Yesterday, at the party’s tartan fringe the room was large and, would you believe, full. Perhaps the smell of free food attracted passers-by or perhaps it was the whiff of forthcoming power?

Aunt Annabel and Uncle David turned up to speak in what can only be described as their weekend gear; Ms Goldie as a lumberjack and Mr Mundell in jeans and an open neck shirt.

The Shadow Secretary of State had a full explanation for the casual look: they had just visited a social action programme. “In fact, we have dressed up for our attendance here because you might have had the prospect of Annabel in a white, polyester jumpsuit.”

Mr Mundell’s message was a familiar one: hard work, no complacency and a rallying call of “dour optimism”. He laid out how Dave planned to lovebomb Alex under the Tories’ “mutual respect agenda” in the hope that the nasty Nats would not be quite so nasty and, if they were, would be exposed in all their nastiness by that font of sweetness and light ensconced in London -- Mr Cameron.

Aunty G, described loving-ly by a colleague as “indomitable”, rose in her chequered shirt, thankfully without an axe, and recalled how a colleague looking at her dress down attire barked: “Good grief woman, what the hell are you dressed like that for?”

The Holyrood leader again dismissed wee ‘Eck as “a sideshow” and his party an irrelevance at the General Election. She denounced the

“grudge and grievance politics” offered by the SNP “rump” and insisted only the Tories offered “optimism and hope” for Scotland -- despite the miserablist outlook offered by Shadow Chancellor George Osborne only the day before.

Then she recounted her one and only trip to a bookies many years ago to place a bet on a horse in the Grand National. “We didn’t know what to do and someone gave us a bit of paper that said: ‘Names.’

I wrote Annabel Goldie. And a gentleman beside me said in a monosyllabic voice: ‘Horse!’ I watched the horse come in and it came in fourth.” Not a good omen.

Of course, in the political race ahead Aunty G will be hoping that her favoured horse comes in far better than fourth but given that Mr Salmond is supposed to be the canniest racing pundit at Holyrood, she might have her work cut out.