Driven demented

ALL those bright shiny new students are getting ready for uni. We hear about a new student going to St Andrews who caught a bus to the town from Glasgow and felt the need while it was scooting along the motorway at top speed to interrupt the driver to tell him self-importantly: "Excuse me, the wifi isn't working." The Fife driver replied: "Neither's Brexit or ma marriage, but there's nothing I can do about aw three - so gonna sit down afore a crash the bus eh?"

The great persuader

GREAT fundraising dinner in Glasgow on Friday to raise money for a proposed statue of Nelson Mandela. South African star Mara Louw, who sang in George Square when Madiba was given the Freedom of the City, returned for the dinner, and told of Mandela on a visit to Switzerland where he doggedly pursued the country's Finance Minister, whom he thought was avoiding him, to persuade him to donate 20,000 to build a village school in South Africa. He eventually tracked down his man, who agreed. When he left, Nelson's wife said to her husband: "You realise that he actually said he would donate 20m." "Twenty million?," replied Mandela. "What kind of school is that?"

Bedroom talk

AS usual at large dinners, lots of folk were chatting when Mara got up to sing. We liked her unique way of getting everyone's attention by announcing: "I would never walk into your bedroom and talk when you are performing."

Mum's the word

EMBARRASSING moments, continued. Confesses Rachel Martin in Musselburgh: "In the nineties, teaching in an Edinburgh primary school, I glanced over a low bookcase to see the top of a child's head entering the resource room. I whipped round the end of the bookcase saying, 'You know you're not allowed in here on your own!' to meet a teeny volunteer mum. Luckily she was a very nice teeny mum!"

Spreads his wings

IMAGINE his surprise when Bob Doris, Glasgow SNP MSP, arrived for an event in Possilpark in his constituency, to be met with a barrage of reporters, photographers and TV cameras. “I take it you’re not all here for the Chinese Association cheque presentation” he asked. When informed that he was about to witness the arrival of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to the same venue, he took it in his stride. While Jeremy had to deal with the media melee in the foyer, Bob was in the main hall enjoying some relaxing Tai Chi with his constituents.

Sink or swim

TALKING of politics, we are still trying to understand Brexit. Joe Heenan tries to help by explaining: "Atlantis didn’t sink. It held a referendum and 52% voted to live under the sea. Experts warned them they would probably die but some lying idiots who wrote 'Living under the sea will be great' on a cart, said 'Experts don’t know anything!' So they lived under the sea and drowned."

Benchmark

THINGS you could only hear in Glasgow - "You stop to take a picture of the 'Homeless Jesus' sculpture in Nelson Mandela Square and a passing cabbie shouts 'He's sleeping!' Happened to me last week,' says Isobel Frize.

In his stride

MORE on growing old, as Eric Arbuckle in Largs tells us: "Packing my case to go on holiday I could not put my hands on a snazzy pair of Italian jeans. High and low I searched. Not a nook or cranny evaded my earnest attention. Yup...I was wearing them."