Panda to your Every Desire (16 page)

YOU HAVE to be wary of what appears to be a bargain offered on the Internet. Said one chap in a Glasgow pub: “I paid £200 to a firm which guaranteed to make me rich.

“Turned out they changed my name to Richard by deed poll.”

RETIRED police inspector turned crime writer Les Brown tells us that many years ago in the Gorbals, new police recruits were taken on the beat and led into the cellar of the vast Co-op headquarters in Morrison Street where the coffins were stored.

Says Les: “After a few minutes the lid of a coffin would slide sideways and a shrouded figure, which was of course another cop, sat up.

“The practice came to a sudden end when a young cop struck the shrouded figure with his baton before exiting the building.”

OUR LUNCH stories remind a lawyer: “Advocate Donald Findlay tells of a junior counsel assisting him in a trial at the High Court in Glasgow whom he sent to fetch something for lunch. ‘Nip up to M&S. Get a tuna and sweetcorn sandwich for me and something for yourself.' The youth returned and gave Donald his lunch and 50p change. Donald pointed out he had give him a £20 note and had expected rather more.

“‘But you told me to get something for myself,' replied the lad.

“‘Well what did you get – caviar, foie gras?'

“‘No, a shirt.”'

WE MENTIONED Rony Bridges' play
Six and a Tanner
being performed at Barlinnie Prison. It subsequently was put on at Greenock Prison.

A chuffed Rony told writer and actor Tony Roper afterwards: “One lifer told me it was the most powerful piece of drama he had ever seen.”

“To be fair,” replied Tony cautiously, “he probably doesn't get out much.”

OUR LONDON contact phones to tell us the excuse used by one of the rioters appearing in court. Apparently the miscreant blamed his mobile phone's predictive text and claimed all he had tried to do was text his pals to ask if they wanted to meet up that night for a pint.

One chap, with a 42-inch plasma telly balanced on the front of his pushbike, claimed it was his satnav.

And another was dubbed the city's worst looter. Apparently he ran into Argos and escaped with a dozen catalogues.

YES THE London riots were shocking, so we don't believe our London contact who told us his neighbour announced: “I feel bad about turning my kids into the police for being involved in the looting.

“You see they were innocent, but having them locked up is a lot cheaper than paying for a child minder during the school holidays.”

AND TRYING to find something positive in it all is Eric Scot out in Bondi who opines: “Now that the Metropolitan police are getting the hang of it, they might be ready for a resumption of the home internationals.”

THE ENGLISH riots were being discussed at an Ayrshire golf club this week, where one club member opined: “Did you hear the rioters in court arguing that ‘everyone else was doing it' and ‘I needed more money'.

“Well we've heard all these excuses before – from MPs.”

AND FINALLY on the riots, a London court contact tells us: “One of the looters was fined for taking goods from a DFS furniture store. But he doesn't have to pay anything until 2013.”

FUTURE productions at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland – the old RSAMD in Glasgow – were being discussed at a staff planning meeting when the staging of
Tommy the Musical
next March came up. A bemused member of staff asked if Tommy would be out of prison in time for the opening night and whether he had given his approval for the show.

It was then gently explained to her that they were talking about the Pete Townshend rock musical based on The Who's 1969 double album, as opposed to the life story of Pollok naughty-boy turned politician Tommy Sheridan.

THE HERALD reported that Celtic chairman John Reid had complained to First Minister Alex Salmond about John Wilson, the Hearts fan who was cleared of assaulting Celtic manager Neil Lennon.

Reader Joe Hughes in Johnstone explains what actually happened in court that day.

“Just before the jury foreman delivered the verdict, the defence lawyer asked him: ‘Who is the best Celtic winger ever – Jimmy Johnstone or Davie Provan?'

“‘Not Provan,' replied the foreman.”

It goes without saying that women can have the sharpest and funniest tongues around.

AN AYRSHIRE reader out with friends heard a cacophony of shouting and spied a hen party touring the pubs.

The bride-to-be was not young, but the slogan emblazoned across her party gear read: “Half a hunner. But still a stunner!”

A WEST END woman returning from a company party with her husband asked him: “Have I ever told you how handsome and sexy and totally irresistible to all women you are?”

“Why, no,” replied her deeply flattered husband.

“Then what,” she added, “gave you that stupid idea at the party?”

FAVOURITE Twitter message we’ve read this week: “My husband complains I put too much information on Twitter. Clearly, his haemorrhoids are making him cranky.”

THE WOMAN having coffee with friends in a grey, drizzly Glasgow was perhaps being a bit harsh when she confided: “When I told Derek I didn’t want to see him any more, he told me I would never meet someone like him again.

“I told him that’s what I was hoping for.”

A READER back from holiday in Guernsey relates that some fun-loving, young Glasgow women were staying at the same hotel. One morning, they were discussing what they got up to the night before. One of them was being accused of getting over-amorous with a chap, but she defended herself: “Leave us alone. Nothing happened – we were just talking, that’s all.”

“Don’t talk tripe, Mags,” retorted a pal. “You had his shirt aff faster than a nurse applying CPR.”

A GROUP of young women were overheard discussing how lazy their boyfriends were over a bottle of Pinot Grigio in Glasgow’s West End.

The winner was the girl who alleged: “My Jackie’s so lazy, even his smoke alarm has a snooze button on it.”

“NO, I DON’T get jealous seeing my ex-boyfriend with someone else,” said the woman in the West End bar to her friends who had spotted the ex coming in the door.

“My mother always taught me to give my old toys to those less fortunate.”

A READER overhears two women in Glasgow discussing a mutual friend’s new boyfriend, with one explaining that the chap is rather on the large side.

“How big is he?” asked her friend.

“Put it this way,” she replied. “He needs a boomerang to put a belt on.”

“DO YOU ever miss the ex?” a woman meeting her girlfriends for a drink asked in Glasgow’s West End.

“Oh all the time,” replied one of her pals. “You wouldn’t believe how much.”

“But I thought you hated his guts?” replied the first woman.

“Wait a minute,” replied her pal. “Did you say ‘ex’ or ‘sex’?”

A WOMAN having coffee with friends in Glasgow was discussing her new boyfriend and mentioned she had reservations about him having such a hairy back. “How hairy is it?” eagerly asked a pal.

“Put it this way,” she replied, “I’m worried that if we go on holiday this summer, animal rights activists will throw red paint over him.”

WOMEN drivers – won’t hear a word against them. However, John Bannerman tells us that when his wife was learning to drive in Kilmarnock she had to react when the car in front of her at traffic lights began to reverse towards her. But instead of sounding the horn, she chapped on her windscreen to attract the driver’s attention.

TWO WOMEN catching up in a West End bar were watching the married chap at the bar fiddle absentmindedly with his wedding ring. “What do you think he’s doing?” remarked one. “Trying to work out the combination?”

FOLK trying to talk posh reminds Mary McNeill in Lanarkshire of an aspirational friend who, when travelling by bus to the village of Stane near Shotts, would ask for “one to Stone” which always led to her being asked to repeat it.

A READER overhears a Glasgow woman tell her pals over a coffee: “In the evening I can hear any leftover cake, and sometimes ice cream, calling to me from the fridge.

“Broccoli is strangely silent.”

“MY DAUGHTER,” said the woman having coffee with friends in Edinburgh this week, “has just texted saying ‘call me ASAP’.

“I think,” she told her friends, “I’ll just stick to Jennifer.”

ANDREW GILMOUR tells us he was on a bus in Maryhill when the wee wummin behind him asked her pal if she liked oysters, but she replied that she had never tried them.

“Ah think they’re great,” persisted the first woman. “Oor James brings us in bags o’ them an we stick them in the freezer.”

“How dae ye eat them?”

“Open them an fill them wi’ ice cream.”

“Does that no make the ice cream taste o’ fish?”

“Naw it’s no they oysters. It’s the wans ye get in the ice cream shoap.”

A BEARSDEN reader admires the fortitude of wee Glasgow wummin. When she came out of the Tesco store on Maryhill Road last week she passed one such local lady who was bent double while trying to make headway against the gale-force wind. Their eyes met and the wee wummin, almost going one step backwards for every step forwards, remarked: “Aye it’s a good dryin’ day.”

OUR STORIES of age mistakes reminds a female reader of being out walking in bad weather with her hood up when a passing police car stopped, and the young officer asked her her name and where she lived.

She tells us: “After my bemused responses he explained that I fitted the description of a woman reported missing from the local nursing home.

“I threw down my hood and told him I was only in my early fifties. He quickly jumped back into his car with a look of fear in his eyes that he may be assaulted by an even more irate and humiliated middle-aged, drookit woman.”

AGED aunts continued. George Morton in Newton Mearns recalls: “My aunt was visiting from Wales. She described her journey in her son’s BMW as very smooth, and that her son hadn’t exceeded 30mph all the way up. Later her son confided she had been looking at the rev counter and not the speedometer. At 3000 revs a Beamer is travelling at 90mph.”

CONGRATULATIONS to Glasgow City FC for winning the Scottish Women’s Premier League for the fourth year in a row. The women’s game has come on leaps and bounds since an old buffer once told us: “Women’s football will never catch on. How will you ever get eleven women to go outside in the same outfit?”

THREE loud office-workers having a drink after work on Friday in Glasgow were en route to their staff Christmas party when one was asked if she would kiss her boss under the mistletoe.

“I wouldn’t even kiss him under anaesthetic,” she replied.

ANDREW STALKER tells us about police in Falkirk using a sniffer dog at club queues to detect drugs. When the dog stopped next to a group of females and barked, one of the girls broke down, confessing she was under eighteen, but how could the dog possibly know?

It turned out it had detected drugs on a chap behind her and was not, as she had thought, trained to work out folk’s ages.

WITH Christmas approaching, an Airdrie reader tells us about taking his aged mum out to a local hotel for Christmas lunch last year, where she surprised him by asking: “Why would anyone bring their budgie with them?”

As thoughts of old ladies sitting there with cages on the table filled his mind, he asked what she was on about.

She pointed at a sign at the door which read: “No prams or buggies.”

Weddings, funerals, church services … even there, a smile or two can be discovered.

CHRIS THORNHILL in Ardfern tells us about the Highland funeral in winter when the two gravediggers were standing to one side, stamping their feet and patting their arms to try to keep warm, while waiting for the end of the graveside service.

As the mourners turned to leave, one of them approached the cold gravediggers and asked: “Do you chaps take a dram?” When they eagerly answered in the affirmative, the mourner pointed back at the grave and told them: “Well let that be a dreadful warning to you.”