She would never be so vulgar, but the Countess of Mar could advance a claim to be Britain?s grandest aristocrat. An ancestor may have paid up to bag the family earldom, but if so the secret died with Alexander I of Scotland, who awarded the gong back in 1115 ? making Mar?s the oldest title in the House of Lords. Not that the countess?s current seat glints with baronial splendour. Rather than a drawbridge, one passes two bungalows before reaching her whitewashed cottage from where she and hubbie run a small goat farm in the golden Worcestershire hills. But this rural idyll is illusory. The countess is fighting a ferocious battle against Britain?s chaotic immigration system. After 21 years she has resigned from the panel hearing immigration appeal cases, claiming the whole system has descended into an ?expensive legalistic game?.