THE suave Swede, arm draped around his gorgeous girlfriend, chimed: "You Scots don't know a thing about perfection. You're all podgy and white."

Don't know perfection? This white and podgy Scots tourist's blood began to boil.

"Haven't you seen our mountains?"

I asked.

His living-doll girlfriend looked smugly at me. "Perfection is useless when you never get near it because of angry, miniscule flying beasts and atrocious weather, " she said.

I suddenly wished a permanent plague of midges and a true Scottish thunderstorm upon them.

As they left me, I realised they had put my gas well and truly at peep.

Being in Sweden, far from home, is in some ways like being parted from a lover; it makes you realise why or wonder why you love them. At that moment, I was experiencing the latter.

I felt like I had been forced to peek over the fence, and had seen a side that was much greener; so lush it left me in danger of becoming green with envy.

I banished such treasonable thoughts from my head.

It was at a recent Burns Supper that my doubts resurfaced.

Why, hundreds of years after his death, were we celebrating the short life of a man who was, by all accounts, a lazy, drunken womaniser? Shouldn't heroes lead perfect lives with perfect wives?

My wallowing was stopped abruptly by the sound of laughter as our bawdy bard's poetry filled the room. It was then it hit me.

Perfection? Who needs it? A perfect person with a perfect life could never make us laugh like the blemished Burns.

Look at footballer David Beckham. He proves it: life lived at a canter produces rotten banter.

I thought back to that perfect Swedish couple, like Mr and Mrs Beckham leading a seemingly perfect existence.

But what use is perfect if it is perfectly vacant?

So what if we take our podgy white selves to the bottom of the picture-perfect mountain only to spend the afternoon in a dirty wee rain-lashed pub instead?

The grass on our side is often rough and patchy, but who wants to play on a perfectly manicured lawn?

Give me banter with Burns over boredom with Beckham any day.