IF the Bard were here today, chances are he would be proposing a toast to...Ayr butcher Stewart Duguid. For Stewart's three Pollok Williamson shops in the town "cut up wi' ready slight" the opposition at the annual Traditional Scotch Haggis competition at Ayr College on Tuesday.

ONE - Stewart himself, who runs the Pollok Williamson shop at 27 Mount Oliphant Crescent, took the first prize.

TWO - his shop managed by Clark McCrindle at 23 High Street took second place.

THREE - his shop managed by Andy Lauchlan at 34 Alloway Place came third. Said a delighted Stewart: "We normally only make the one batch of haggis for all the shops. But this year I decided each shop should make its own and enter it for the competition - although it's all my recipe." He added: "We are delighted to have swept the boards." The competition was run by the Ayrshire Butchers' Association.

Fifteen entries from throughout Ayrshire were cooked and judged by 13 third-year catering students at the College under the watchful eye of Norman Robertson, the food studies expert, and William Ferguson, the senior lecturer in hospitality studies. The delighted Pollok Williamson trio were presented with copious quantities of whisky at the Mount Oliphant Crescent shop on Tuesday by Bob Steele, the local sales representative of Campbell's Distillers, of Kilwinning, the competition sponsors.

Allan Hastie, secretary of the Ayrshire Butchers' Association, said: "That was a tremendous achievement by the Pollok Williamson shops. It also shows that the judging was fair, because the same recipe took the first three places. If they had been first, eighth and fifteenth questions could have been asked!"