This week the Scottish media went in quite heavily with the news that Ruth Davidson had signed up “Scottish fishing industry leaders” to back the UK government over the Scottish Government, after the latter had warned that Westminster planned to sell out the industry again during Brexit negotiations.

To be honest we didn’t pay it a lot of heed, assuming that “Scottish fishing industry leaders” just meant Bertie Armstrong again – a longstanding ultra-staunch Unionist and Leave supporter with a track record as a reliable anti-independence rentaquote – and nothing in the coverage led us to believe otherwise.

But then we saw a picture:

Mr Armstrong is the white-haired and bearded chap standing immediately to the right of Davidson in the photo, with his hand on the top corner of her pledge. But who’s the fellow immediately to the left of her?

Thanks to an eagle-eyed reader, we know that he’s John Buchan of Peterhead:

And we know that he tweets as “crouchy197”:

And Mr Buchan has, well, some quite colourful views.

To be scrupulously fair, we can probably brush off his wish for the Scottish Parliament to be blown up and Nicola Sturgeon to be “taken out” as mere figures of speech rather than serious calls for violent acts:

And his reaction to the husband of murdered MP Jo Cox asking for a commemoration of the anniversary of her death is certainly tasteless and ugly, but nothing illegal:

But it gets worse than that.

He really loves French racist Marine Le Pen:

(Though to his credit he did eventually seem to realise that perhaps referring to her as a “Frog” wasn’t the best way to properly show his appreciation.)

And she does have some rivals in Mr Buchan’s affections:

From there it’s not a surprising leap to his views on Muslims and refugees:

(The answer to his question, incidentally, is “between 500,000 and 2.5 million”.)

He classes Humza Yousaf, born and raised in Glasgow, as a Pakistani:

And you might not be entirely astonished to find that he yearns for a return to the good old days of sectarian murder and violence in Northern Ireland:

His choice of words when opposing immigration is… revealing:

He especially seems to dislike migrants from the Philippines, or “flip flops” as they’re derogatorily known among certain sections of the North-East community:

He’s not a big fan of gay people either.

And you’ll never guess who he favours between Nicola Sturgeon and Donald Trump:

Or between her and Theresa May:

He’s pretty consistent in his views of the First Minister, in fact:

Although he seems to be in two minds over her call for a second referendum:

And he certainly favours a tough approach to Brexit negotiations:

We could go on, but you probably get the idea by now.

Now, we have to acknowledge that it’s not exactly a hold-the-front-page revelation to say Ruth Davidson has been scraping the sewers for allies. The parade of Tory bigots, UKIP rejects and general lowlifes revealed by the council elections is now almost comical in length (the latest additions being the delightful Alistair “Mulder1981” Majury and Robert “spears and loincloths” Davies), to the point where it’d almost be easier to name the Scottish Conservative councillors who weren’t open racists.

But in recruiting the likes of John Buchan, celebrated Remain campaigner Davidson must surely be getting pretty close to the bottom of the barrel.