BURNS Night is this Sunday, and if you’re thinking that provides a solid excuse to get smashed in January you’re half Scottish already. This is how to do it:
Assign guests roles
It’s important to represent the full range of Scottish identity. Ask guests to embody the following stereotypes: Braveheart man, Simon Callow in Four Weddings, unintelligible Glaswegian in shellsuit, purse-lipped disapproving crofter, Calvin Harris and Begbie. Hair should be dyed vivid red.
Serve appropriate food
Scotland has a rich and varied cuisine of shortbread, Buckfast, tablet, Tennant’s Super, single-malt whiskey, grouse stuffed with lead shot and giant panda. All should be served with ‘the auld enemy’ as the Scots term Irn Bru because it is solely responsible for their low life expectancy.
Provide a Scottish soundtrack
Guests should be piped in. If you have no bagpipes due to being sane, a Henry vacuum cleaner packed with school recorders and set on blow will produce a similarly discordant wail. After which play Scottish music, beginning with the fey indie of Teenage Fanclub and working up, via Deacon Blue, Texas and Del Amitri, to the giddy heights of Runrig.
Read poetry
Poetry is central to Burns Night. Read selections from the work of William McGonagall, Irvine Welsh, Iain Rankin, Oor Wullie, any Doctor Who episode where Jamie is a companion, Alexander McCall Smith and the Culture novels of Iain M Banks. Ensure your Scottish accent is as broadly insulting as possible.
Perform in a cupboard
All Scots love the Edinburgh Festival, so recreate it by asking guests to put on their most monied English voice and perform a stand-up set, one-man play with full frontal nudity or Alan Ayckbourn farce in a cupboard, pantry or downstairs toilet to an audience of nobody. Reward each of them with three stars and debts of £18,000.
Get drunk and get burned
Finally, the climax of the evening: get your guests drunker than they have ever been in their lives to this point, or as they call it north of the border ‘Wednesday’. Get out the deep-fat fryer, decide which unlikely food each will be battering and hand-dipping into boiling oil, and administer the first-degree burns! Which is why it’s called that, what else would it be.
