I HAD not intended entering into the stooshie aboot coorie, but someone has to step in and make sense of the situation.

“Coorie” is supposed to be the Scottish equivalent of Denmark’s “hygge” (pronounced “hithyathethyagaya”). The concept has its origins in a contrived campaign last year by Scotland’s tourist authorities – sound of codswallop alert klaxon – that sought to emulate the Scandinavian guff with something of our own, which they called còsagach.

I commented authoritatively and definitively about this fake hygge in our sister paper at the time and have nothing to add but another column. That’s because someone has now written a book about the non-phenomenon.

It’s called The Art of Coorie, wisely avoiding the còsagach after Gaelic speakers pointed out that, as well as meaning “snug, sheltered or cosy”, it could also mean “full of crevices”. There are, of course, many crevices in Scotland – led currently by Ruth Davidson – but that’s not what the tourism salesmen were trying to convey.

They wanted to emulate the snuggly-wuggly, cuddly, candlelit atmosphere of hygge, which most Danes didn’t know anything about until they were tellt that it was what they loved best.

However, that concept appears to have been widened considerably by Coorie author Gabriella Bennett, extending even – reportedly – to the outdoors world which, in Scotland, is rarely cuddly. Suddenly, it was all about swimming in freezing lochs and climbing Munros, something that no one in their right mind does except for a bet or a suicide bid.

Things took a darker turn when the Daily Mail got involved, running a feature bigging up coorie by a woman who’d moved with her family from London to the north of Scotland and had embraced the Scottish lifestyle, dressing in tweed balaclavas and inhaling vats of cullen skink for her dinner.

As you can imagine, the article attracted facetious comments “below the line”, about both the author and Scotland, which top intellectuals said you could buy in its entirety with the proceeds of a house-sale in London.

Indeed, a few days later, the Mail ran a big feature about a Dane who’d become the biggest landowner in Britain, though it turned out all the featured estates were in Scotland. Apparently, he likes nothing better than getting his hygge oot in a big Scottish castle.

The Mail warned Scots not to voice “chippy complaints about the injustice of a single wealthy owner now owning such vast swathes of Scotland” so, as a good loyal lieutenant (see below), we’ll say no more about it.

Others have spoken out, however, querying the definition of coorie, claiming it back for the peasantry from bourgeois writers with their pious mince about “wellness”. Oddly enough, the Scottish National Dictionary gives one definition of coorie as “cringe” and, indeed, there’s surely a book to be written about Scotland called The Art of Cringe.

I won’t be writing it and neither am I going to knock people trying to say something positive about Little Scotia, even if it is somewhat suspect. I trust that has cleared the matter up for everyone.

To summarise: hygge is bosh, coorie is bilge, and we cannot complain because that would be chippy.

FAKERY is fast becoming reality in this, the best of all inhabited worlds that we know about. You’ll have encountered fake news – and, in this column, fake views – but the phenomenon is now moving towards the celestial spheres, ken?

Those of you with radiograms may recall Starman David Bowie crooning: “Don’t fake it, baby; lay the real thing on me” (I’ve added the semi-colon in the hope of starting a new musical genre of grammatical rock).

That was in his Moonage Daydream, the sentiments of which are being inverted in yonder China where the city of Chengdu plans to install a fake moon above its pretty skyscrapers. The idea is to create a dusk-like glow that replaces street lights. Can’t wait to see the rates bill for that.

Elsewhere, meanwhile, Japanese multinational Mitsubishi has developed a new lighting system that floods interiors with fake sunlight and mimics blue skies, sunrises and sunsets through the windaes.

The system is powered by “suspended diffusers” – aye, thaim – and could prove popular in hooses and offices lacking light. The BBC’s Dan Simmons described the experience as “alarming”, particularly when you couldn’t see a real sun ootside.

Imagine what it would be like in Scotland, where the gods micturate daily on our heads. You’d be sat there in your sunny interior before waddling ootside in a T-shirt to find it was bucketin’ doon, as per. Time to get real, folks, and reject all this artificial clamjafry.

IT”S sad but true that not everyone’s a winner. If you follow Scotland’s mainstream established religion, Taoism, you’ll know there cannot be winners without losers.

Given the choice, I suspect most people would rather be winners. But it’s not given to everyone to win, which is bad news for the health.

According to Utrecht University economist Adriaan Kalwij – aye, him – coming second creates stress that takes years off your life. When I say “your”, I don’t mean you. This is about athletes, not somebody sitting down with a pint of sherry and a Steak Bake to read the Sunday paper.

But Snr Kalwij’s point was that the idea of it being the taking part not the winning that counts is distinctly testicular. I’ll be quite candid with you here and confess I’ve long aspired to be second-rate (readers’ chorus: “Keep going, son, you can make it!”). Always considered myself one of life’s runners-up, a batman in military – not superhero – terms.

It’s very Scottish. We’re a nation of NCOs and ghillies. Scotland so often plays batman to England, as typified by the fawning behaviour of disturbingly glaikit Tory MP Ross Thomson towards Boris Johnson.

If Herr Kalwij’s thesis is correct then playing second fiddle is bad for the national health – as statistics prove. Time, then, to oil the nation’s shorts and start waddling towards the winner’s tape more briskly.