ONE of the more notable exercises in Scottish journalism of late has been the Daily Record's ongoing pursuit of Jack Vettriano, pictured. Scotland's most successful artist (in terms of income) was exposed, to use tabloid language, for copying images from a GBP16.99 reference manual to create his paintings, including his blockbuster GBP750,000 grosser The Singing Butler.

The Daily Record's entrance into the world of culture is long overdue. In a previous life, the Buffer received a few approaches to leave the gentlemanly journalism of the Glasgow Herald and join the Record. I agreed, on condition that I would be the paper's arts correspondent. I didn't know much about opera, ballet or the visual arts which would qualify me eminently for the job. The Record was not ready then to employ an art critic.

The Daily Record eventually did hire the services of the Buffer. It was after I had demitted office from the Herald Diary, weary after decades of toil at the joke-face. I foolishly reneged on a personal pledge never to return to the business of pursuing wee stories. It was a combination of pride and avarice that made me do it. The pride was in believing the nice things the Record people said to me. The avarice was earning GBP1 a word, including and and but.

It was a disastrous venture which thankfully lasted only a few months. I knew how legendary showbiz scribbler Gavin Docherty felt when he joined the Sunday Scot newspaper and left after a fortnight with the pithiest of resignation speeches: "I'm in the wrong movie, man." I didn't have Mr Docherty's bravery or integrity. I carried on writing wee stories that were neither funny nor interesting. I did feel guilty for taking GBP1 a word, but.

It was a blessed relief when the Record hinted that the venture had not been a success. Would I like to work the month's notice in the contract I had not signed? Would I like to write a farewell column to the readers? The answers were no and no. With one gentle kick in the backside I was free.

A week later, when the newspaper ran its infamous Thugs And Thieves headline about the players of Celtic FC, I was able to stand on the slopes of Parkhead and sing with an almost clear conscience: "You can stick your Daily Record up your erse."

I retain an admiration for the many Very Nice People who labour in the Record vineyard and wish them well in the pursuit of investigating the philosophically problematic issues of inspiration and imitation in the field of the visual arts. Having brought Mr Vettriano to book, it is time for the Record art police to name and shame some other painters.

Would the accused, Pablo Picasso, please enter the dock. Your painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, is said to be the most important landmark in the development of 20th century painting.

Is it not, however, the case that this painting of some ladies from a Barcelona brothel owes more than a little to works by Raphael, Rubens, and Botticelli? Except for that clever bit where you used the African masks you saw in the museum of ethnography for the girls' faces. My man in the world of art says that Picasso may also have been influenced by having seen some dirty postcards while he was creating this pivotal painting.

And while we're at it, would messrs Raphael, Rubens and Botticelli care to admit that their paintings which inspired Mr Picasso were in turn ripped off from The Three Graces, the bit of sculpture in the Louvre carved by some unknown Greek fellow a couple of millennia ago. That delicate curve of the derriere belonging to the Grace in the middle is a bit of a giveaway.

The history of art, as summarised for the Buffer's benefit by Our Man With The Easel, is that they have all been at it from van Gogh down to Jack Vettriano. The academics have to make it more complicated, because that is their job. Art critic Bettina Wadia, for instance, justified your man Botticelli's serial pauchling of the works of his fellow artists by saying: "Source hunting can be a fascinating game. It is also one of the more depressing and unreliable activities of scholarship. Any young artist or writer naturally borrows ideas from his predecessors and contemporaries before his individual style has materialised. What is far more important and interesting is the value of the work in itself and what he did not borrow."

What Mr Vettriano et al have created are not copies but "analogues". Oui droit, as they say in France. (At this point, I should admit that some of this information has been analogued and pasted from Google. ) The Buffer has no issue with Mr Vettriano being at the analogue. It is rich, however, that the London people who flog Vettriano's works should threaten Scottish artist Joe McLaughlin with dire legal consequences for analoguing Reach Out And Touch, a work by the Fife master analoguer.

Apparently, there is no room for irony when there is money involved. And there is plenty of cash involved. Sales of Mr Vettriano's prints, already substantial, have soared since the Daily Record got on his case.

The good news is that some of the gravy is being spread around. A Fife chap who paid GBP275 some 20 years ago for a painting called Summer Breeze expects to get GBP12,000 for it in auction. It was done by a chap called Jack Hoggan, as Vettriano was known in those days. It is an analogue of the painting called A Gust Of Wind by 19th-century American painter John Singer Sargent. It is an ill wind, indeed, which does not blow someone some good.

IT is, of course, the people who will fork out GBP12,000 for a Vettriano which is really a Hoggan who fuel the madness. If I wanted Mr V's most famous work, The Singing Butler, to adorn the walls of Buffer Towers - which I wouldn't since it looks vapid and Woosterish - I wouldn't have to pay GBP750,000. A perfectly good analogue of the work (not a print but done in oils) sold for GBP116 on eBay this week. They are done by a company called Master Oil Paintings and come with a money-back guarantee if you are not completely satisfied.

Give me the work of an honest forger any time: a Vermeer by Hans van Meegeren or a Rembrandt by Tom Keating. Lack of space precludes full discussion of these talented artists, but you can check them out on Google. Keating was a Cockney who forged 2000 paintings. He was due to go on trial but escaped on health grounds. He ended up on Channel 4 doing a series on DIY Old masters.

Van Meegeren was famous for creating a Vermeer which ended up in leading Nazi Herman Goering's private collection. Goering had the common sense to pay for the painting in counterfeit currency. Compared to Keating and van Meegeren, Vettriano's use of an illustrator's guide is a mere footnote in art history.

Fortunately, the Buffer art collection does not rely on forging or analoguing. The latest addition is The Ham, by Our Man With The Easel. It is far superior to similar oeuvres by Gauguin or that fellow Picasso. In my opinion, it stands comparison with The Ham by Edouard Manet, part of the Burrell Collection.

The Buffer's ham has a thoroughly genuine provenance. It came from Costco. Our Man With The Easel cooked it with cloves and a honey glaze.

Then he did an enchanting watercolour of it. Then we ate it with cabbage and new potatoes. The biled ham that is, not watercolour. Now, that is what I call a real work of art.