Girl power

With me in tow, my 11-year-old daughter watched Avril Lavigne at the Carling Academy in Glasgow last night. Was it good? "The best night of my life", according to Wade minor, encompassing an hour and half's travel, a Chinese meal, three hours of music and screaming (a weird experience that, like listening to 1,000 deranged fax machines go off at once) and a hour and a half's travel back into the wee small hours.

Fair play to Avril, or Mrs Whibley as she is properly known these days. She puts on a show and her teeny-tiny fans go home happy. So whatever you think of the singer and her music, she at least offers something substantial to have an opinion about. It's not just a beauty contest.

Thanks to Olympus for the pic, taken from row Y of the balcony of the Academy. Glasgow was the first venue on Avril Lavigne's European tour.

Miss Scotland, ya beauty

"These girls don't feel patronised; nor do they think they are pandering to their admirers' baser instincts.

"'If you're feeling comfortable, I don't really see why you'd bother about that. I think it's just a great opportunity,' says Ashley Scott, a language student from Gourock, who sounds genuinely surprised by the notion that she might be a sex object. Stacey Sharp, 21, who works in a pharmacy in Baillieston, is more blunt. 'Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I don't think it's a meat market at all. I think it's fab. I honestly don't know what to say to that at all. It's just ugly people who say that.'"

To read more about this year's Miss Scotland contest, go to the full article in Scotland on Sunday, which is here: Ya beauty.

For the record, my wife doesn't think it's a post-feminist event at all. Who cares, eh? Sleeping in the garden is quite comfortable at this time of year.

The photo shows some of the finalists with young Master Beaumont, son of the Queen of the South club doctor - by one of those happy quirks of fate, the contestants were staying in the same hotel as the team, who were playing in the Scottish FA Cup Final. The eventual winner of Miss Scotland, Stephanie Willemse, is second left in the photo.