YOU can't beat a Glasgow audience. Author Maggie Ritchie was speaking about her novel Paris Kiss at Bridgeton Library when she asked the audience if they had any questions. As she was expecting something of a literary nature she was momentarily nonplussed when the first question was: "I’m looking at this picture of you on the flyer – have you had your hair dyed since it was taken?”

A TOUCHING tribute to former president of the Law Society of Scotland, Michael Scanlon, in The Herald's death notices on Friday. Michael's family, who knew he always liked a laugh, described Michael, whose funeral is at Daldowie Crematorium on Wednesday, as "Reasonably well-liked by his many friends." Many of us would settle for that.

AH the glamour of Holywood. Maureen O'Hara, the red-haired film star, who died at the weekend at the age of 95, is perhaps most famous for her role as the Irish lass playing opposite John Wayne in The Quiet Man. The film, set in Ireland, had her character dragged by the hair through sheep dung, and as she explained decades later: "That was real dung. The director John Ford was the biggest devil. He put as much of that dung in the field as he could, and then made sure that I was covered in it by the end of the day. Oh I can still smell that awful stuff."

FORMER Prime Minister has given a qualified apology for certain aspects of the Iraq War that he took Britain into. Not everyone is convinced by it. As Adam Ramsay puts it: "Tony Blair apologising for Iraq War 'mistakes' feels like someone who burgled you apologising for trampling mud into your carpet."

WE should all be grateful that Chinese medical scientist Tu Youyou has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine this month for her work on preventing malaria, which has probably saved thousands of lives. But such is the world of trivia that we now live in, someone has pointed out: "Very confusing if you ever sang 'Happy Birthday' to her."

HALLOWE'EN this Saturday, and a reader tells us how impressed she was with the iPhone's Siri application which answers questions you put to it. When she asked Siri on her phone: "What should I wear for Hallowe'en?" she was told: "You could go as an eclipse. Just dress in black and stand in front of things."

And a young woman in Glasgow, invited to a Hallowe'en party, told her friends: "I'm thinking of going as that fictional character I pretend to be in all my Facebook postings."

A READER getting the bus into Glasgow heard a young chap in school uniform tell his pal: "Funnily enough if you leave your homework to the last minute, you can usually get it done in a minute."

WISE words from a colleague who tells us: "Just watched a five minute video of a dog going round and round in circles chasing its own tail, and I chuckled to myself about easily amused it was. And then I realised I had watched the whole five minute video."

YES the clocks went back an hour yesterday. As Dave Williams tells us: "Of course when Ukip members say it's time for the clocks to go back they add, 'to where they came from'."

Pic capt: "Picture taken at a water installation near Ranch Station - and we thought midges were to be feared!," says reader John Brownlee.