Leading article: Pudding race

What are we to make of the sensational news that haggis sales are soaring south of the border? The big supermarket chains claim they can't sell them fast enough. The more paranoid among the Scots will wonder if this is part of some dastardly plot by the English to steal one of their sacred totems of nationhood, by making the taste for oatmeal and sheeps' lungs as common in Aylesbury as it is in Auchtermuchty. But could it not be construed as a sign of envy? Could this growing appetite for a quintessentially Scottish delicacy indicate that some satirical demonstration in favour of an English parliament is in the offing?

But perhaps the reason is more sporting than political. Is this an attempt by the largest nation in the union to catch up with the pre-eminence of their Scottish cousins in the field of rugby? You are, as Andy Robinson might note, what you eat.

Judgement will obviously have to wait until we discover how the sales of neeps and tatties have been performing in the Home Counties. And in any case, we suspect that a more global ambition is at work here. After all, it's not just in Sassenach country that the great chieftain of the pudding race has been making its presence felt recently. We note that a screenwriter called Paul Haggis has been picking up Oscars in Hollywood, most recently for his work on the 2006 Best Movie, Crash. Coincidence? We think not. The haggis is on the verge of going global. Not bad for a small quadruped from the Scottish Highlands, with the misfortune to be born with two limbs shorter than the others.