Legging it

LEITH author Irvine Welsh has a follow-up book to Trainspotting coming out this year entitled Dead Men's Trousers. A fan asked him if it would be retitled Dead Men's Pants for the American market to reflect common usage there. Irvine rather wittily replied: "No doubt some snootier critics will simply refer to it as pants."

Suspicious minds

CRITICS of the Scottish Government were getting all hot and bothered about Prestwick Airport being used by the American military – although we seem to recall a great Herald picture of Elvis Presley landing there in his American army uniform so don't think it was much of a secret. Anyway, the always garrulous Labour MSP Jackie Baillie accused the SNP Government of 'breathtaking hypocrisy" in yesterday's Herald story. A Dumbarton reader gets in touch to tell us: "Wait until she finds out about the US-built nuclear missiles in her own constituency."

The final curtain

A CHUM tells us about the theatre-goer in front of her at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow this week who slept through most of the production. We liked her pal Jude Stewart who told her of his experience at a concert: "The guy next to me slept for most of the Kate Bush concert most people struggled to get tickets for. I thought maybe he'd taken a euthanasia pill – that this was his perfect way to slowly die."

Any other unusual activity by theatre-goers?

Don't preach

GROWING old continued. A Partick reader emails: "The singer Madonna is celebrating her 60th birthday later this year. I thought I should tell you so that people can prepare themselves for when it happens so that they don't burst into tears."

Job lot

A GLASGOW reader swears to us that a young lad in his local was telling his pals about a recent job interview, and he told them: "The guy doing the interview looked at the form I'd filled in and said I was asking for quite a high salary considering I had no experience in their line of work. I explained that was because the work is much harder when you don't know what you're doing."

And we don't believe the reader who claimed: "I went for a job as an Argos delivery driver. Turned up three hours late for the interview and they said congratulations, you qualify for the job."

Putting the knife in

TODAY'S daftness comes from Paul who says: "My 18-year-old son is putting the cutlery in the wrong sections of the drawer after he reluctantly agreed to do the washing up. So I'm putting some of his game discs in the wrong boxes. Let's see whose head explodes first – him or his mum's."

Floral tribute

FINAL warning, it's Valentine's Day next week. Thinking of writing your partner a love poem? As a Hyndland reader muses: "Poetry would be so much more difficult if violets were orange."

Good call

WE'VE mentioned dealing with cold callers, and a Bearsden reader tells us: "I managed to silence one such caller when he asked me who my internet provider was and I replied, 'My next door neighbour'."

Cheeky

KNEW I shouldn't have looked up when a colleague bustled over to my desk. Eventually I did and he told me: "Guy over there just told me I am totally rubbish at describing people. He's got a cheek."