The colourful Mr Coutts

I keep on seeing the above in a rather forlorn and semi-derelict shopfront not a million miles away from Planet Politics Towers, and the 'Coutts' featured in what looks like an old SNP election poster is presumably Mr David Coutts, who stood for the Nationalists in the Dundee East constituency in 1992's general election, losing out to Labour's John McAllion. Mr Coutts was the SNP leader on Dundee District Council and also the party's chief executive.

Although his spell as a councillor was a bit before I became interested in Dundee politics, since then Mr Coutts' name has cropped on a regular basis in what seems to have been a colourful and varied political career. Thus the recent appearance of the old election poster - there was no obvious sign of it when the shop was actually open - perhaps represents a good opportunity to pull some of the strands of Mr Coutts' political career together, and it certainly provides an interesting contrast with my own rather humdrum existence, as I'm sure it does in comparison to most people's.

Anyway, it seems that Mr Coutts was a particular thorn in the side of Labour's Dundee hegemony when he led the SNP opposition, but unfortunately for him it was revealed during a bitter expenses scandal that he had "convictions for theft of cheese for a student cheese and wine party and for vandalism".

Presumably this didn't help his chances against Mr McAllion, but being a good Scottish nationalist Mr Coutts decided to decamp to Tallin, Estonia, where he became involved in the pub trade with Kenny MacAskill and a former SNP spin doctor called Chris McLean. (And to where Mr MacAskill apparently jetted in 2000 with entourage in tow to discuss a leadership challenge to Alex Salmond, which coming a year or so after his infamous drunk and disorderly charge presumably amounted to something of a high-risk strategy. But how times change!)

However, despite his Tallin investment Mr MacAskill clearly thought his future lay at home rather than in the former Communist bloc, but Mr Coutts seems to have had a rare old time there, including organising a Miss Wet T-shirt competition, the winner of which seemed to depend on a rival contestant refusing "to bare her breasts to the leering throng". Very 'civic nationalism'.

And Messrs Coutts and McLean also attempted to develop a shopping mall called British House (sic!) on the basis that: "Scotland does not have enough companies to sustain a Scottish House, whereas Britain does, along with a reputation for good quality products." Which all sounds a bit, "too wee, too stupid" etc for my liking.

Although it's not clear if Mr MacAskill intended including this sort of thing and the wet T-shirt competition in his proposed "Museum of the Scottish Diaspora" - or if they're included in his books Global Scots - Voices From Afar and Wherever the Saltire Flies - fortunately Mr Coutts retained a link with his home country in the shape of Dundee's taxi trade, where he ran a couple of vehicles with a private hire firm founded by the Marr brothers, who owned Dundee FC and were linked with such colourful characters as lawyer Giovani de Stefano - recently arrested on fraud allegations and who previously defended people like Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and killer doctor Harold Shipman - and gangster John Healy.

Of course, there's no suggestion of impropriety as regards the Marrs themselves, but given Mr MacAskill's seemingly never ending campaign of action against organised crime in Scotland's taxi and private hire trades, it's presumably fair to say that he wouldn't have been too happy at Mr Coutts' involvement with a business owned by people linked by the tabloid press with a millionaire convicted drug smuggler, although there's nothing to suggest that Mr Coutts himself was involved in the Marrs' hobnobbing.

But it seems that Mr Coutts had a bit of a fall out with the SNP anyway, and as I recall it he returned to Dundee promising to stand for elected office on a "Peoples' Independent Party" sort of ticket, but this didn't seem to happen.

And after being involved in founding 505050 Taxis in Dundee, Mr Coutts once again emigrated, but this time only as far as Edinburgh. There he was apparently instrumental in securing Councillor Steve Cardownie's defection from Labour to the SNP, presumably after a rapprochement between the latter party and Mr Coutts.

Messrs Coutts and Cardownie - the latter under the media cosh recently due to his status as deputy leader of Edinburgh council and involvement in the attempted bail-out of The Gathering - ran a Russian-themed pub in the capital, which got into trouble for selling cheap booze (minimum pricing, anyone?) and operating without proper planning permission, and was eventually closed following complaints from neighbours over noise.

Mr Coutts then turned his attention to Edinburgh's private hire taxi trade, with Mr Cardownie tagging along, and the inevitable press speculation about organised crime duly followed, this prompted by Mr MacAskill meeting police and licensing officials following "fears that Glasgow criminals are trying to buy into the capital". Which Mr Cardownie refuted by pointing out that "people with a criminal record cannot get a taxi permit or licence in this city".

But which seemed to contradict earlier comments by Colin Keir, convener of Edinburgh's regulatory committee, who had said: "Because private hire is de-regulated, much of the movement within the trade is just down to commercial decisions taken by the individual organisations, which we don't have any bearing over."

So one councillor thought there was a problem with private hire licencing, while another didn't. Which is where yours truly comes in and plays a bit part! I pointed out the contradiction in a letter to the Scotsman, but in response Councillor Keir harumphed that although private hire vehicle numbers were not regulated the trade is still, er, regulated, so where's the contradiction? Which I still haven't worked out, as pointed out here on a couple of previous occasions, so unless someone can square the circle then I still think Mr Keir was all over the place, presumably due to the slightly awkward involvement of his SNP colleague in the private hire trade.

Onywey, back to Mr Coutts, who it seems more recently quit his position in Edinburgh's private hire trade after the Sunday Mail revealed him to be running a "sleazy sex club" described as "Edinburgh's biggest and best swinging club". Gosh, I wonder if Tommy ever visited?

So when Mr Coutts was photographed with Dundee's boring old SNP group following their taking control of the City Council in 2009 - and penned a glowing missive to the Courier on the Nationalist nirvana about to bewitch Dundonians - we can only hope that his involvement in the swingers' scene had nothing to do with it!

What he's up to these days is beyond this blogger's ken, but it's surely safe to say that Mr Coutts has led a significantly more colourful and exciting life than the Shona Robinsons and Joe FitzPatricks of the Scottish Nationalist firmament, and indeed a good bit edgier as well by the looks of things.

Of course, Mr Coutts is likely to go down in SNP history for an entirely different reason, this being due to his involvement in an episode much earlier in his Scottish Nationalist career. In 1985 Willie MacRae, a lawyer and leading Nationalist who stood in an SNP leadership contest, was found dead in mysterious circumstances, and while the official inquest verdict was suicide, SNP luminaries like Gordon Wilson and Winnie Ewing questioned this, others claimed he was assassinated by the British State, and the row rumbles on even now.

But by coincidence Mr Coutts was one of the first on the scene when Mr MacRae's body was found in his car in an isolated spot near a Highland road. Mr Coutts knew Mr MacRae, helped remove his body from the car, subsequently questioned the farcical investigation into the death and "fought desperately" for a pubic enquiry.

Of course, I'm sure he would rather not have become involved in the aftermath of Mr MacRae's death, but in terms of interest and excitement his life could surely only go downhill after that, but I suspect a faded poster in a dusty and decaying Dundee shop window won't represent the end of my own interest in Mr David Coutts!