a lecture; but no ordinary lecture: the Richard Dimbleby Inaugural Lecture. It was to be delivered in front of 150 students and guests. And that's how I spent my Wednesday evening, nervously trying to seem knowledgeable hoping that the spirit of Mr Dimbleby senior was otherwise engaged.

Let's grasp the thistle at the Stade de France

Some hours after you read this I shall be sat in the Stade de France in my best kilt, over-sized sporran and darkest blue turban waiting for the hairs on the back of my neck to make themselves known as we prepare to go into battle. I then will be on the pitch (spiritually at any rate) joining the wall of blue, white and thistle as we get in among the Pumas and try to cause an upset at the Rugby World Cup.

My friend Andy called me and asked if I was Scottish enough to be interested in going to the game; he had a spare ticket. Scottish enough? It led me to ponder degrees of Scottishness. Are the Proclaimers more Scottish than me because they sing in a Scottisher accent? With my Glaswegian burr am I Scottisher than Alastair Mackenzie, once Monarch of all our Glens, who sounds like an Englishman even though he was born and brought up in Perthshire? And what about Archie Gemmill or Annie Lennox or Alex Salmond? Are they the Scottishest of the lot?

How do you convey what you feel about your nationality? It's a strange one. I interviewed some people in the British National Party a few years back. Bless them. I was offered the leader of the youth wing of the party, a boy barely old enough to shave, who had decided that Britain was solely for the use and enjoyment of the ethnically white. I was more than happy to help him enforce his policy if the rest of us could have Australia, America and South Africa back.

Anyway, I asked this lad whether he regarded me as Scottish. Obviously I feel very Indian, but I grew up in Scotland. He was quite firm in his opinion that I could never be Scottish. Ever. This was because I was not ethnically Scottish.

This lad from the BNP was not for moving. I tried to explain to him that even if my skin and my ancestry are not "Scottish", my heart and my soul are. I cannot control the quickening of my heart when I hear 'Flower Of Scotland'; I have no ability to stop my soul yearning for the Highlands when I hear the pipes played; I cannot stop shedding a tear when I watch Braveheart and Mel Gibson is on the rack.

(Incidentally the wee boy from the BNP said he would have been left cold by the prospect of an evening of chicken dhansak, aloo gobi and a peshwari naan all hand-served by Beyoncé Knowles and Halle Berry. Maybe he didn't like curry.)

I'm gladdened by the new dawn in the politics of a contemporary, SNP-skewed Scotland. The nation has never felt so inclusive, never felt so forward-looking, never felt so exciting. And I have never been so proud to be a Scot. I feel part of our future in a way I could only have dreamt of as I grew up.

Now all we have to do is send the Argentinians home tae think again. One dream at a time...

Musician who'll never sell his sole

My pal Neale has changed my life a little. We were having a battle of the singer/songwriters the other day, each championing different artists. I had made a convincing case for KT Tunstall and the Cowboy Junkies, when he uttered two words to me: Ray LaMontagne. Neale gave me the first album, Trouble. Now, in the old days, you would buy someone a CD and hand it to them or else purchase a voucher that they could redeem themselves. In this instance the album was purchased and gifted in a completely virtual way: the wonder of the interweb. This wholly modernistic approach to music buying couldn't have juxtaposed more sharply with the nature of the record itself. Having heard a song by Stephen Stills, LaMontagne quit his job making shoes in a factory and started touring. Five years later he had 10 songs and recorded Trouble in two weeks in Los Angeles. The album was done on the cheap with the producer playing most of the instruments, the painfully shy LaMontagne offering his fragile vocal to the mix. And flawed and raw as it is, it does what all truly great music does: it offers tragedy and beauty. For once in my life I am happy that there are fewer shoes in the world.

Take note, Mr Cameron

David Cameron's speech to the Tory conference was done without referring to notes. Can you remember anything he actually said in this script-free event? No, me neither; but I will never forget that he spoke without notes. Because last week everyone kept banging on about it. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm not sure that's such a big deal. I'd hope that the prospective leader of one of the world's most influential countries might be able to have the vision to know what he believed in without needing to be reminded.

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1602432007