Announcing a major increase to the arts budget in Scotland, spokesperson Farquhar Tomkinson-Snoddy, said that the people of Scotland should be grateful for the contribution to everyday life that the funded arts bodies made.

"Scotland is internationally known as being the birthplace of Ballet and Opera. After all, we have given the world global opera stars like Moira Anderson and Kenneth MacKellar and ballet stars like Gerard Kelly and Stanley Baxter".

Janette Krankie - to be Artistic Director of Scottish Ballet?

Rejecting criticism from Tory politicians that Scottish Ballet "was staffed by foreign poofs", Farquhar defended the current Scottish Ballet recruitment practices. "It is true that most of the dancers, and all the senior creative personnel were born outside Scotland, but I have to make it quite clear, that had Janette Krankie not being doing pantomime, she would have been approached for the position of Creative Director".

Conceding that Scottish Ballet was under attack as being an elitist art form of no interest to most Scots, Farquhar supported the value of ballet as an art form . "It is extremely important that the small girls of middle class mothers in Edinburgh and Glasgow can continue to watch muscle-legged men wearing tights with socks stuffed the groin area. How else are these children going to become curious about the male anatomy?"

Warming to his task, Farquhar continued, " It is also an important part of the exercise regimes of these mothers. There is an enormous amount of buttock and groin clenching and unclenching going on in the audience during a performance".

Pointing to the critical success of Scottish Opera's most recent production of The Ring Cycle, Farquhar noted that without central government funding, the real cost of each ticket sold would have been £1,468. "It's obviously unrealistic to expect the average opera-goer to pay a week's earnings for a ticket. Without the £238 million pound grant, opera in Scotland would simply die".

A spokeperson for Scottish Opera said that the company was very disappointed with the grant allocation and that they would have to reduce the wages of its cleaning staff.