MALE primogeniture isn't a condition which affects many Scottish men, which is one reason you won't find it listed on the NHS Scotland website. Another is that it isn't actually a medical condition at all, rather an old-fashioned rule that says the daughters of titled toffs can't get their hands on the family jewels, as it were, even if they're the eldest child. Instead the title (plus the house, the Bentley, all those paintings of horses and the income from the teashop) goes to the nearest male relative.

In the case of the 68-year-old Earl of Balfour, that means his brother or his brother's son, and certainly not any of his four daughters, whose names are Kinvara, Maria, Willa and Candida (and yes, confusingly you will find that last one on the NHS Scotland website).

But now help is at hand for all those on the distaff side who find themselves suffering from a painful case of male primogeniture. It comes in the shape of a proposed reform to the Gender Recognition Act which will allow people to legally change their gender without a medical diagnosis. So if you're down as male you can become female, if you self-identify as non-binary you can put X and – crucially – if you're down as female you can put male. Bingo! The house, the Bentley, all those paintings of horses and the income from the teashop is yours. No penis? No problem.

“As far as I can see, on the same day that I meet my maker one of my daughters could declare that there has always been a man screaming to get out of her female body,” Lord Balfour said last week. “She could thus claim my hereditary title as a son. How could present law be applied to argue with that, given the way this area is developing? And should that even be necessary in this day and age?”

As you can guess from that, the earl is all for it. So, by the way, is his eldest daughter Lady Kinvara (or Shrimpy, as she's known to her friends) who has previously described male primogeniture as “archaic” and “absolutely mad”. Mind you, something tells me that's an assessment most people would apply to the titled aristocracy in general.

Rubbish buildings

IF fly-tipping was ever made an Olympic sport – c'mon, anything's possible: they had live pigeon shooting in 1900 and skateboarding is in for 2020 – you'd imagine Team GB would have a decent shot at a medal. After all when it comes to fly-tipping we're naturals, at least according to Countryfile presenter John Craven who says the practice has now reached “epidemic” levels. That's good, right?

Craven backs up his claim with facts: a million fly-tipping cases reported every year and a £50 million clean-up bill as a result. So there's clearly a lot of fly-tipping talent out there – and thousands of discarded fridges to bear witness to the fact.

But if we think we're good, New Zealand's fly-tippers are on a different level entirely as a property development firm in Auckland discovered when somebody fly-tipped something a little bigger than a fridge onto a previously empty site: an entire house. OK, so it was a bungalow, but even so.

“It's the first time I have seen a whole house dumped,” said Rod Bray of Northbridge Properties Group, an observation that should surprise nobody. “It's a level up from the old mattresses and household refuse people have been dumping.” Bray's hope now is that somebody recognises the house – or at least notices that there's one missing from their street – and comes forward to claim the $1000 reward he has posted. “Given it's a whole house and would have taken a truck to move, someone would have seen something,” he added confidently.

Hail scissors!

OVER a month on from Noel Gallagher's appearance on Later With Jools Holland, I'm still puzzling over the exact duties of the female percussionist in his band, the High Flying Birds. Honestly, I can't sleep for thinking about it.

Wearing a red poncho and a stripey, Breton-style shirt and with a look of extreme concentration on her face, she appeared to be playing a kitchen implement not previously known for its musical qualities: the scissors. Had she been playing the spoons, nobody would have batted an eyelid. Had she been using a pair of chopsticks, say, to beat triple time on an upturned wok, I think the reaction would still have been fairy muted. But scissors? No. Tongues were very quickly a-wagging in mockery and a fair few were lolling in disbelief.

One of these belonged to Gallagher's younger brother Liam. Asked on Twitter if he had “anyone on scissors” for a forthcoming gig, he said no but he would have someone sharpening a pencil, adding: “it sounds mega with a bit of reverb on it proper out there gear”. Whatever that means.

Nor did Noel Gallagher exactly clear things up when he was asked about it a few days later. “When I said to her [the poncho-wearing scissorista] 'Can you play tambourine in this song?' she said 'I don't play tambourine' and I said 'Oh, what can you play?' and she said 'I play the scissors',” he explained. “And when she started playing them it ******* blew my mind … I didn't say to her 'Play these scissors and it will confuse everybody.' She plays the scissors. She invented it.”

Just like Paul McCartney, in fact, who invented celery playing when invited to join the Beach Boys in the studio for the famous 1967 Smile sessions. Legend has it it's him you can hear crunching in time to the music on a track called Vege-Tables. And we all know how much Noel Gallagher reveres The Beatles.

Chefs with everything

SCOTLAND doesn't have a National Scissor Player but it does now have a National Chef to sit alongside its National Poet – or Makar – and do for venison what she has done for verse. He is Gary Maclean, 2016 winner of the professional version of Masterchef which, as any regular viewer will tell, is the iteration most likely to get your tummy rumbling even if you've had your tea. He's currently a senior lecturer at City of Glasgow College.

Maclean's job is, in his words, to act as “a passionate advocate for cooking fresh, nutritious and locally-sourced food”, and in those of Cabinet Secretary for the Rural Economy Fergus Ewing, to celebrate “the rich larder of produce that we have available”. Does that mean he'll be promoting such mouth-watering, Masterchef-friendly dishes as Scotch pie with triple-cooked chips and an Irn Bru foam? Or will it just be another 100 ways to cook kale that don't work either? We shall see.

Either way, sensing a trend I will be applying for the job of Scotland's National Barista as soon as it's advertised – and as soon as I've figured out how you make those pretty leaf patterns in the milk. Currently mine always end up looking like something you see scrawled on toilet walls.