They say you should never meet your heroes, but when you get the chance to wander up to a slightly ginger Fifer in a red cap who wrote the song after which your company is named, you should probably do that.

And that’s what I did on Wednesday night of this week when I went to see James Yorkston playing at the Pleasance in Edinburgh with The Pictish Trail and Seamus Fogarty. It was a very low-key but very funny and musically ace night, drink was taken and it was all good.

At the interval I huckled James Yorkston and told him that I’d named my company after his song ‘A Lang Cat’ which is off a record called Lang Cat, Crooked Cat, Spider Cat. I think it’s out of print now but you can find out more about it here.

Anyway, when I was setting up the name kept popping into my head and wouldn’t go away, so I gave into it and that’s why the lang cat is called what it is. Also, it stops us sounding like a team name from the Apprentice or whatever.

James was a gentleman and managed to look not too crestfallen when I told him what business we were in. Sorry it’s not Fairtrade humanitarian stuff, James. He also told me the story behind the title of the record.

When he was in Spain one time, he saw three cats attacking a snake – one at the head, one at the tail and one at the middle. One was crooked – sort of bent out of shape I guess, one was (I dunno) spidery, and one was ‘lang’ which doesn’t just mean long but can mean skinny, like ‘a big long drink of water’.

Here’s a picture James kindly tweeted (follow him on @jamesyorkston) of said cat, loking sated:

And there it is. Now you know, and can stop asking me, and now I know the story behind the title. Thanks to James for writing it, and telling me about it. Go and buy all his stuff immediately. Most of it isn’t all that cheerful, to be honest, but it is fantastic.

Here’s the video to Border Song, which is one of my favourites:

and here’s a wee video from Wednesday night (not taken by me) of James, Johnny and Seamus playing, er, Erasure.

Have a nice weekend.