Hard to stomach

SO are you still at home eating leftovers or cheerfully heading back to your office? Chris McAlees summed it up for many: "Why am I still eating? I don't need to eat again until Easter. I have gone from eating pigs-in-blankets to being a pig in blanket. I wish I was back to work just to stop me eating. Oooh, Twiglets!"

And an England-based newspaper asked readers if they were willing to queue up at 2.45am in order to be first at the sales on Boxing Day.

A Glasgow reader replied: "At 2.45am I was steaming, eating the wean's selection box and screechin' All I Want for Christmas at my poor cat. Whose got the time for this queueing up nonsense at 2am?"

Word count

CUTE things kids say, continued. Brian Donohoe tells us: "Seven-year-old grandchild on the phone to cousin, also aged seven, passes phone to Grandma saying, 'I've run out of words, it's your turn'."

Kiss him goodbye

CONFUSING all the sponsorship for football leagues these days. A reader in a Johnstone pub a few days ago heard two gentlemen of a certain age discussing the match being shown on the pub telly. When one told his slightly deaf pal that it was a game in the Vanarama League, the old fella was confused and asked were they not a pop group in the 1980s. Further discussion elicited that he thought it was the Bananarama League.

Driving at

WE mentioned accents causing problems, and a Milngavie reader recalled golfing in Portugal some years ago when he was driven fast and erratically by his playing partner's 12-year-old son in the golf buggy. At one point our golfer's head hit the roof and he shouted: "Slow down you wee rascal!"

Says our reader: "Sharing a drink after the round there was a noticeable dryness in the conversation, and I jovially enquired if I had said something to upset them. 'Well, yes!' said the father. 'It was what you called my son!' 'You mean when I hit my head on the roof, and I said slow down you wee rascal!'

“'Oh! He thought you called him an ‘a**hole’.”

Ringing endorsement

THE Herald reported that actor Gregor Fisher would play Rikki Fulton's morose minister character, The Rev I.M. Jolly, to mark the 40th anniversary of the BBC comedy sketch show Scotch and Wry.

Our old chum Tom Shields once asked Rikki how the Rev Jolly popped the question to his dragon-like wife Ephasia, and Rikki solemnly replied: ''It was a misunderstanding, actually. They had gone for a fish tea at the Ritz Fish and Chicken Bar and afterwards, as she helped him into his taxi, he mumbled, 'I'll give you a ring sometime.' The magistrate ruled that a definite proposal had been made.''

Letter of the law

READER Sandy Tuckerman passes on the story from musician Phil Cunningham about when his sports car was set on fire by thieves many years ago in their frustration at not being able to get it started.

Says Sandy: "The police arrived promptly and while they surveyed the smouldering wreck in Edinburgh's Gorgie one of the officers asked him what make it was. Phil told him it was an MGB GT. To ensure his notes were accurate the constable asked, 'Could you spell that please?'"

A goal

A TALKING point at Christmas was the Queen giving her annual message on the telly with a gold piano behind her, with some folk arguing it was an ostentatious show of wealth. But as Andy Gilder argues: "I wonder how many 'ordinary working people' who got mad at the Queen having money are currently cheering on millionaire man-babies hoofing a ball around a bit of grass?"

Money talks

TODAY'S piece of whimsy comes from a reader who tells us: "Banks need to get better at restocking these ATMS after Christmas. This is the fifth one I've been to that has 'insufficient funds'."