On yer bike

AFTER feuding for decades Robbie Williams and Liam Gallagher have decided to bury the hatchet. Both celebs are volatile chaps, so by the time you read this they may have dug up the hatchet from where ever it was buried (local allotment? plant pot in garden centre?) and are once again waving it enthusiastically, like a Native American saying “Yoo-hoo!” to General Custer at the battle of the Little Bighorn.

Most Diary contributors are like Robbie and Liam. Eager to learn from past errors, though often tumbling back into old ways. Thank goodness for that, as it means we never run out of stories to tell, including the following classics from our vaults, such as the reader who enquired whose bicycle pump did Dunlop borrow to blow up the first pneumatic tyre?

Name game

SOME situations aren’t the fault of the protagonists of our stories. They can’t help the names they were given at birth. For instance, there was a catering manager at Cleland Hospital who rejoiced in the name I. Tipple.

Royal scrawl

THE Diary doesn’t normally endorse graffiti, but we made an exception in the case of a wee inscription once written in a Glasgow civic building’s lift that had recently been visited by the Prince of Wales. On the panelling was scratched the message: “HRH was ER.”

Antisocial climbers

A PUBLIC inquiry in Glasgow heard an application by a mining firm who wished to operate an open-cast mine on the outskirts of Easterhouse. One of the concerns voiced by anxious locals was that ‘settlement ponds’ which would have to be dug would pose a danger to children in the area. No problem, said a company spokesman. A wall-and-chain-link fence 17 feet high would be built round the ponds. “You don’t ken the weans frae Easterhouse,” was the comment from one of the locals in the hall.

Clever doggy

LEGENDARY Tannoy Announcements of the Past. During a speedway match in Peterborough involving Glasgow Tigers, the following information was broadcast: “Would the driver of the yellow Vauxhall Nova in the carpark please note that his Alsatian dog has just switched the windscreen wipers on.”

Hairy moment

EILEEN McCallum rose high in the Diary’s estimation when she once accepted an award as actress of the year at a Bafta Scotland ceremony. In her speech after receiving her Baffie (or whatever they’re called) she said: “Oh dear. If I knew I was going to win, I would have bleached my moustache.”

Dolorous being dollarless

WE recall the quote from an Edinburgh legal chap, which we hope was said in jest. Envious of the $250,000 fee earned by an American lawyer for a trial, he muttered grumpily: “Och, it would take a Scottish solicitor a year to defraud a client of that amount of money.”

Future imperfect

AN advertisement in the Borders weekly newspaper the Southern Reporter once forlornly advised: “Due to an error, an evening of clairvoyance will NOT be held tonight in the Foresters Arms, Jedburgh.”