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Andrew Feinberg
White House Correspondent
A Labour frontbencher has been forced to resign from his role chairing a committee in the Scottish Parliament after being heard making comments about a woman in the public benches.
A microphone picked up the MSP and former minister Frank McAveety discussing the "very attractive girl" in a conversation with the committee clerk, during a break in committee proceedings between the consideration of petitions on wind farms and Parkinson's disease.
He was heard to say: "There's a very attractive girl in the second row, dark... and dusky. We'll maybe put a wee word out for her."
Mr McAveety, who is married, went on: "She's very attractive looking, nice, very nice, very slim," before adding: "The heat's getting to me."
The MSP also said: "She looks kinda... she's got that Filipino look.
"You know... the kind you'd see in a Gauguin painting. There's a wee bit of culture."
He said yesterday that he would quit his role as committee convener and as Labour's sports spokesman in Scotland, and that he had already apologised for any offence caused by his remarks.
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