Poor Katie Price. They burn an effigy of her in Kent as part of the Guy Fawkes celebrations — and she’s also being blamed for a study showing that half of all schoolgirls want plastic surgery. The “Jordan Generation” are apparently being brainwashed into thinking they must enhance this and reduce that.

Well, here’s my dirty secret. I’ve had plastic surgery — and you lot paid for it. It started when I was 14 and the charming street urchins I shared my formative years with decided I looked like Griff Rhys Jones, a man who has since taught me a lot about the waterways of Great Britain, but not the look I was aiming for at the third-year disco. I had a protruding lower jaw — think Jimmy Hill or Bruce Forsyth. I was not deformed, but the NHS humoured my teenage angst, suggesting complex and costly maxillofacial surgery.

While being measured for my new face, they asked if I had any requests. “Em, yeah, could you make me look like Belle from Beauty and the Beast?” The NHS wouldn’t operate on me until I stopped growing at 19. There followed seven weeks with my mouth wired shut, unable to speak or eat. The surgeons did an okay job — sometimes I look in the mirror and admit I do see a wee flash of the Disney animator’s hand. I was so instantly changed that nobody recognised me. To this day, those high school tormentors haven’t the vaguest idea that “Griff” moves among them still.

Okay, that kind of anonymity isn’t going to be guaranteed by the boob job or liposuction that most prepubescent girls seem to be raiding their piggy banks for. But the problem for young women who make these physical alterations is that mentally and emotionally, you’re still exactly the same when the sutures are removed. The NHS gave me symmetry, but not the self-assurance that goes with having good looks since birth. Jordan and Michael Jackson’s desire for repeated surgery suggests that they never quite got what they wanted either. The irony isn’t lost on me that after all that, I’ve chosen to work on the radio. At least I have a face for it.

Scots have never done too well in the Tower of London, but the case of Moira Cameron is particularly troubling. After 22 years in the armed forces, followed by two as the first female Beefeater, she claims she has suffered bullying at the hands of her male colleagues. You might expect to hear allegations of such treatment in the Govan shipyards, but these, after all, are men who wear tights and frilly knickers.

My own time in London involved working in a tiny sports office with six Englishmen at the height of the Euro 2004 football championships. Variously known as Morag or The Sweaty Sock, I didn’t miss female company, just the opportunity to speak at a rate of more than two words per second. So I was delighted when I heard that another Scot, Gordon Strachan, was going to join us. At last some company. When the great day came, I sat in the production office, surrounded by 20 male colleagues, as my saviour walked in.

“Get us a cup of tea will ye love?” he said, without even making eye contact. Let’s just say he’s still waiting for it.

Butchers have mounted a campaign to give square sausage its own exclusive provenance, or, to use the EU jargon, Protected Geographical Indication. This prevents others from trying to pass off Slice — or Lorne sausage, to use its Sunday name — as the real, Scottish thing. You may mock, but the square sausage is so much more than flattened mincemeat. It’s the food of champions. James McFadden, after that wonder goal against France in Paris, came straight back to his maw’s chippie in Glasgow and demanded a roll ’n’ sausage. You know he wasn’t going anywhere near a “link”.

Apparently, though, we’re not doing enough to safeguard our indigenous specialities. Portugal has 10 times more protected foods than us. So what makes a dish Scottish? Our skill seems to be to take something that already causes heart attacks and increase the surface area to artery-bursting proportions. So while we’re securing Slice’s future, let’s stick deep-fried pizza on the EU menu, too.

November is National Novel-Writing Month. The long nights mean we’re supposed to get round to writing that book we’ve all got in us. To mark the occasion, I saw the stage version of Confessions of a Justified Sinner. James Hogg’s masterpiece is the reason I’ll never write a book. Nothing could come close to his genius. Hailed as the first psychological novel, it tackles pre-destination, demonic possession, fratricide and eternal damnation — which does rather put all this talk of Lorne sausages and jaw operations in perspective. I take comfort from the opening to the great man’s memoir: “I like to write about myself; in fact, there are few things which I like better.” Perhaps he wouldn’t have minded the odd newspaper column either.

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