Train of thought

IT’S rarely a good idea to indulge in social-media banter with Sir Chris Hoy.

Someone tweeted him a photograph showing a South Eastern train that had been named after Hoy, and asked cheekily: “Hi Chris, when I grow up I’d like to have a train named after me too. Any tips?”

Hoy replied by posting a picture of another train, saying, “I thought you already did?”

This particular train only had one name written across it.

Virgin.

Dead wrong

YESTERDAY’S anecdote about the Flip store, and second-hand clothes, brings forth this contribution from Alan Barlow. “I was in a charity shop in Largs when I came across a selection of very good quality trousers and shirts.

“On enquiry I was told by a member of staff that they had belonged to a recently deceased member of the aristocracy. Unable to resist, I purchased a pair of trousers, whereupon the assistant offered me a pair of the dead man’s underpants.

“I declined the offer”, Alan concludes. “And I never did wear the trousers”.

Accent on style

ANDY Cameron, meantime, weighs in with this: “Back in the fifties there was a shop in Cambridge Street which sold American shirts with celebrity styles like Bobby Darin, Dean Martin and Sinatra collars. I can’t recall its name but the owner was a guy from Glasgow called Bob Fletcher who, whenever you came into the shop, suddenly sounded as if he came from New York or LA.

“I once asked him how he got such a good American accent. ‘Easy enough, Andra’, says he. ‘I sometimes go into the bar in the Beresford Hotel in Sauchiehall Street and listen to all the American servicemen from the Holy Loch’.”

Adds Andy: “I loved those shirts, man - every time I got a new one I’d wear out shop windaes looking at myself to see how good I looked!”

Flagging enthusiasm

NOT everyone who has seen Christopher Nolan’s film Dunkirk has been impressed. BBC presenter Samira Ahmed tweets what she describes as her favourite review so far. The verdict, by someone called Nigel, who is clearly old enough to remember a previous movie on the evacuation, is succinct: “Very poor film, the old film was far better”. He could have left it there but couldn’t resist one last kick. “Plus, in the trailer, the union jack on the beach is up side down”.

Hard to swallow

LAST Friday’s Diary said a woman had admitted to Judy Murray that her own signature was “inedible”. Hugh Brennan asks: “Could she not have sent it to The Reader’s Digest?”

Beware of the puddle

RON Beaton, reading recent Diary items about language difficulties between people from different parts of Scotland, volunteers this story.

“I’m a Dundonian who lived in Glasgow for nine years. One day, after a heavy downpour, my friend and I were about to cross Sauchiehall Street. As we made to step off the pavement, I threw my arms across his chest and yelled, ‘Look out, big dub!’

“He leapt backwards, looked around in fear and asked, ‘Where’s the big dug?’

“’No, not dug. Dub!’ I said.

‘’’What the blazes is a dub?’ he said. ‘A large puddle’, I told him.

“The conversation after this point cannot be printed”.