Not smiling

THE claim in The Diary that old folk tend to go on too much about their ailments reminds Donald Grant: "There was an elderly gent in Hillington who constantly regaled neighbours about his ill health. One morning my father felt that he had heard enough and as the gent approached him he said, 'Now look, Willie, I am sick fed up hearing about your ill-health. I am aching all over and the only bloody thing that I don't have pain with is my dentures.' Willie grabbed his arm and said, 'Alex, wait till I tell you about the problems I’ve been having with mine!'"

Simply the Best

WE have been looking at the alleged parsimony of folk from Paisley, and Jim Scott tells us: "That great but wayward footballer George Best signed for Hibs and didn’t turn up for training one day as he was indisposed after a session in some local hostelries where he was bought free drinks all night. Some said he should have signed for St Mirren as nobody in Paisley would have bought him any drinks."

Sugar-coated

YES, the usual crop of fantasists have been announced by the BBC for the next series of The Apprentice, starting next month. As Andy Glider commented dismissively: "Always fun, the launch of a new series of The Apprentice. Competing to be as successful as previous winners like Thingy, That Bloke, and Her Who Was On The Wright Stuff Once."

And the Radio Times has asked people how they would like the American comedy series about geeky scientists The Big Bang Theory to end now that it has been announced that this will be the last series. Colin Fesser replied: "Nine seasons ago."

Mum's the word

A GLASGOW reader heard a chap in his local tell his mates about a date he had lined up with someone from a dating app on his phone. "Did she look like her picture?" a pal asked. "Put it this way," he replied, "when a woman came up and said hello I looked at her and said, 'You must be Beth's mum. Could she not make it or something?"

Summing up

WE try to understand the news from the Labour Party, where their Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer went further than the party's leadership on whether to reject the Tory Government's deal on leaving the EU. As our old chum Ruth Wishart explained on social media: "Feel a bit sorry for Keir Starmer. He's a bit like the clever maths teacher who keeps having to find a rationale for the dodgy arithmetic of the headie and his deputy."

Tee time

OUR tales of men-only golf clubs remind Norman Brown in Barassie of the classic tale: "A friend was recently invited for a game of golf at an upmarket club in the north of England. He was told that previously a member had three-putted the 18th and launched into a string of expletives. Some lady members on the veranda overlooking the last green were not impressed and duly wrote a letter of complaint to the committee. Having considered the matter, the committee announced their decision – henceforth no lady members to be allowed on the veranda."

Shelled out

GROWING old continued. Says a Bearsden reader: "I'm now at an age where I get angry if the supermarket changes where it puts its eggs."

Driven

YES, we mentioned golf courses, and a reader in Ayrshire tells us about a fellow member at his club who announced: "Caught my wife going through the neighbour's bins the other day.

"No, she's not nosey – just really terrible at parking the car when she gets home."