Donald Trump sketch: Tour de force from a true eccentric, still tilting at windmills

“There’s only one Donald Trump,” chanted the anti-wind-farm brigade, before the tycoon was whisked away in a black Range Rover after the most eccentric, yet strangely compelling, committee appearance witnessed at Holyrood.

The adoring chants from the wind-farm objectors clashed with the boos from the renewables supporters as Trump made a brief appearance in front of a parliament still trembling from his bombast.

A bizarre couple of hours in front of an MSPs’ committee had just seen The Donald joke that he was “thinking of” buying Rangers, dispute the existence of global warming and claim that the cancer-stricken Lockerbie bomber had gone for a run in a park last week.

Unencumbered by false modesty (or any modesty whatsoever), Trump opened by telling the MSPs of his “many, many” tourism awards and his status as the builder of a Chicago hotel rated the best in North America.

“I have also created something that is magnificent. I have created what some people – and myself – are considering the best golf course in the world,” he said, describing his “small” development in Aberdeenshire.

Wind farms would “ruin” Scotland, claimed the multiple award-winning New York-based “world-class tourism expert” and expert golf-course designer with a “net wealth of seven billion”.

But this masterclass in overweening self-confidence failed to deter Chic Brodie of the SNP, who asked Trump to provide the “empirical evidence” that would show wind farms would result in the destruction of Scotland.

“I am the evidence,” thundered The Donald, as if his list of accomplishments was not long enough already.

Discussions then turned to the “betrayal” felt by The Donald (or The Evidence, as he now styled himself) at the hands of Alex Salmond and his predecessor, Jack McConnell. Both First Ministers had reassured him that it would not be possible to build a wind farm near his golf course, because of MoD objections and the interference with shipping lanes, Trump claimed.

“They lured me and I spent the money, and now I might regret it,” Trump complained. It was at a meal with Salmond in New York in 2007 that the current First Minister had made those assurances, Trump recalled.

“We had a dinner,” Trump said. “We talked for hours. We talked about windmills. Who would believe we wouldn’t talk about windmills?”

With all this windmill chatter, it was almost as if Trump and Salmond were planning a trip to the Moulin Rouge. For those whose minds are inclined to wander, thoughts of a trip to a risqué cabaret were not discouraged by the frequent references to the “Dancing Ladies of Gigha” made by Mike MacKenzie of the SNP. Great was the disappointment when it became clear that the Dancing Ladies were, in fact, three windmills on the island of Gigha, of which MacKenzie is a great supporter.

But what about the fact that both McConnell and Salmond had denied making such assurances to Trump?

“I have heard that, [but] Mr Salmond is denying other things on the front page not related to this,” said Trump, cleverly turning his attention to the First Minister’s Leveson troubles.

It was a diatribe punctuated by Trump’s repeated reminders that his mother was born on Lewis. Not wishing to appear outdone, Angus MacDonald of the SNP declared that his family came from a village five miles from Trump’s mother’s. Poor old Graeme Pearson of Labour was forced to admit he had no family connections to Lewis whatsoever.

Such was the fascination with Trump, it was easy to forget that other people were giving evidence to the committee. It was Mark Gibson, of Communities Against Turbines Scotland (Cats), who mentioned that bats were being sucked into the “low-pressure vacuum” created by wind turbines.

When it came to “bats”, there was no surprise that the battiest contribution to the meeting came from Trump when he attempted to compare the Scottish Government’s renewables policy to the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

“This is the same thinking that gave you al-Megrahi, where they let him out of prison… because he would be dead in two weeks. Guess what? He was seen running in a park last week,” Trump said – to bemusement all round.