DO any of the major parties have any credibility when it comes to courting the rich and powerful?

First Minister Alex Salmond is under pressure this week over allegations of trade-offs with Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump.

Mr Salmond stands accused of offering to lobby the UK Government to approve a controversial Sky takeover bid in return for the support of one of Mr Murdoch's newspapers.

Mr Trump claims he was told a proposed offshore windfarm near his new Aberdeenshire golf course would not go ahead to ensure the golf resort was built.

It never looks good when democratically elected politicians, especially those who are seen to have the common touch, get too close to the murky world of billionaire tycoons.

However, when Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont suggested Mr Salmond had been a "sucker" taken in by the big time, macho deal-making culture of super-rich men, Mr Salmond had the answer he has used so often in the past at the ready.

When it comes to courting Fred Goodwin, who proposed and gave him his knighthood?

On Rupert Murdoch, Ed Miliband has been seen "beaming" at News International functions in London and Mr Trump said Jack McConnell was first to give him assurances the windfarm would not go ahead.

That is before we even get to the Tories and their billionaire businessmen chums or dodgy LibDems' donors.

I wonder if that is what Prime Minister David Cameron meant by "we're all in this together"?

HOLYROOD has seen some mighty egos in its time, but nothing compared to the one that landed this week.

Donald Trump hit town blustering about windmills, thundering that they were tourist-eating monsters that would see Scotland end up in the world poor house.

He did say they have a place – just not anywhere near his precious golf resort, which he modestly claimed on several occasions to be the greatest in the world.

He also decided it might help getting the natives onside if he could claim to be one of us, so he also let it slip, around a dozen times, that his mother was from Stornoway. With most of the committee, indeed the Scottish Parliament, in favour of renewable energy, it was expected Mr Trump would meet his match.

The first big head to head came soon after Murdo Fraser opened the session and it was Mr Trump versus the SNP's Chic Brodie.

Who cares what Chic said. Never before were two more laboriously coiffed hairdos together in the one committee room.

Mr Trump's extravagant New York blonde weave versus Mr Brodie's brylcreamed Las Vegas Elvis-impersonator bouffant.

Later, Mr Trump swept out of Holyrood to a cheering crowd of less wealthy Nimbys.

Elvis, on this occasion, was still in the building...