Once again with bands who are my personal friends I find myself getting the criticisms out of the way early.  In this case it is that I have seen pretty much all of these songs performed live, and one or two don’t quite retain that zip in their recorded form.  Maybe I just have to […]

St. Johnstone, the SPL’s newcomers, have made a decent start to life back at the top level, and are currently sitting in 8th place. As the league gears up again for the Christmas stretch, manager Derek McInnes talks about life in the SPL and points to one win in particular that was especially significant.

The Proclaimers are currently in New Zealand with three more shows scheduled this weekend. On their way home the boys have announced a stop off in Dubai for their 94th and final gig of 2009 on Friday 18 December. Details and NPR set below.

I think it’s time to take stock and review the state of our game in a rational and moderate way by searching for Scotland’s Player of the Century. Yes, let’s take a look back through the first ten years of the millennium and determine which player best represents our very own lost decade.

…Derek Forbes, according to the readers of Dear Scotland. Many thanks to the thousands of new visitors to the site in the past week who voted. Derek joins Stuart Adamson and Paul Thomson in Dear Scotland’s Greatest Ever Supergroup. Some great DF moments below:

So we come to the last of our ‘greatest’ questions: Who is Scotland’s Greatest Ever Vocalist? Now if you’ve ever been to a football match or witnessed the pubs empty on a Friday night in Scotland, you’ll know that the Scots love to sing. And we’ve produced some of the best in the business.

See on really wintry days like these, I like to watch a bit of animation from Swatrick Payze. He’s arguably Scotland’s Greatest Ever Digital Animator. This week’s episode features The Secret Bubble Bath Tree.

This week in SEAN, James McAvoy’s Oscar buzz gathers more momentum with screenings for The Last Station in New York and LA, a new interview and a Golden Satellite nomination. Also Gerry Butler is named Glasgow’s first Film Ambassador and David Tennant is the Fifth Greatest Scot ever.

In the first of his monthly columns on Scottish Literature, Alistair Braidwood takes a closer look at ‘Morvern Callar’ by Alan Warner, the 1995 novel that was later made into a film by Lynne Ramsay. Next month Alistair will examine Andrew O’Hagan’s ‘Be Near Me’.