Curry king Salmond needs to get stuck in.

Byline: Mackenna

EVER passed through Edinburgh's Charlotte Square late at night? And seen a rotund figure slipping over the fence at Bute House and bolting it down the road?

Yep, it could be Alex Salmond giving his flunkeys the slip.

Apparently the First Minister wanders round his official residence at night phoning up mates and asking them to meet for curry. First Ministers are meant to stay locked up in Bute House.

Working on official papers. If they want to go out then there are endless official functions for them to attend.

Of course, Salmond does go to them. He's supposed to attend, say, three, an evening. And keep to the timetable.

You know - 7.45pm: Finish dessert. 7.55pm: Make speech. 8.05pm: Get in car. 8.10pm: Arrive at next mind-numbingly dull event. 8.25pm: Begin starter. But, apparently, if our First Minister finds a function he enjoys, that's it. He'll just stay there. All bloody evening. Bugger the rest of the diary.

A "nightmare," one of his advisers whispered to me the other day. "We can't control him". Of course, controlling Salmond was never going to be much of an option for his troops.

He's older, smarter and much more experienced than most of them. And he's having too much fun. So what if he wants to slip out of an evening and touch base with the common people? After all, what's the point in being king if you can't enjoy it?

The good thing is he doesn't suffer from the massive insecurities and paranoia that afflicted his predecessors Jack McConnell and Henry McLeish. Both became lonely in power and ruled through ever-decreasing cliques. The bad thing is, he's letting inexperienced people do largely what they want.

And that's dangerous. Word is that at least one weak SNP cabinet minister has fallen completely under the spell of the civil servants. And is not so much making decisions as doing completely what he is told to do by them.

It's always a bad thing when Edinburgh's weird clique of civil servants start calling the shots. They protect themselves, not the people and certainly not the Government.

And when their meddling causes things to go pear-shaped, as it inevitably will, they will simply disappear into their gold-plated pensions.

Leaving Salmond wondering if he should have skipped one or two of those late-night curries.

"He's a nightmare - we can't control him," whispered Alex's advisers..

CAPTION(S):

MAIN NAAN Alex savours a mouthful of his favourite dish