A great lift

SAD to hear of the death of veteran actress June Whitfield. It is strange in some ways that after a life on stage and in film she is remembered by many folk for her great line in a Stannah Stairlift, I think it was, advertisement when she declared:

“It goes so fast that you can still remember why you went upstairs.” Anyway, we prefer her retort when she was asked a few years ago if she would ever go on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. Replied June: “My dear, I wouldn’t go into a field to rejuvenate my career.”

What a knight

SO a knighthood for actor and writer Michael Palin if you care about those sort of things. It does, however, remind us of when we saw Michael speaking at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall a few years ago about a book he had written on, from memory, Ernest Hemingway. He was standing at a podium and showing slides when a delightful lady in the front row loudly announced he was blocking her view of the screen.

A taken aback Michael started to manhandle the heavy podium backwards out of her way when he suddenly had a brainwave. He let go of the podium and told the sight-obscured audience member: “Do you see these two empty seats in the middle? Well, Princess Anne said she would come, but she hasn’t, so why don’t you move up?’’ Problem solved, although we did like the idea of Princess Anne arriving and saying: “What do you mean, there’s no seat for me?”

What’s he driving at?

ALWAYS interesting, the chats with taxi drivers at this time of year – although it is the only occupation where we can’t stop ourselves from asking: “So what time are you on ‘til?” Anyway, a south side reader was heading home from the city centre the other night when his chatty taxi driver told him he had a PhD – then added it stood for “Pot-Hole Dodging.”

Initial thought

MORE trouble on the High Street as HMV appoints an administrator. Says reader John Henderson: “Much as I have real pity for anyone being made redundant in the present economy, but when I looked at my iPhone, I almost let out a yelp of pleasure when I saw the fleeting headline that HMV was to go into administration. I didn’t have my glasses on, and

I thought it said HMGov.”

Print that

OUR tale of the police officer asking Phil Cunningham after damage to his MGB GT how he spelled it, reminded Ian Cooper in Bearsden of when a teenage pal was injured in an accident and, when asked by a police officer what his father’s occupation was for the accident report, replied: “Compositor.” Says Ian: “The officer in question made several attempts to spell it correctly in his notebook before looking up and asking, ‘Can we just say your faither’s a printer?’”

Bit of a flier

YES, it was truly shocking of the police to release details of the couple they arrested over the Gatwick drones who were then hounded by the press before the police confirmed they were not charging them with any crime at all. As a reader phones to tell us: “I should be glad they were innocent, but part of me was slightly annoyed as when I read the chap was a window fitter I had been working on a line for The Diary that ‘people who put glass in houses shouldn’t

fly drones’.”

Simply the best

EXCITING win for Rangers in the Old Firm derby at the weekend. We thought Ireland-based bookies Paddy Power were a wee bit parsimonious in their praise when they announced: “This is the best Rangers have looked since they had all those great players that they couldn’t really afford.”