Helen and the Red hobgoblin

So, while Professor Arthur Herman’s book, How Scots Invented the Modern World, has been seized upon since it came out to be put up there on a shelf next to the tea-towel with our other "inventors" on it (Logie Baird, Bell, Dunlop, Macadam, Fleming, Simpson, etc), we could almost thank Tommy Sheridan for enlightening us to the fact that it was a Scotswoman who translated The Communist Manifesto into English. Not a lot of people know that.

Our man in the Big Apple alerted us to the New York News and Letters Committee party held in West 14th Street (get off the subway at, most appropriately, Union Square) to celebrate David Black’s book, Helen MacFarlane: A Feminist, Revolutionary Journalist and Philosopher (Lexington). Admittedly, the Yanks were more interested in her as a feminist than a commie.

Meanwhile, we had been worried that Tommy was going soft after backing merchant bankers involved in the Enron scandal, but we spotted that one of his latest motions at Holyrood is a tribute to Helen MacFarlane and an appeal: "At last this radical Scotswoman will be rescued from obscurity." He hopes the Scottish Parliament Information Centre will order a few copies of the book.

There’s a reason why she is so obscure, though. She translated it under the pseudonym "Howard Morton".

She was living in Burnley in the 1850s and knew Friedrich Engels. That’s how she got the gig.

However, the original famous opening sentence was not: "A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of communism." It was: "A frightful hobgoblin stalks throughout Europe. We are haunted by a ghost, the ghost of Communism." Maybe not quite as catchy, but it does have a ring of Tam O’Shanter about it.

Radical Bob's Big Night

CASANOVA’S Limp sounds rather nasty, even enough to make your eyes water, but as a fan of a pie and a pint we are prepared to put up with a play of said name as part of Oran Mor’s lunchtime theatre series which has kicked off again in Glasgow.

But before the Bewley’s Cafe Theatre claims it is the first to put a post-modern spin on Casanova next week, we are about to correct it.

SR Plant’s play may well be a tale of female kindness and male opportunism, as he is nursed on his deathbed by two former lovers.

But the definitive post-modern Casanova was not Fellini’s Marcello Mastroianni, Richard Chamberlain or even Frank Findlay, but Bob Hope - and an authority as esteemed as the Wall Street Journal backs us up. Indeed, the Journal has hailed Casanova’s Big Night as the most radical part Hope ever played.

Bob was the first to dispense with the Aristotelian model of suspending disbelief and to introduce a Brechtian approach. In the final scene, with Bob’s head on the block and the guillotine about to drop, the image suddenly freezes. A voice-over explains that, although Paramount would "like to see Mr Hope’s head roll into the basket", the star insisted on filming his own ending. Cue rewind as Bob dispatches the villains and wins the girl. That’s all, folks.

Another Indian takeaway?

WE WILL be flocking to the nearest television this evening to see Channel 5’s How Not To Decorate. The legendary Mrs and Mr Unis, famed for their pakora and other Indian delicacies, are receiving the treatment from Colin and Justin as they have recently had their house done up.

LAST word on the flamboyant, nay baroque, performance of Sir Timothy Clifford at the audit committee this week goes to chairman Brian Monteith: "It was as colourful as your Titians."

CLYDESDALE Cricket Club made it on to the news agenda at the White House press room yesterday. Our man in Washington explains: "Some Brit flagged up the return of Yasir Arafat on the wires ... to Titwood. The supine allies of the neo-cons in the media are not so much meticulous as gullible."

THE erudite Alastair Simpson came across two young ladies in Sunny Leith the other evening building a snowman in deserted Duke Street. "They were charming French students. But on my way home half an hour later, I was quite shocked to see that it had the most enormous phallus I had ever seen." Sounds like something out of Trainspotting, Alastair.

Carry on Blunketting

DAVID Blunkett, it would appear, ranks among the undead, just like Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson.

We know Tony Blair is loyal to his political hitmen, but it is stretching things that Blunkers is alive and kicking as Home Secretary, whether Charles Clarke realises it or not. New citizens of our ken were amused at their recent "inauguration" ceremony to receive the Blunkett picture and missive from an embarrassed official. Entitled Message from the Home Secretary, its modest tone had all his hallmarks. Not quite "my mistress and I", but he does say: "Her Majesty The Queen has asked me to welcome you on behalf of herself ... blah-blah." There follows a homily about the qualities of a good citizen before the sign-off: "Together we can all ensure that Britain in the 21st century continues to be a decent and open society, respected across the world." Despite, that is, the shenanigans of government ministers.

Romanov team needs a name

OUR man in Lithuania tells us that Vladimir Romanov (right), the mysterious new owner of Heart of Midlothian, also sponsors a Belarussian team called MTZ-Ripo in Minsk. "Understandably, the club is considering changing its name. One suggestion is Minsk United. Min United?" Nyet. Meanwhile, Vladimir’s arrival at Tynecastle was not the first time he’d been in Scotland. As a Soviet submariner, he says, he’d been up the Forth a few times having a reccie at Rosyth, albeit unofficially.

Forecasters forced to work under a cloud

MICHAEL Fish should thank his lucky stars that he is not Russian, and Heather the Weather had better watch she doesn’t end up in the gulag, according to our man in Moscow.

Weather forecasters in Russia have been warned they face heavy fines if they get it wrong. And in Romania, the head of the Meteorology Agency, Ion Poiana, was fired after he predicted warm weather fronts when temperatures plunged to a record minus 36 centigrade.