Greater Cressroads Robert Burns' Appreciation Society, welcoming Sassenachs to its ranks in the watercress capital of the land, is grown out of a 250th Anniversary Burns' Supper and Order of Ceremonies at Alresford's Tichborne Arms.

On the night Patrick and Nicky Roper's French chef Francois Dubois served cock-a-leekie soup before pouring his whisky gravy over helpings of haggis, champit tatties and bashed neeps.

Cranachan followed. A traditional Scottish dessert made from a mixture of whipped cream, whisky, honey and fresh raspberries topped with toasted oatmeal. Robert Burns' songs and poems are widely known and loved. But the most fervent admirer admits that it is sometimes difficult to know the exact meaning of some of the words and phrases the famed bard set to 18th-century parchment.

Sporting his late father's distinguished red smoking jacket Tichborne bard Charlie Ottley, 34, who writes and performs comic verse for TV, radio and the national press, provided translations as well as explanations.

As did Alresford's Gordon MacKay, managing director of a telecom company and organiser of the newly-born Burns' Appreciation Society, Chairman MacKay smiles: "Bards and their love affairs, eh!

"Scotland's favourite son - poet, lyricist, farmer, even excise man - was a pioneer of the Romantic movement.

"He is the best known of poets to have written in the Scots language. But much of his writing is also in English, given a 'light' Scots dialect and made accessible to an audience beyond Scotland.

"Rabbie also wrote in standard English, and it is in these pieces of his work that his political commentary is often at its most blunt, shall we say."

Selkirk Grace was said before Enter the Haggis and Ode to the Haggis.

Kilted Gordon's dozen Burns' followers were asked to fill their glasses after dinner and coffee in preparation for their chairman making no apology for his lengthy delivery of the Immortal Memory (of Rabbie, whose notable works include Auld Lang Syne, To A Mouse and Tam O'Shanter).

Then followed a Toast to the Lassies, 'whisky tasting and whatever' through until midnight.