Did he?

JUST as an aside to the death of funnyman Ken Dodd, we are reminded of our former editor Harry Reid's book Deadline, in which he chronicles the ups and downs of the Scottish press, and in which he tells of former Scotsman editor John McGurk, when he was a young reporter, making conversation with a local minister. John had told Harry: "I went to this minister, and I was trying to get a story, and on his sideboard there’s a picture of Ken Dodd, who was a pretty popular comedian at the time.

“To try and break the ice, I say, 'Ken Dodd, is that someone you know?' And he looked at me and looked at the picture, looked back at me and said, ‘That’s a photograph of my wife’.”

Crumbs

OUR tales of student life remind Sandy Tuckerman: "I had a flat-mate who would Hoover his bedsheets once a term, whether they needed it or not."

She's toast

HAVING breakfast in Glasgow's west end can throw up a story or two as you interact with the colourful mixture of folk who live there. Says Tom Rafferty: "I had breakfast this morning in a cafe in the west end. The young lady at the table beside me had a convoluted posh accent, and her request for Cider caused great confusion - 'naw, we're no licensed', etc - until her friend worked out that Arabella was actually wanting sourdough toast."

Vegging out

A GLASGOW reader heard some young chaps in his local pub discussing the pros and cons of vegetarianism, when one of them declared: "Imagine being a vegan, stumbling home after a night out, and saying to yourself, 'I could fair go a cabbage supper'."

Numbers game

WE bump into our old colleague and chum David Belcher who has helped write the football-inspired comedy drama The Pieman Cometh, which is on at Oran Mor until Wednesday night. We asked how the rehearsals had gone and he tells us: "Director Frank Miller, a fan of Aberdeen, has joined actors Julie Coombe, Hibs fan, and Gavin Jon Wright, Rangers, in competitive reminiscence about their teams’ respective glory days, with endless chat about winning formations: 4-4-2, 4-2-4, 3-5-2, 3-4-1-2. Grizzled stage veteran Callum Cuthbertson scored the winner with his contribution, telling them, 'Personally, I reckon you can’t beat a 1 and a 2, and a 1-2-3-4.' Callum is a fan of jazz."

Fair game

AFTER MSPs voted to scrap the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, an Ayr grandfather tells us bad behaviour at matches is unlikely to be stamped-out any time soon. "I took my seven-year-old grandson to Somerset Park this season, and the wee yin has become a real Ayr United fan. However, I was somewhat embarrassed during the crucial top-of-the-table clash with Raith Rovers, when Grandson shouted at referee Gavin Ross, 'Haw ref, is this your first game?'

"I shudder to think what he will be shouting by the time he's 20," says Grandpaw.

Alarming behaviour

A WHITECRAIGS reader fears that his teenage daughter might be an evil genius. After warning her that he was going to confiscate her mobile phone at night because she was contacting her friends late into the small hours, he carried out his threat, took her phone, and left it in his bedroom. Hours later he was abruptly woken as she had set the alarm for four in the morning before he snatched it from her.