IT will be one of the highlights in the TV review of 2013 - the day the Mair savaged the mayor.

In a BBC interview earlier this year, London mayor Boris Johnson was asked by Scot Eddie Mair: "You're a nasty piece of work, aren't you?"

It was a rhetorical question. Johnson had admitted "sandpapering" quotes as a London Times journalist and he failed to deny he lied to then Tory leader Michael Howard about an extramarital affair.

Johnson presents himself as a funny and engaging self-publicist, behind a shambolic facade as endearing as the Dulux sheepdog.

But he again revealed his true blue colours last week, mocking those with low IQ and declaring, "greed is good".

He told a City audience: "It is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16% of our species have an IQ below 85 while about 2% have an IQ above 130."

Our species? The Tory master race in full cry.

Intelligence quotient? It's what helped oh-so-clever City fat cats create the worst economic crisis in living memory.

It's what successive Westminster governments have proved is no substitute for common sense.

Are we to believe, Boris, that every posh boy in the city or the civil service or in politics got there under his own steam, with no help from daddy, or his name, or his money?

They will never admit that inherited wealth and privilege outweigh intelligence. You only have to look at David Cameron's cabinet of millionaires to see that.

You can't imagine any Bullingdon Boys, no matter how thick, being destined for the dole, can you? Or do they become mayors?

Is that why women earn less than men, Boris, because they are less intelligent? Err, no, it's because they are not all cornflakes.

He says: "The harder you shake the pack the easier some cornflakes get to the top.

"I don't believe economic equality is possible; indeed some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy and keeping up with the Joneses that is, like greed, a valuable spur to economic activity."

Yes, greed is good, except when its zero-hour, starvation wage workers asking for more.

This from a man who once told another BBC interviewer that his £250,000-a-year payment as a columnist for The Daily Telegraph was "chicken feed". I should be such a chicken.

Johnson dedicated his speech to his idol, Margaret Thatcher, and he predicts Britain is returning to what he happily recalls as the "boom times" of 1980s Thatcherism.

Boom times? Anyone north of Watford remembers the 80s being dominated by the miners' strike and City excess.

The first British PM to serve a complete decade since William Pitt the Younger in the 1790s, and didn't Maggie leave her mark. It was about the only thing she left in Scotland, that and the Poll Tax.

She sold off steel, shipbuilding, mining, car-making, British Gas, BA, BT. Her nasty party mantra of profit, wealth creation and tax cuts - financed by Scotland's oil - inflicted four successive election defeats on Labour.

So enter Tony Blair and New Labour, wearing the Iron Lady's clothes for 13 years and creating an even bigger mess.

The tiresome two-horse race then put Cameron in No10, and if you look around today - at recession, unemployment, housing, the 'bedroom tax' - the 80s may never have ended.

And that's your choice for the referendum next September, this stagnant London-centric status quo versus an independence leap of faith.

But what it's NOT is a vote for the SNP's White Paper - and here I wish I had the IQ of the Bitter Together brigade, who claim to have forensically dissected its 670 pages almost before the ink was dry.

Still, things could be worse. How about PM Boris?

The mayor's diatribe - which will resonate with the Tories' free-market greed - was perhaps his way of ensuring they lose the 2015 General Election.

He's planning his Westminster return and a challenge for the leadership when Cameron inevitably is knifed in true Tory tradition.

Boris would bring back Thatcherism and says longingly she "would comfortably see off Salmond, as she saw off so many smart alecs".

What he means is no-one alive at Westminster can take on wee Eck.

Maybe they should ask Eddie Mair.

THE city's new slogan, People Make Glasgow, received a tepid welcome when it was unveiled in June.

Jokers were quick to add their own tag lines, such as People Make Glasgow the UK capital for heart disease.

Well, it may indeed need daily medication, but the proactive response to the attempted Glasgow Airport car bombing and now the Clutha tragedy has shown the world what we Weegies have always known, that our city has a huge, brave heart.

Yes, People Make Glasgow, this Weegie is proud to report.