Earlier this year I asked an old Canadian pal of my wife's had she ever heard of a chap called Paul Kennedy? Wireless chappy, I understood. Her prairie-wrinkled old sparklers gleamed momentarily, then dulled. 'Well,' she said. 'The name is kinda familiar. Does he have an Advice Column of the Air?' 'That sounds like him.' 'I'll let you know.' Like several other Canadians of our acquaintance, she sends, each Christmas, a multipage, photocopied account of her remarkable family's achievements during the previous year. You know: Charlene's studying ecological trends in Rekjavik; in April, Little Billy was promoted to First Triangle in the Winnipeg Philharmonic; Big Bill just can't wait to get out of the correction facility to hug his adorable new granddaughter ... & so on. This year she enclosed - 'for Scottie' - a small coloured photograph cut from some magazine or other of a fellow with the kind of grizzled hair, thrillingly roguish smile & improbably distinguished good looks that you normally only find in great, international diamond 'traders'. You can imagine my disbelief as I now try to reconcile this noble apparition with the kind of velvet collared opinions that can clammily embrace: welfare shirkers; Pooh Bear (in the name of Jaysus); the solipsistic Thoreau in preference to Emerson; the greasy hucksters from Athens screaming to have their stones back. And has no compunction about sneering at that bracing administrator, Michael Harris. Scottie B.