Each week, the self-righteous and highly judgmental journalist Rab McNeil puts one of the country's highly regarded sacred cows under close scrutiny in his Scottish Icons series. This week, Robbie the Pict feels the wrath of his Sauron-like gaze...

Mysterious folk, the Picts. Nothing much is known about them, though recent archaeological digs in the north-east and Perthshire have shed some light. Artefacts, ken? But of words: not a word. So far, there’s been no Rosetta Stone. Just irritatingly obtuse symbols on stone slabs.

No one knows what the symbols mean, though educated sources have suggested “Golf sale” or “This way up”. No one knows either what happened to the Picts. They just disappeared from the historical picture, subsumed by Gaelicised Scots.

Until one re-emerged. Step forward Robbie the Pict, famous campaigner against Skye bridge tolls, founder of the Pictish Free State, and godfather to Leonardo DiCaprio.

Born in 1948, our hirsute hero has represented himself in court scores of times against the British state, which regards him as, in the words of the Guardian, “the biggest pain in the arse to descend from the Highlands since accordion music”.

A sometime roadie and student at Aberdeen Yoonie, in 1977 Robbie was given an acre of land on Skye by a solicitor friend. He declared this Pictland of Alba, an independent centre of resistance against yonder Britannia. It grew to cover 1,000 acres thanks to supporters’ donations.

In 1981, the British Nationality Act, ostensibly changing the national status of Scots from subjects of the kingdom of Scotland to citizens of the Westminster parliament, raised........

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