“A couple of controversial songs at the end,” the man in the row behind me said as the lights came on in Stirling’s Albert Halls. More than a bit of an understatement as it goes.

We’d just watched Kenny Anderson, aka King Creosote, possibly torch his good name by telling us in song that he thought that American hard-right commentators such as Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens as well as local boy and vaccine-sceptic Neil Oliver were among his pantheon of “good guys”.

Other names mentioned included Right Said Fred, Stephen Morrissey, Eric Clapton and JK Rowling, not necessarily all fellow travellers by any means, but possibly placing Anderson to the right of the majority of his audience at the gig, one imagines.

Back in 2014, Anderson stood out from many of his fellow Scottish musicians by not backing independence in the referendum. Last year at Celtic Connections I heard him speak out against globalisation (albeit, a little incoherently). It’s been clear for a while his politics don’t fit neatly into any liberal-left orthodoxy.

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But the Albert Halls gig suggested his position was much more radical than anything he had suggested previously. When you’re naming Oliver as “one of the best guys” you’re nailing your colours to the mast.

The Stirling audience seemed to take all this with a sense of bemusement. There........

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