Thanks for the replies. I also found this in a web article:

Scalar aggregates are queries with aggregate functions in the select list and no GROUP BY clause. Scalar aggregates...

Thanks for looking at this and the reply.

Nice to know I'm not going mad! 🙂

Yes, thats exactly it!

Thank you very much for that, you've hit the nail on the head!

I knew i wasn't going crazy. :crazy:

This does however smell to me like a bug!...

I may of got a bit carried away too...sorry.

Yes it was in 2012. Simply a vanilla build 2008 R2 server, with vanilla sql 2012 instance.

I created a new database, with...

How patronising!

I can reproduce this on a vanilla 2008 R2 server, with a vanilla SQL install.

Maybe you are just too good and i'm just a dummy, but what am i...

Managed to get things working.

The linked server uses the 64bit client in SSCM to connect, but the replication subscription connection uses the 32bit client. Therefore i had to...