Crowning

YES, news of yet another Royal Baby as Prince Harry's wife Meghan Markle announces she is pregnant. Some advice from stand-up Hal Cruttenden who says: "Make sure your baby’s born in Europe Meghan - Ireland’s nice - then he/she will be able to get an EU passport and live and work on the continent post Brexit. Don’t think a German great grandmother is enough."

Thin ice

WE mentioned the inventive nicknames police officers give their colleagues. One retired officer tells us: "There was a superintendent who always walked with one hand behind his back. The older he got the more he bent forward, and his head went from side to side. He was known as The Speed Skater."

Table talk

WRITER Deedee Cuddihy tells us: "Actor Sandy Welch who, when he isn't appearing on our TV screens, runs the trendy William cafe on Queen Margaret Drive, was discussing customers who overstay their welcome and spoke of one young couple who came in recently, ordered a coffee each, and lingered over it for more than three hours before finally asking for the bill. Sandy replied, 'And not before time - I was going to start charging you rent'."

Slice of luck

MORE on wayward golf shots as entertainer Andy Cameron recalls: "Many years ago Dougie Donnelly and myself played a match at Cathcart Castle against two of their members, namely sports writer Hughie Taylor and Jimmy Sanderson of Radio Clyde fame. On the first hole, a par three, I asked Hughie what the course record was and he says, 'One'. Seeing a look of bemusement on my face he explained that one day a player was teeing off on the first and somehow hit the ball between his legs where it hit the flagpole and ended up rolling into the hole on the 18th nearby."

Tall tale

WE asked about unusual introductions, and David Donaldson says: "In the late 1950s my father, a painter who was always self-conscious about being only 5 foot 3 inches tall, was introduced to the then Lord Provost at a Glasgow Art Club exhibition. 'Pleased to meet you, Mr Donaldson' said Myer Galpern. 'And I'm delighted to meet someone even smaller than myself!' replied my father. Maybe that's why Herbert James Gunn got the commission to paint the Lord Provost's official portrait."

Spanish eyes

GOSH that was a trip down memory lane the other day when a fellow journalist had to explain on social media: "A confused young person asked me about the reference in my article to Lladro ornaments. I had to explain that they were mawkishly sentimental ceramics that upper working class women brought home from Spanish package holidays in the 1970s. 'Heh Bella, gonna bring me hame some Lladro fae Callela?'"

As someone rather harshly replied: "My mother has regularly threatened me with inheriting her collection. It’s been made very clear they will be binned!"

Any fans of Lladro out there?

Not so positive

A HYNDLAND reader explains to us: "I wonder if other people dispose of their batteries the same way as I do? First you take them out of the device they were in, but you don't put them in the bin as you remember that you are not supposed to dispose of batteries that way. You then tell yourself that you are going to look up on the internet how to dispose of batteries safely, but you never do. Two months later you find them still left on the shelf where you put them originally. And then feeling a bit guilty you hide them in the bin."

Sunk

OH dear, we stop to look at the sun streaming in the window and a colleague thinks he can interrupt our reverie. "A former sailor," he bellows, "wanted to forget the days he spent playing cards in submarines." We sigh, and wait, before he adds: "He said it was all just bridge under the water."