WRITER Allan Brown has just published an affectionate encyclopedia of Glasgow humour, entitled The Glasgow Smile, which includes memories of the sometimes makeshift STV lunchtime show The One O'clock Gang.

Allan recalls that one morning a cameraman had a ferocious hangover, and when Dorothy Paul was performing some airy ditty, the camerman vomited over his equipment sending bits of bacon sandwich on to her frock.

Dorothy stormed off to the producer and declared that the cameraman was a disgrace. "Well Dorothy, everyone's entitled to their opinion," said the placatory producer.

Mum's the word

A TEACHER in North Ayrshire passes on from a pupil's essay: "As the pregnant mother's time drew near, her contraptions worsened."

Bumps on seats

MUCH debate last week on Dunbartonshire MP Jo Swinson not being offered a seat in a crowded House of Commons despite being seven months pregnant. Colin MacKelvie in Lochwinnoch suggests: "She should remember the neat solution offered by a heavily pregnant lassie on a crowded underground carriage who displayed a placard which said: 'Stand, or I'll deliver!'"

Friends in the north

A CHAP who moved to the north of Scotland recently picked up an elderly relative who came to visit, and as they drove along to their house off a single-track road, he courteously waved at every driver who pulled in to let him pass. When they arrived at the house his relative told his wife approvingly: "You've only been here a short time but already Alan seems to know everyone up here."

Putting the aaarrr in rugby

GOOD to see fresh sporting faces. Ayr rugby club played the Cornish Pirates from Penzance for the first time at the weekend in the British and Irish Cup. Says Matt Vallance who was there: "I didn't particularly enjoy watching Ayr being put to the sword by the Cornish Pirate, but I did like the chutzpah of the Pirates' fans.

"One would start the old chant, 'Give me a C, give me an O'. But just when you start to think that this could be tedious by the time they finish, the choirmaster would shout, 'Give me an R', and the entire Pirates following would, indeed, give us an 'Aaarrr', as in 'Aar Jim Lad', and the chant would end."

Red liner

OUR story of the wean with red hair makes reader Tom Bradshaw think he can delve into a very old joke-book and tell us: "Overheard in Bellshill Main Street. 'My, your wean's got a lovely heid of red hair. Does he take after his faither?'

"'Ah don't know, he never took his bunnet aff'."

Study break

THE Open University tells us a definition of studying which one OU student came up with: "The act of texting, eating and watching TV with an open textbook nearby."

Emergency stop

NEWS you may have missed. A bullet train in Japan made an emergency stop when distressed passengers claimed a drunk passenger had told someone on his mobile phone that there was going to be an explosion on the train.

Turned out he was merely explaining to a pal that if he didn't get off the train soon "his bladder was going to explode".