Ruth Wishart: Don't mess with our leading ladies, Boris

Not late night squabbles over wine stains and computers, and not the polis popping round after the neighbours got twitchy.

Not either the objects of previous dalliances. threatening a tabloid tell all.

No. this was serious stuff. Like his predecessors, he thought to charm the Scottish natives by a quick dash north, following his election triumph over Mr Hunt.

And dash was the word. As I drove up to Glasgow on Monday, a slew of police outriders and fast cars whisked up the other side of the dual carriageway, with mere motorists moved out the way.

But it started well enough. Faslane has enough security fencing to keep out unwelcome visitors, and the submariners in what he mistakenly referred to as a “ship” were never likely to be insubordinate to the man with the ultimate power to decide where they go and when and for which purpose.

Then again, these were pretty well all blokes, including the new Defence Secretary, a former MSP who had knocked the UK’s first female one off her perch after a mere eight weeks in post.

Still to come were a couple of dates with a formidable female duo.

The doorstep of the First Minister’s residence in Charlotte Square has seen its fair share of high powered handshakes in its day.

It had probably never witnessed a tableau quite like this one, with the bold Boris’s attempts to usher Ms Sturgeon into her own pad given very short shrift indeed.

After an hour of frank exchanges, after which flies on the wall had to have therapy, the Prime Minister decided – having had a less than ecstatic welcome on the way in – that he and his entourage would exit via the back door.

(The car park is round the back of Bute House – the protestors weren’t. Not, by general media agreement, a good look.)

And there was a second handbagging from Scottish Conservative Leader Ruth Davidson who, in the course of the Tory leadership campaign, had backed every candidate bar Boris in the final run-in.

Never a Johnson fan girl, Ms Davidson. And hardly likely to be fawning, days after he’d sacked the man she had advised him to keep in post as Secretary of State for Scotland.

The Scottish Tory leader made it clear she thought any chat of a ‘no deal Brexit’ was a load of mince. Up with which she would not put.

Thing is, Boris, these Scottish wimmin are not like the ones you can sweet talk down London way with your smooth routines.

If they think you need telt, they’ll tell you.