Dateline Stornoway II

Just to prove Stornoway is the news centre of the universe two stories pop up on the radar with a Hebridean connection.

Watching the lunchtime news here my mother gasped as it was announced that US billionaire Donald Trump has won his battle to have his golf course in Aberdeenshire. She, of course, knows him as “Mac nighean Chaluim Alasdair UIlleam” (the son of Calum Alasdair William’s daughter) who came from the same village as she does. As part of his publicity campaign Trump dropped in on his late mother’s village of Tong earlier this year (9th of June my mother, who keeps a better news archive than Bill Lucas, tells me) He'd never found time to do so before. I wonder when we’ll see him next in these parts.

Then the news drops that Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy has joined the campaign to give the Stornoway Black Pudding European Geographical Protected Status.

There are imitation “Stornoway-style” black puddings flooding the market and it just isn’t good enough, or rather having been blind tasted, they aren’t good enough.

Now Highland MSPs want to give the “marag dubh” the same status as Parmigiano and Champagne and Metlon Mowbray pork pies. On his way to Iceland to extract the money that Scottish councils deposited there (not the Western Isles Council this time) Murphy stopped off in Edinburgh to endorse the campaign.

Stocking up on puddings this afternoon I chatted briefly to Iain "Barley" MacLeod, one of the local butchers. He reckons it will take ten years to get protected status. Great news for local freelance journalists, this is a story that will run and run.

I've just remembered that Jim Murphy is vegetarian so his endorsement is generous considering what goes into black pudding. He's on the way to Reykjavik but I suppose there's no chance of getting him to stop off at Sulasgeir to grab a guga for the pot.