KEEPING fit is still a huge industry these days. But not everyone is convinced. A reader heard a customer in a Glasgow boozer at the weekend declare: "So if you eat what you like, and don't exercise, eventually you get a motorised scooter.

"I'm really not seeing the down side to all this."

Which reminds us of the Diary reader who confessed: "My New Year's Resolution was to lose 15 pounds before the summer holidays. I've just got 20 pounds to go."

IT'S the Budget today, and we are reminded of the reader who once told us: "If the economy's slowing down, how come it's so hard for me to keep up with it?"

WE asked for your favourite lies and Bruce Skivington suggests:

*I was only doing 30, officer.

*I shall start the diet tomorrow.

*If I buy a size 12 I can slim to get in them.

*And of course the answer to: "Does my bum look big in this?"

A READER wonders if this is the rudest waiter out there as he heard a chap at the table next to him, when the waiter asked what he could get him, reply: "What do you recommend?" The harassed waiter merely replied: "I recommend that you tell me what you want to eat."

THE Times newspaper has named Glasgow's Finnieston as the hippest place to live in Britain. It has certainly been livened up with bars and restaurants since the Hydro arena opened nearby. A reader once told us that he was in a bar in Finnieston when the peace and quiet was shattered by a gaggle of women arriving and demanding drink after attending a Michael Buble concert in the Hydro. They all wanted served at once so the under-pressure barman shouted out: "Right, let's do this the easy way. Oldest first."

Suddenly, says our reader, you could have heard a pin drop.

THE other thing about the Michael Buble concert was the large number of women attending who all wanted to go to the toilet at the interview. One desperate woman dashed into the gents' toilet which was not being used in order to avoid the queues. As she came out a chap heading to the loo rather cleverly, we thought, told her: "I hope you remembered to put the toilet seat up."

THE Herald story yesterday about the Lobey Dosser statue with Lobey astride his faithful horse El Fideldo reminds Rev Graham Smith in Livingston: "I was lucky enough to win a bottle of whisky courtesy of The Diary in 1992 by providing a motto for Calton Creek – ‘Semper Fideldo’ when the statue was being created."

Which reminds us, we must have another Diary competition soon. Suggestions of topic for contest always helpful.

DISNEY has announced that they are making a fifth Indiana Jones film with Harrison Ford, now in his seventies, still playing the lead role. We wondered what it would be called, and Simon Ricketts suggests ?Indiana Jones and I’ve Forgotten Why I Came Into This Underground Tomb.

A COLLEAGUE wanders over saying he wants some advice. Cautiously we ask him what about and he tells us: "My wife said women always say the opposite of what they mean. Now I don't know whether they do or not."