Duncan Macintyre

The heavy promotion of Scot Squad, the latest in the tradition of Rab C Nesbitt, Still Game, Chewin' the Fat and others, demonstrates BBC Scotland's belief that the only form of comedy which is appropriate for television is patronisingly coarse portrayals of the working and non-working class, an attitude doubtless fuelled by a self-congratu­latory sense of comradeship with the characters.

In so doing, the programme makers are producing what they would leap to condemn in others, namely, clichéd and distorted representations of Scottish life and culture from which they would loftily and fashionably recoil.