WE fear Kezia Dugdale won’t last long on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! Besides the perennial unpopularity of politicians, there’s also the curse of Alan Roden to consider. After Red Roddo went to work as her top spindoctor, she quit as Scottish Labour leader within a year. He then worked for Anas Sarwar in the race to replace her. Richard Leonard romped it. Now he’s back spinning for Kez of the Jungle. Surely a humiliating exit is guaranteed?

THERE was a stushie in the Holyrood bar when Kez made his gutsy debut on Thursday's show, with the staff dying to avoid it and the press dying to gawp. Ms Dugdale’s partner, Nat MSP Jenny Gilruth, wasn't present, but did write about it in a newspaper. “I can’t watch … This is unbearable… I don’t know how I feel about that,” she said. So that’s going well then.

RODDO also popped up on STV to defend his old boss. Looking as if he’d spent a month under canvas himself, he predicted Kez would be a great addition to the camp (she lost the first task and cost people food) and declared “she’s a born leader”. Really? Taking your party backwards in three elections, quitting at a few minutes’ notice and leaving your team in the lurch aren’t exactly the dictionary definition of leadership. Nice try, though, Roddo.

KEZIA’S adventures in prime time also reminded Unspun of her attitude to Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson appearing on Have I Got News For You. As recently as June, Ms Dugdale sneered: “I think in the last year she has very much enjoyed the light entertainment side of the job, with her growing public persona, at the great expense of politics and doing the right thing.” Isn’t it amazing how quickly a massive cheque can broaden the mind?

REJECTION seems to be the mother of invention for Nats trying to make a buck after June's election. Already part of Alex Salmond’s TV firm Slainte Media Ltd, ex-MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh has now created Keep Calm Media and Entertainment Ltd. Meanwhile fellow loser Angus Robertson, still SNP deputy leader, has just set up a one-man consultancy, ASCR Ltd. Perhaps fortune will smile on them, even if voters won’t.

WHILE we’re on about failure, Edinburgh Labour organiser Shonagh Munro clearly didn’t take her candidate’s defeat in the Scottish Labour leadership well. An Anas Sarwar fan, she fumed on Twitter: “This is still my Party and no amount of trotty wee boys and old white men can stop that from being the case.” For reasons unknown she omitted the fact that she didn’t actually vote for “my party” in June, but put a tactical cross in the LibDem box instead.

THERE are some winners in politics, however. For instance, James Dornan, the SNP MSP for Glasgow Cathcart, recently tabled a parliamentary motion urging MSPs to congratulate the victors in the 2017 Icon Awards, including “Rosa Zambonini, who works for an MSP”. Not that he’s biased, of course, but the MSP she works for just happens to be James Dornan.

NAT MSP Richard Lyle is having more trouble with his office workers. In July, staffer Kirsten Felvus was fined £400 by a sheriff for posting homophobic abuse online. Mr Lyle refused to discipline her, saying she was the victim of a “vendetta”. Now his other gopher, North Lanarkshire Councillor Jordan Linden, has stepped aside while police probe claims - hotly disputed - of sexual harassment. Dick Lyle sure can pick ‘em..