by Ken Smith
WE really must end our false-teeth stories, but a reader reminds us of The Diary story some time ago of the grandmother who told us she didn’t notice her granddaughter coming into the bathroom just as she was taking her set of false teeth out. Her hopes that it would go unnoticed were dashed when the little one went racing downstairs shouting at her brother: “Come and see Gran. She’s doing tricks.”
WE are going far down memory lane, as a reader continues our best excuses for being late with the recollection: “I taught in the Gorbals many years ago and one little boy’s excuse for being late in the days of boxed-in beds in tenements was, ‘I couldnae sclim ower ma granny.’”
PARENTING skills, continued. Says a Cambuslang reader: “My granddaughter was looking through some family photograph albums and asked me why so many people in those days had red eyes.
“I was about to explain to her about using camera flashes close up but decided, what the heck, and told her instead about the demon uprisings in the seventies.
“Seemed to impress her.”
REARING children, continued. A reader tells us: “I remember taking my nephew to the soft play for the first time. Worried about letting him climb on his own, I stood at the bottom shouting instructions, and at a point where there was a low ceiling, I shouted, ‘Duck, Archie, duck,’ to which he turned to me and replied, ‘Quack quack,’ just as his head bumped into it.”
BUMPED into our old chum journalist Paul Drury, who tells us: “Kind shopper at Glasgow supermarket notices till operator explaining to a girl of about nine that she does not have enough for her sweets. Chivalrous shopper offers to pay the difference but was taken aback when he was asked for £2.50. Nevertheless, he brandishes a tenner and says, ‘Take it off this.’
“The wee girl skips away and the guy says jokingly, ‘Bet she tries that every week.’
“The till operator’s face fell. ‘You mean she’s not with you? I just gave her your change!’”
SO are your children a bit obsessive about their mobile phones, always wondering who is contacting them? A Bishopbriggs reader tells us: “Was sitting in the lounge with my son watching the football on the telly when his phone, which was in the kitchen, pinged to say he had a message. He immediately got up and went through to the kitchen to read the message, which said, ‘Just make a cup of tea while you’re there. Dad.’”
A WHITECRAIGS reader fears that his teenage daughter might be an evil genius. After warning her that he was going to confiscate her mobile phone at night because she was contacting her friends late into the small hours, he carried out his threat, took her phone and left it in his bedroom. Hours later he was abruptly woken as she had set the alarm for four in the morning before he’d snatched it from her.
THE stress of being a teenager. A reader heard his daughter look up from her mobile phone and state: “Some people have written ‘Happy Birthday’ on my timeline without any exclamation marks. It’s as if they don’t even care.”
A NEWTON MEARNS reader swears to us that his teenage daughter announced: “My friends say that I’m self-absorbed, so I took a long, hard look at myself. Beautiful.”
BRINGING up grandchildren, continued. A reader confesses she was reading an article in The Herald about an online course on Jacobites in which, said The Herald: “Participants will study the Jacobite campaigns from the flight to France of James II in 1688.” She was spluttering at the newspaper calling him James II instead of his Scottish title, James VII, and her grandson asked what was wrong. When she read the sentence out to him he merely asked: “When were aeroplanes invented?”
GRANNIES are the best, aren’t they? Sandra Williams in North Berwick tells us: “Overheard in North Berwick High Street. Grandmother asks young grandson what his bright green lollipop tastes of. ‘Lime,’ he replies. ‘That’s good for you,’ she says.”
CHILDREN’S tales, continued. Says Margaret Forbes in Kilmacolm: “Your story about the child frightened of the draught reminded me of the time my mother and sister came home drookit after heavy rain. My mother said, ‘We were caught in that rain!’ And so I said fearfully, ‘What does the rain do to you when it catches you?’”
Talking of mothers, an East Kilbride reader asks: “I wonder how many tragedies my mother actually prevented when me and my siblings went out to play and she stood at the door shouting at us, ‘Be careful!’”
WE mentioned getting youngsters to behave at the airport while flying out for the Easter break, and Margaret Thomson tells us: “When my granddaughter was four, we went as a family group to Florida. At Glasgow Airport, we went through all the queues, check-in, passport control, body scan, etc., which took over an hour. When we finally emerged in the departure lounge, my granddaughter asked, ‘Are we in Florida now?’”
A RATHER tetchy reader phones to tell us: “It’s Father’s Day this month. My message to teenagers is get something that will really make your dad happy on Father’s Day. A flat.”
5
Student Days
As new student flats pop up around our main cities, we bring you some of the stories of our bright young hopes for the future.
AS the new intake of students prepares to head off to university, a former Glasgow Uni student tells us of a group years ago getting together for a drink, when one of them who had disappeared for a while told his pals: “You’ll never guess what I wrote on the toilet wall.”
One of his pals was sober enough to tell him: “We left the Union half an hour ago, ya eejit. We’re back in my flat.”
OUR recent tales of student life remind a former Glasgow Uni student of a neighbour knocking at the door at two in the morning and announcing that he couldn’t sleep. Our reader’s flatmate, who answered the door, drunkenly told him: “Well, you’re in luck. Our party’s still going so come on in.”
WE asked about student flats, and a Glasgow reader tells us that, years ago, he and his chums played the classic trick on a flatmate who was annoying them. They balanced a bucket of water over his partly open bedroom door. “Of course he spotted it,” says our reader.
“Rather smugly he slowly removed it and took it to the kitchen sink to empty it. He then failed to notice that we’d removed the waste pipe below the sink.
“Happy days.”
A READER on the train from Mount Florida to Central Station yesterday heard a young girl look up from her mobile phone and tell her pal: “Did you see that Selena Gomez got a kidney from her best pal?” After a pause, she added: “And you wouldnae even lend me yer student ID card.”
CONGRATULATIONS on Glasgow Uni going through on University Challenge after a close victory over Emmanuel College, Cambridge. We liked the comment of Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon after seeing the programme, who remarked: “Speaking as an academic, it’s just a delight to see eight students without their phones for half an hour.”
And Dani Cugini on the Emmanuel team said afterwards: “I love presenter Jeremy Paxman. He gets so indignant if people don’t recognise the poet William Blake, but he reads out the science cards like they’re in Klingon.”
TODAY’S daft observation of the day comes from a West End reader, who emails: “A big thank you to the Student Loans Company for getting me through university. I don’t think I can ever repay you.”
OUR colourful tales of infestations remind Willie Young of post-student days living in a West End flat with pals above a bakery and having an influx of cockroaches.
Says Willie: “One of my flatmates worked at United Biscuits, where the pest-control man suggested we put down bicarbonate of soda and sugar on baking foil. Successful? Fantastic.
“The only snag was we had to have the kitchen redecorated as the cockroaches exploded. What a sight when we turned on the light in the morning.”
SOMEHOW we slithered into tales of flat infestations, and Stuart Miller in Linlithgow recalls: “In a West End flat in the seventies we lived above a kebab restaurant, which sent cockroaches up the pipes. When the Rentokil man came he asked me to capture a few at night so he c
ould assess the problem. A few weeks later my brother-in-law came across my matchbox with a cockroach, so jokingly put it in his wife’s coffee. As it eventually floated to the surface, she screamed in horror, but he laughingly assured her it was just a plastic fake. ‘Er not exactly,’ I told him. Cue more screaming.”
WE pass on the comment from American college professor Marian Viorica, who is not impressed by the ability of her students to get up in the morning. As she put it: “I once taught an 8 am college class. So many grandparents died that semester. I then moved my class to 3 pm. No more deaths. And that, my friends, is how I save lives.”
OUR tales of student life remind Sandy Tuckerman: “I had a flatmate who would Hoover his bedsheets once a term, whether they needed it or not.”
AS our flat infestation stories continue to run around, reader David Steel tells us: “Reminds me of sharing a communal flat on Pollokshaws Road with one friend embellishing his life with a pet hamster, which ran about the living room inside its ball.
“However, one day the hamster went missing, and after much searching we reckoned it had escaped to city life.
“Three months later we were leaving, and the owner sent in cleaners to make it ready for the next tenants.
“We arrived to reclaim our deposit, and the owner produced a dead hamster which had been found in the toilet brush holder. To add insult to injury he took £30 off our deposit because we weren’t meant to have pets.”
MANY parents will have sympathy for broadcaster Anneka Rice, who said: “Messaged my son, ‘Dear Son, I transferred £80 to you in a sunny weekendy moment of love, except you’ll have realised by now my thumb juddered and I sent £800. This is not what I meant to do. Obviously. Please get in touch.’ No reply so far.”
6
No Business like Show Business
Scots love to meet the famous – and if the famous can tell a story against themselves, then so much the better.
GOOD to see Scottish women being explained to Americans. Paisley-born film star Gerard Butler was on a late-night chat show in the States when he explained: “You can’t get away with much in Scotland.” He said he was in a bar back in Scotland when a woman who had been staring over at him came over and said: “You know, I know your face from the telly – but I’m not gonna tell you that, because it’s going to give you a big ******* head!” Host Seth Meyers asked: “Is that Scottish flirting?”
INTERESTING musing from comedian Kate Robbins, who appeared at Glasgow’s King’s Theatre not so long ago in the show Fifty Shades of Beige. Said Kate: “A few years ago I met Princess Anne at a charity event. In the pre-show line-up she asked me what I did. I said, ‘I’m an impressionist,’ to which she replied, ‘Do you have an exhibition on anywhere?’”
ALL this sobering commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales reminds Tim Malseed of a story involving a friend of his. The friend’s gran phoned very early in the morning, telling him urgently: “Quick, put your television on. Something has happened to Diana in Paris – she’s been chased into a tunnel by Pavarotti on a scooter.”
GOOD to see Glasgow-born songwriter Bill Martin of “Congratulations” fame going on stage at the Edinburgh Fringe to talk about his career. Gordon Wright tells us that Bill confided that he had met Stones’ singer Mick Jagger recently and commented on the number of wrinkles on his face. “They’re laughter lines,” replied Mick.
“Nothing’s that funny,” said Bill.
GLASGOW’S Susan Calman was all dolled up yesterday for a red-carpet appearance by this year’s Strictly Come Dancing contestants. As she later commented on her chances of winning, the diminutive comedian said: “To do well on Strictly I may need to be more ‘tabloid’. [Coughs] In 1991 I was late returning Puppet Master to Azad Video. I paid the fine.”
OUR tales of bands remind Billy Sinclair: “When Glasgow was European City of Culture in 1990, I was in the reception of the media centre in St Enoch Square when Deacon Blue came in for a press call. No matter who you were, you couldn’t get past reception without signing in.
“The receptionist asked for their name and Ricky Ross told her, ‘Deacon Blue,’ which she wrote down. But as the band went past her she called them back, saying, ‘I’ve got Deacon’s name,’ pointing at Ricky, ‘but I need aw youse names before you can go through.’”
GLASGOW-BORN author Ryan O’Neill, now living in Australia, has been shortlisted for the Australian book award, the Miles Franklin Award, for his irreverent book taking the mickey out of Aussie culture, Their Brilliant Careers. It seems the old phrase about “you can take the boy out of Glasgow” is true, as Ryan tells us: “I’ve been in Australia about 13 years, but as Australians never tire of telling me, I still have my Glaswegian accent.
“In a shop the assistant asked me, ‘Anything else?’ and I said, ‘No thanks, that’s all.’ After we walked out, my friend who was with me said in a shocked voice, ‘Why did you call him an asshole?’”
THE news that the BBC is to pay £850,000 in costs to Sir Cliff Richard after he sued them in a privacy case reminds us of the yarn our late lamented editor Arnold Kemp told of the Scotsman’s extremely erudite drama critic Charles Graves once being sent to review a Cliff concert in Edinburgh. The disgruntled Graves devoted most of the review to the jugglers who were the warm-up act, making many scholarly references to the history of their art. He mentioned Cliff only in the final paragraph, which was chopped off in the composing room to make the review fit the space, leaving confused readers the next day wondering why Cliff Richard never actually featured in a review of his show.
AS TV comedy series Dad’s Army celebrates its 50th anniversary, surviving cast member Ian Lavender, who played Private Pike, ruefully revealed in the Radio Times that when he did a one-man show he would bring out the scarf that Pike frequently wore on the series and explained: “The scarf got a round of applause. I have to work an hour just to get a round of applause, but I just bring the scarf out and it gets one straightaway.”
CULTURES collide, it seems, as folk head to Edinburgh for the Festival. The Rev. Richard Coles, one-time Strictly dancer, giving talks at the Fringe, explained yesterday: “Tremendous entertainment on the train to Edinburgh as someone who isn’t, but could be, Gwyneth Paltrow, requires to know the provenance and vegan credentials of the tea being briskly served by the Geordie LNER ladies.”
And self-styled bubbleologist Louis Pearl, who has impressed audiences for years at the Fringe with his gravity-defying bubble tricks, tells us he recently had a lad about nine up on stage who volunteered to be put in a bubble. Having a chat with him, Louis saw the boy’s arm was in a cast and asked what had happened. “A dog bit it,” said the youngster. Trying for a laugh, Louis then asked: “What happened to the dog?” Instead of smiling, the boy said with a straight face: “He got castrated.”
FORMER singer-turned-minister Richard Coles was indeed a popular figure on the last season of Strictly Come Dancing, although his style was more wooden than the pews in his church. He was recounting at the weekend that he went to visit his mother in hospital and a nurse on the ward said: “Mrs Coles, is this your famous son, the Strictly vicar?” His mother merely replied: “Yes, but he was awful, so no need to fuss.”
JOHN Cleese is in America publicising his rather underwhelming TV series, Hold the Sunset. We liked his reply when he was asked by our sister paper USA Today where his humour came from. Cleese replied: “It comes from a little man in Cardiff. He’s just wonderfully funny. I read the postcards and do pretty much what he tells me. He told me recently they’re not his ideas. He gets his ideas from a lady in Swindon who refuses to say where she gets her ideas.”
THE Radio Times is asking folk to vote for their favourite television crime drama, with STV’s Taggart in the shortlist. We remember a reader watching an episode of Taggart in France. It still had the original spoken English but with French subtitles. Our reader noticed that when Taggart, the late, great Mark McManus, unwrapped a fish supper, scowl
ed and shouted: “Where’s ma pickled onion?” the translator admitted defeat and merely put him saying on the screen: “Bon appétit.”
DEALING with hecklers. New York stand-up Mark Normand says he was interrupted the other night by an audience member who shouted: “You’re white, what do you know about racism?” Mark’s sharp response was: “Are you kidding? We invented it.”
LOTS of folk enjoyed the royal wedding, although there were a few eyebrows raised at Prince Harry being made the Earl of Dumbarton. As Stephen McGowan commented: “Being made the Earl of Dumbarton as a wedding present? I’d take the toaster.” And council cutbacks in local services led to Alan McGinley stating: “I live in West Dunbartonshire and the fact that Harry is now Earl of Dumbarton has unleashed a fury of expectation among the locals that the bloomin’ grass might actually get cut.”
MEETING someone famous, continued. Amongst the original line-up of the Rolling Stones was Scottish blues pianist Ian Stewart. Reader David Corstorphine tells us: “In the early sixties my granny and her sister, my great-aunt Phemie, worked at one of the knitwear factories in Cellardyke. One day, four young men or, as Phemie recalled, ‘long-haired Nellies’, arrived at the front desk, where Phemie was stationed. The men wanted in to speak to the lassies, but Phemie refused them entry. ‘Do you know who we are?’ asked the blond one.
