The candidates on Isles FM

Click the arrow to listen to the Great Debate broadcast on Isles FM on Monday 3rd May after 5pm.

I am busy keeping my wayward wife and preparing for election

WOKE up this morning and there was no sign of Mrs X. Ah, she must be cooking a special breakfast for me, I thought. I’ll tiptoe down and surprise her. No, she’s not in the kitchen. Not in the loo. Garden shed? Nope.

No note on the fridge to say she has gone round to her sister’s? No. Of course, she has taken the mutt for a walk in the castle grounds. No, Hector’s still in his basket. Don’t panic; there must be a perfectly simple explanation. No, there isn’t. She has run off with someone. And it’s usually someone the wronged partner knows. Who was the last person I saw giving her a peck on the cheek?

Jimmy Ogilvie. Having had cataracts removed from both his eyes, he actually told me how it had changed his life as he can see pretty girls for the first time. Now he has changed my life by skipping off with my old missus.

He has single-handedly ruined my life; that’s what he’s done. Things will never be the same again. I’ll have to do my own cooking and stuff.

What did the fork-tongued Laird of Ogilvie Towers (currently closed to the general public) see in her? Everything, obviously, after his eye ops. And what was the attraction for her? I bet he’s got loads of money. We’ve all seen Jimmy O, sitting there in the corner of the Lewis and the Carlton sipping fine Napoleon brandy from his fancy crystal goblet. Shamelessly flaunting his bulging wallet, he has turned my beloved’s head.

Not that I haven’t got a wee bulge myself, you understand. It’s just not in my back pocket. Mine is more upfront, if you know what I mean. However, having just appointed Binnie, one of the superstars off the Gaelic TV weight-loss show Farpais Fhallain, as my personal trainer, I’ll soon slim down and blacken both of Ogilvie’s roving eyes.

Wait. Was it not Donnie Saunders I last saw planting a kissag on her? Donnie flipping Saunders. Him off the radio. I should have known. She has a thing about those broadcast types. Well, well. What the heck has he got that I haven’t got? Apart from a Crocodile Dundee hat?

And she is a stranger to the truth. She told me she didn’t like beards on men when I went a bit Adrian Chiles. Scarlet woman that she is. Right, sit down in a quiet room. Deep breaths. That’s it; into the living room.

“Hullo, darling, come in. Andy Murray was two sets down, but he is coming back now.”

There, bold as you like, was the alleged hussy herself in front of the telly, a cup of coffee in one hand and a breakfast crumpet in the other, looking as if the only bulges on her mind were the ones delivering Murray’s forearm smashes. She had sneaked downstairs at 8am to watch it.

Good morning, dear. You watch the tennis. I’ll just go and write something for the P&J.

First, though, I boil myself an egg to celebrate the return of my prodigal wife and wonder how Margaret Thatcher scoffed up to 28 a week to lose weight before the 1979 election. Maybe she kept up that regime afterwards, too.

Her Cabinet was probably so desperate to get upwind of her they would agree to anything.

“Right, let’s bomb the Belgrano. What do you say, John Nott?”

“Yes, yes, Margaret, whatever you say. Now would someone please open a window.”

It is important I study the habits of high-profile political figures in case I decide to stand at the expected forthcoming election on May 6. A letter arrived the other day asking me to allow my name to be put forward to be the Christian Party candidate. So I have cleared my diary.

Snigger ye not. It is an American-style open primary, so it’s open to anyone to be selected. And they are, we hear, having a bit of difficulty finding someone of the right calibre. They say they want someone to rock the boat. So call me, Rev Hargreaves.

My only mistake was showing the plea to sometime Labour apparatchik Callum Ian MacMillan. I suspect he’s now going for it, too. I told him it will take more than going now and again to listen to Rev Kenny I, and knowing upbeat Father Tom Kearns, the self-confessed former 1960s London swinger who is priest in the Catholic church, to become the ideal ecumenical candidate.

Kenny in the SNP office admits they are worried down there. They’ve heard the MacMillan fellow is the preferred candidate of the Gideons, the bedside-Bible crowd. Bet the Gideons are in Kenny I’s flock, too. That’s what I’m up against – cliques.

My secret weapon is that I’m going to be a doctor. I won’t be ripping out any appendixes just yet as I will be a doctor of divinity.

I came across this site on the internet, you see. All I had to do was answer a question or two like who was Adam and what does the word covet mean when they talk about your neighbour’s wife in the 12 commandments. Take note, the covetous Messrs Ogilvie and Saunders.

Just sent a hefty cheque, for post and packing, to an American college. I think it is really kosher in a general, non-Jewish way. Now a scroll confirming my new academic status is winging its way back across the pond.

My manifesto will say those who covet others’ wives will be put to death. No messing about.

Mrs X is shouting from downstairs that Andy Murray has lost to Roger Federer. Fantastic game, she says, but Andy is just saving himself for the ardours of a certain summer tournament in Wimbledon. Yeah yeah, whatever.

I’m still worried that Mrs X herself might be still saving herself for the ardours of that Ogilvie fellow – or that Saunders.