Frank Reynolds Vindicated As Footage of Scotland’s Musical Diddling Championship Resurfaces

The beautiful melodies of the Scottish people echo through the centuries like the call of the golden eagle ringing across the highlands. Legends say that if you stop and listen to the wind on a clear day in Glencoe, you can still hear the ancient clans singing, “Do not diddle kids, it’s no good diddling kids!”

Contemporary wisdom tells us that under no circumstances should one ever combine music and diddling, but tradition would ask us how in the world are we supposed to diddle without a little tune? While It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fans know that Frank Reynolds found himself in hot water during the episode “Frank Reynold’s Little Beauties” for attempting to shut down diddling allegations through song after accidentally purchasing a child beauty pageant, the Scottish people once held an international competition to determine who was the very best diddler in a musical pageant that resulted in zero arrests.

You see, in Scotland, diddling and songs are like haggis and a dram — they pair perfectly, and it’s almost unpatriotic to demand that music should be diddling-free. Last month, the BBC Archive released its footage from the 1974 World Diddling Championships, proclaiming of the event, “Let’s face it; diddling is harmless, diddling is fun, and above all, diddling is free.”

Tell that to Frank’s old business partner — diddling cost him his freedom.

As the BBC waited nearly two minutes to clarify in the above video, diddling is a very different pastime in Scotland as it is in Pennsylvania. To the folk music lovers across the Atlantic, the phrase “diddling” is more likely to evoke the sounds of “hey diddle diddle” rather than the image of an embalmed Frank Reynolds desperately trying to explain to a crowd of exploitative parents that he’s not sexually attracted to any of their child beauty queens.

In Scotland, diddling is a specific style of singing that’s more of an old-timey equivalent to scatting, as contestants in the hilariously titled World Diddling Championships sang lilting songs with nonsensical syllables in competition for “the greatest prize in diddling.” Clearly, compared to how they’re received in Philadelphia, diddling songs are much more harmless and much less likely to attract accusations of pedophilia in Scotland, where, according to the BBC, “Diddling can be infectious” and a “communal diddle” is likely to break out in a crowd of music-lovers.

There’s another island besides Great Britain where group diddling is a popular leisure activity, one which Frank has visited many times. But don’t worry, he was only there for the snorkeling.