Egg on your face

SAD to hear of the death of musician and cartoonist Malky McCormick, whose caricatures of folk famous and not so famous have adorned newspapers and even pub walls for many years. Malky always had a wicked sense of humour. He once told me that in his first office job in Glasgow he had to go out for the lunches folk ordered, and one boss was always complaining about the food. So the young Malky bought a plastic fried egg from Tam Shepherd's joke shop, put it in a roll, complete with hot oil over it, and put it amongst the lunchtime orders. The ever-complaining recipient took one bite, declared it the worst fried egg ever, and stomped off to the shop to complain as Malky told the rest of the office what he had done.

Takes the biscuit

SOME messages on social media really need a larger audience. As a young Scots chap declared the other day: "Maw keeps buying dark chocolate biscuits knowin' fine well am allergic tae them. Thinks it'll stop me tanning them. Think again Alison hen, get the EpiPen ready."

Smash hit

COMEDIAN Frank Skinner has just announced that he will be back at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year – the place where his comedy career began in 1987 and where four years later he won the Perrier Award. Funny guy Frank, although perhaps not everyone is a fan. We never did get to the bottom of why one year at the Fringe a well-known comedy agent went up to a a perspex-framed photograph of Frank on the wall in the Assembly Rooms bar, punched it, and smashed it to pieces. However, we did like Frank's comment in the Radio Times years ago on fatherhood when he said: "He's the best thing that's ever happened. Even if he grows up to be a Conservative, I'll forgive him, like one of those mothers who goes to visit their serial killer son in prison."

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Put the knife in

TALKING of Conservatives, Martin Morrison in Lochinver declares: "Home Secretary Sajid Javid said in a speech on knife crime that he too might just as easily have led a life of crime rather than becoming a Conservative Cabinet Minister. I suppose in the present climate it is kinda refreshing to hear a politician admit to making bad choices."

Getting the hump

DEPRESSING pictures of the fire at Notre Dame, although the damage appears to be repairable. It somehow reminds us of the story told of impressionist Victor Seaforth appearing at the Glasgow Empire, with its feared audience, and giving his take on Charles Laughton as the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Victor later wrote in his biography: "There I was all twisted up going into the dialogue, and a really loud Scottish voice shouted out, 'Away hame you humpy-backed old b******'. I worked my way up to the mike and as I looked up into the Circle I said, in my loudest voice, 'Don't you recognise your father?' and with that I got myself off. It was the longest week of my life."

Milking it

OUR stories of unusual drink combinations reminded George Morris: "We lived in South Africa in the seventies, where my brother's father-in-law drank whisky with milk. We were convinced he did this so his wife didn't know how much he was actually drinking."

Picture this

GROWING old, continued. Says a Newton Mearns reader: "You know you've reached an advanced age when you realise that you can't actually work out what many of the adverts on the telly are actually selling."