The plan is to commemorate the birth in the year 2222 of Armstrong Scott, the character "Scotty" played by recently beamed-up actor James "The Ship’ll never stand it Captain" Doohan.

For reasons best known to themselves, local council officials plan to mark the birth centuries from now of someone who never existed, presumably in the hope that the move will give tourists a reason to stop and visit the town.

Welcoming the move, Professor Beaker of Dundee’s Department of Pretending To Understand French Post-Structuralism, told The JT: "Normally one would expect that plaques would be put up to someone real who had died previously. In marking the birthplace of a character from a TV show who hasn’t even been born yet, tourist bosses are playfully engaging with received notions of verisimilitude. Or, to put it another way: it doesn’t make any sense."

It is thought that the project is only the first step in re-constructing the whole idea of "Thereness" so beloved of cultural theorists with nothing better to do with their time.

In a series of performance pieces planned for the High Street, residents of the quiet, if terminally dull, West Lothian town, will be challenged to assess their whole notion of ontology, asked to respond to the question : "Are we really real or are we simply imaginary constructs existing outwith real time and space?"