Sounding off

THE rock combo Coldplay are very much in the mould of such bands as the Sex Pistols, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. If the Sex Pistols, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath had been made up of polite, middle-class boys performing music that wouldn’t be out of place being played on the "call waiting" phone line of an old age home in Weston-super-Mare.

And yet Coldplay have an abundance of fans. Many were out in force this week, watching their heroes play Hampden.

Alas, Nicole Cameron found herself crushed up against those same music aficionados as they travelled to the stadium on the train she uses to return home from work.

One of Nicole’s colleagues, travelling with her, hissed in her ear: “I don’t know what’s worse. Not getting a seat on the train. Or discovering my home town has no musical taste whatsoever.”

Top drawer

WE continue discussing IZAL toilet paper. Alan Smith from Neilston scolds the Diary for unfairly traducing the scritchy-scratchy bog roll.

“IZAL’s greatest claim to fame is its use as tracing paper,” says Alan. “As a child I whiled away many happy hours tracing characters out of my Beano and Dandy comics, and actually became quite a good drawer.”

The Diary is now eager to discover if da Vinci, Rembrandt and Picasso had IZAL in their cludgies.

How else to explain their blossoming talents?

Lonesome loo dweller

MORE toilet tales. Eric Simmons was faced with a doubly difficult dilemma when he needed to use the gents at the Stair Arms in Pathhead. For there was a notice pinned to the door which read: "ONLY TWO PEOPLE AT ONCE".

Our reader searched in vain for a chap to accompany him, then was forced to go rogue by ignoring the stern commandment and scandalously entered the toilet alone.

Cash for kids

A FINANCIAL thought from reader Ted Faulds: “Kids are the most expensive things you can get for free.”

Clever doggy

OVERHEARD in the pub by reader Gordon Doncaster: a sozzled chap slurred to his friend: “I still cannae get o’er the fact parrots can speak, and naebody seems bothered. It’s like a dug learnin’ tae dae a Rubik’s Cube an everyone just shruggin’ their shooders.”

Half-cut

OBSERVANT reader David Donaldson spotted in The Herald that Glasgow hair salon, The Rainbow Room, has been granted a drinks licence.

Says David: “Any chance they'll change their name to Hair Of The Dog?”

Mind your language

LINGUISTICALLY-LIMBER reader Paul Pearson points out: “A good pun is its own reword.”

Read more: The emergency action no one wanted to take