It’s closing time at the pub. Swally merchant and Star Trek hater Tam o’ Shatner’s just blown his last fiver on last orders. Taxi fare spurned and a wrathful waiting wife at home, in his quest to hoof it hame, oor Tam must brave the sub-zero brutality of the Glesga winter, the wandering ghosts of the Necropolis, and freaky lights in the sky, hovering with anal-probing intent above Mount Vernon Park.

Two and some quarter centuries ago, Robert Burns, Bard of Ayrshire, published a poetic tour de force. An epic, supernatural parable of whisky, witchcraft, sex and Satanism. That poem, was Tam o' Shanter.

Here, D.A. Watson, author of the bestselling novels In the Devil’s Name and The Wolves of Langabhat, pays homage to the Burns masterpiece. He learned Tam o’ Shanter in primary school, and his great uncle, after whom he was named, was a Burns expert and war hero who lost a leg to a grenade in World War Two. It happened just outside Glasgow, in an unfortunate accident while he was still in basic training.