ON Wednesday, millions of people around the world celebrated the birthday of our national bard, Robert Burns and the Burns Suppers are set to continue right through the weekend as people don their best tartan and raise their drams to toast auld Rabbie.

He was a man who only spent 37 years on this earth but is today widely regarded as the greatest Scot who ever lived and his song Auld Lang Syne, despite being written in Scots language, is still sung globally on New Year’s Eve when the clock strikes midnight, signalling the start of a brand new year.

We all know that he was an exceptionally well-educated farmer who became something of a celebrity after his poems were published in Kilmarnock. He was a bit of a ladies man, rumoured to have fathered no less than 12 children to four different women and probably wouldn’t have looked out of place as a guest on the Jeremy Kyle show if he was alive in 2017.

Now I need to be honest and say that I really didn’t know very much about Rabbie until I reached my 20s as it wasn’t really something we covered in school.

My first real encounter with the man was when I was working at a top hotel in Glasgow at the age of 16.

I was a banqueting waitress serving on the breakfast shift which meant my taxi picked me up from the house at 4.15am and on this particular cold winter’s morning I had completely slept through my alarm and was awoken by my mother shaking me to death and shouting that my cab was outside.

Great start to the day as you can imagine, not to mention the fact that I looked like I’d be dragged through a hedge backwards while serving the bread rolls in my pristine white banqueting jacket one hour later.

The breakfast party was a coach group of American tourists sightseeing around Scotland and seemed totally bowled over that I could actually speak English, asking me questions like, “was the haggis free range?” and “did I know if the River Clyde was a freshwater river?”

AS I was clearing away the last of the coffee cups, a little old lady dressed head to toe in tartan came over to me and said with a Boston accent: “Well, dear, you must be very very excited?” to which I responded: “Ermmm because I’m nearly finished work?”

“No, no, dear,” she said, “because today is a very special day.”

I stood staring at her for a few seconds racking my brains as to what she could possibly be talking about until she jumped back in again saying: “Don’t you know what day it is? It’s Rabbie Burns Day” – to which I made the grave error of responding with a confused “Who?”

Fast forward 30 minutes later and there I was standing in front of my banqueting supervisor, receiving a real dressing down for not knowing who Robert Burns was while working at a top Scottish four-star hotel, which resulted in me, standing at the hotel entrance for the rest of the day, wearing a tartan sash and reciting poems from a book of the Bard’s works to the guests as they entered the building.

Needless to say after that I was slightly put off old Rabbie until 2003 when I was given a copy of The Songs of Robert Burns by Eddi Reader.

I can honestly say I had never, nor have ever since, heard anything so beautiful as Burns’ words combined with Eddi’s heavenly voice, which left such a mark on me that I immediately went to the library and spent almost a week learning about the life and times of the man.

This year would have been Rabbie’s 258th birthday and, although he only lived a short while, the impact he made on the literary world can not be measured.

So it is fitting that we celebrate his works each year in the manner that we do, gathering with friends and family, toasting the lads and lassies and of course, feasting on that great chieftain o’ the puddin’-race.

Although sadly, I remember vividly having to break the news to a lovely lady I met in London some years later that unfortunately she wouldn’t be able to book a trip up the mountains to go haggis spotting anytime soon.

Happy Burns celebrations.