David Maddox: The musings of Mr Toad

As this blog as mentioned before, there are few more colourful characters wandering around the grey corridors of Holyrood than Professor Christopher Harvie, the SNP MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife.

The author of many academic works who spent much of his life in Germany provided some rare interest at the public meeting held by the Treasury Select Committee this morning.

He suggested that in their inquiries into banks the committee members should "read novels" particularly by John Le Carre and recommended a long forgotten tome from 1975 called The Crime Industry, produced by the Scotland Home Office and recently quoted by the German Finance minister as a must read.

It predicted that crime would be transformed by globalisation, tax havens and computers.

"That's why mafia bosses stopped using horse's heads and moved into real estate," Prof Harvie told me afterwards.

Committee chairman John McFall, Labour MP for West Dunbartonshire, politely noted that he had enjoyed reading Prof Harvie's books over the years.

However, he may not enjoy reading the Prof's latest work - Broonland - a publication due to come out in August in time for Labour's main party conference where the historian cum-MSP will chart the downfall of Gordon Brown and Labour, predicting a similar electoral annihilation to the one suffered by the Tories in 1997.

Passages can be found on his website which has another interesting twist for the man often described nicknamed the "nutty professor" in Holyrood.

Just to prove that there are still some politicians out there with a self deprecating humour, it celebrates another one of his nicknames - Mr Toad (as in the some time incumbent of Toad Hall in Wind in the Willows).

His likeness to literature's most famous amphibian perhaps most of all is in his style of dress. And Mr Toad is available to take visitors through his website.

The homepage even opens with Toad's most famous song - readers can make up their own minds on whether this fits Prof Harvie.

The world has held great Heroes,

As history-books have showed;

But never a name to go down to fame

Compared with that of Toad!

The clever men at Oxford

Know all there is to be knowed.

But they none of them know one half as much

As intelligent Mr. Toad!