Donald where's your troosers?

Scottish kilt makers want copyright protection for the garment.

Just as Parmesan if it is made in certain regions of Italy and sparkling wine can only be called champagne if it is made in the area of the same name in France, the traditional kilt is at the centre of a campaign which, if won, would mean that only those made in Scotland could call themselves Scottish kilts.

The campaign is the idea of an Edinburgh-based kilt-maker, Howie Nicholsby, who, exasperated by the influx of cheap, foreign imports calling themselves Scottish kilts, got in touch with the Scottish Member of European Parliament Alyn Smith to see if they could persuade the European Commission to give the Scottish kilt protected designation of origin (PDO) status.

Now far be it for me to suggest the tartan skirts are best left to rugby fans and Japanese schoolgirls, the problem here is the fact that the kilt is a foreign import. The philibeg (ie the skirt which certain type of Scotsmen sport today) was the invention of an Englishman, Thomas Rawlinson. Proper Highland dress was banned after the Battle of Culloden and when these laws were repealed, the philibeg was adopted by romantically minded folks as a ready made piece of tartan tweeness.

All this ignores the fact that the ancient Greeks, among others, wore a type of short kilt. As indeed do some modern Greeks. Those Greeks also had their own type of bagpipe.