Hogmanay’s not our worst, by a long chalk

t IS a direct frontal attack on one of Scotland’s greatest tourist draws: Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations come in for a pasting in a new book that brands the event one of Britain’s worst days out. Event organisers can take comfort that the capital’s Hogmanay is up there with Stonehenge, Madame Tussauds and Haworth, home of the Brontës, in a scatalogical volume entitled Crap Days Out. What these cameos lack in accuracy (and that’s quite a lot) is more than made good by sarcastic polemic. But is it fair comment?

The flaw in this attack is that tens of thousands flock to the city each year for Hogmanay and that the depiction of “a giant internment camp which the council actually charges you to enter and battery hens think cramped” has not discouraged the huge crowds who continue to attend.

It is certainly true that it is not an event for every age: most residents prefer to stay indoors than risk the cold. But there are more ghastly days out that are spared the whiplash humour of this volume: a trip to the Highlands hoping to be served lunch at one minute past two; government-sponsored health fun; a teetotal Burns supper with vegetarian haggis; a Bank Holiday buying flat-pack furniture; or a visit to Ardrossan any day without a raincoat.