Scotland is apparently suffering from an extreme, perhaps even critical, shortage of dwarfs.

Are we allowed to say "shortage" in relation to short people or is that politically incorrect?

Whatever you want to call it, there's no escaping the fact - it's a shortage. A shortfall. In short, we're short on shorties.

Or at least such is the view of Iain Gordon, Manager of Glasgow's Pavilion Theatre, who has scrapped plans to stage Snow White as this year's Christmas Panto after failing to find seven small stars to fill the seven supporting roles.

Mr Gordon's previous production of Snow White back in 1999 was compromised by the self-same problem and the show eventually went ahead with only six dwarfs.

"We just had to hope the kids didn't count them quickly enough" he recalls.

Honestly, you couldn't make this sort of stuff up.

Going back to his plans for Christmas 2007, he explained, "You just can't get dwarfs this year. Most of the good ones are tied up with other Pantos on three year deals. We could have had as many Eastern European dwarfs as we liked, but we wanted ones with English as a first language. We'd have ended up with C-list dwarfs who aren't top-rated - so we're doing Cinderella instead."

C-List dwarfs who aren't top-rated? Perish the thought.

Recognising this state of affairs as nothing less than a National emergency, First Foot has scoured the world and we are delighted to inform Mr Gordon that after an extensive search we have managed to find seven top-rated A-list Scottish dwarfs for him.

The Show must go on!

The Seven Dwarfs are;

SLEAZY

Midge Ure

GRUMPY

Sheena Easton

RUMPY (PUMPY)

George Galloway

HAPPY

Gordon Strachan

AWFUL

Jeanette Krankie

CREEPY

Brian Monteith

COCKY

Jack McConnell