Why do we cringe when Stewart Maxwell, the Scottish National Party's culture spokesman, demands, as he did the other day, that BBC Scotland's Hogmanay Live show is broadcast to the rest of the world as proof of its status as a "huge cultural asset"?
Why, indeed, are we remembering Jackie Bird's gaping dress and Aly Bain's lemon smile and the year the storms threatened to blow Edinburgh Castle clean off the rock and, before that, all the horrific heedrum-hodrum Hogmanay heucheramas "starring" Andy Stewart and Sydney Devine and Calum Kennedy serenading the sheep and, look out, it's the bloody Alexander Brothers, both of them?
Why? Because we're Scottish, of course.
I don't remember any gaping dress. And at the risk of dwelling upon unnecessary physicalities, is there anything there which might cause gaping?
I remember Ms Bird trying to sing a song, which was embarrassing for all concerned.