SOME folk were getting agitated about SNP MP Hannah Bardell wearing a football top in the House of Commons. Former Falkirk MP Dennis Canavan recalls: “At last a sartorial revolution at Westminster with Speaker Bercow ruling that MPs don’t need to wear a tie and Hannah Bardell sporting a Scotland jersey. Changed days since the 1980s when a Tory MP complained that I was not wearing a tie. Speaker Thomas pompously responded that any tieless MP would fail to catch his eye, which is a euphemism for not getting called to speak. I politely asked if that would also apply to the Prime Minister. As this was during the Thatcher regime, Speaker Thomas suddenly realised the absurdity of his ruling and moved on to next business.”

A GLASGOW reader swears to us he was in a city pub the other night when a younger chap came in to meet his pals and told them he had lost his new job as a waiter. When his concerned mates asked him what happened he told them: “The boss asked me if I could clear Table Five. I told him I hadn’t tried the High Jump since school, but I would give it a go.”

TODAY sees the launch, as it were, of the film Dunkirk when the British Expeditionary Force was saved from France. What is perhaps not known is that the paddle steamer Waverley, the precursor to the present one which replaced her, was among the flotilla of boats. Then Captain John Cameron later revealed that when they arrived “ a great cheer went up and one lad shouted, ‘Haw Wullie, we’re oan the auld Waverley goin’ to Rothesay. We’re awright noo.’”

Sadly the Waverley was sunk - but many of the men were saved as the wooden seats which folk going down the Clyde sat on, floated to the surface with the troops clinging to them.

SCOTLAND sadly beaten by England in the women’s football the other night. Someone who watched the game explained to us: “The diving, the cheating, the childish behaviour - football just isn’t the same without it.”

HOSPITAL misunderstandings continued. Brian Johnston in Torrance says the hospital conference room where he worked was being used to hold interviews for a new orthopaedic surgeon, and reception staff were given a copy of the timetable and asked to show folk in. Says Brian: “The ethnic diversity of the candidates was reflected by the names on the list. Eventually a receptionist reported that the second interviewee had arrived but, unfortunately, the first, a certain ‘P'nel Con-veh-nez,’ had failed to make an appearance.

“Above the list of names and interview times was ‘Panel Convenes 09:30’."

TODAY’S piece of whimsy comes from a reader who asks: “Am I the only person to be bothered that the patient in the game Operation is clearly wide awake?”

A CLARKSTON reader says she is feeling very old after her young son asked her what happened to dinosaurs. When she told him that they had all died off, he asked her: “Why did you let them die?”