What's that you say? My favourite fact of 2011? I was beginning to think you'd never ask. It's this – there are more pandas in Scotland than Tory MPs.

Here we are in 2012, and I'm still a bit tickled by that. It's 2-1 to the bamboo-scoffing doe-eyed layabouts.

And last night's Wild About Pandas (BBC2, 9pm) showed how it all came about. The panda part, that is.

They didn't really touch on the Scotland's-only-got-one-Tory bit. Probably doesn't need explaining.

Anyway, this cheery film set off with a vet and a zookeeper to a panda sanctuary in China, where Tian Tian and Yang Guang lounged about in blissful ignorance of their looming upheaval.

Edinburgh Zoo is paying £600,000 a year to hire the pandas, which have also cost a million quid a year each to insure.

Chuck in the £70,000 of bamboo they'll chew their way through each year, and the quarter of a million the zoo shelled out on building them a new home and you can start to see why grumbly people grumbled.

But the zoo needed to gamble. Visitor numbers are tumbling, and pandas are the A-listers of the zoo world.

Landing Sweetie and Sunshine – as they're conveniently also known – on a 10-year loan is a coup for the zoo, said David Tennant on his gentle voice-over. A coup for the zoo.

If you or I said that, it would barely raise an eyebrow. Tennant made it sound as luxurious as warm chocolate oozing from a fondant.

The BBC could film him standing in a featureless white room, saying 'a coup for the zoo' over and over and repeat it on a four-hour-long loop, and it would still be better than an average night on Five.

I digress.

Vet Simon and keeper Alison went off to learn everything they needed to know about their new charges. How to feed them and clean them, how to keep them alive and how to encourage them to put down the damn bamboo for long enough to raise the enthusiasm for a little lazy rumpy-pumpy.

Alison took a trip to a sister sanctuary too, where they pride themselves on their record for releasing pandas back into the wild.

Alison told how the staff take every precaution to make sure baby pandas never set eyes on a human keeper.

Beside her was a keeper standing stock still in a panda outfit, staring at the screen. It was a scene straight out of Trigger Happy TV. And, yes, there were plucked strings in the background (see yesterday's rant for further details). As the date of the move approached, the grandstanding began.

Alex Salmond flew to Beijing, to shake hands and look statesmanly. I didn't spot him at the farewell ceremony they held for Sweetie and Sunshine at the sanctuary. It's probably all for the best.

Behind the stage, there was a big picture of a panda, and a great big one of Big Ben and Tower Bridge.