Beyond the pail

COMEDIAN Ken Dodd, who played the Glasgow Pavilion earlier this year, is celebrating his 90th birthday. He still has a sharp tongue in his head. We remember when he was speaking at a charity dinner after fellow veteran comic Roy Hudd, and as Roy sat down to lots of applause he said to Ken: "You'll never follow that." "I will," said the Squire of Knotty Ash, "with a bucket and shovel."

London calling

AN Ayrshire reader tells us: "Sometimes you forget how proud you can feel to be Scottish." He was chatting to a work colleague in England who had been in the Royal Navy for 20 years and he asked him if he had ever seen any action. Adds our reader: "Totally straight-faced he told me, 'The guy next to me went down to gunfire once, that was the closest', When I asked where, he told me in the eighties HMS London sailed up the Clyde on a Friday night, and as the crew took to the deck to see the city lights, the sailor next to him was struck on the shoulder by a shot fired by a gang of neds on the embankment with an air rifle."

What a change

OUR bus stories remind Ronnie McLean of working as an SMT bus conductor as a student in the sixties. He recalls: "Running late on a trip to Killermont Street, we stopped at lights on Cathedral Street and the driver told me to change the destination blind so we could make a quick getaway. While I was hanging on to the front of the bus - a Bristol Lodekka for the anoraks - The lights changed and he drove off with me clinging on. Typical of Glasgow, no one in the crowded bus station batted an eyelid."

A moment's paws

MARRIED life can be tricky. A Glasgow reader heard a chap in his local pub explain to his pals: "The dog ran in from the garden with its mucky paws leaving a trail over the living room carpet. "Do something!" shouted the wife. Apparently reaching for my mobile phone to take a film of it wasn't what she had in mind."

On the rocks

WE are still trying to make sense of the comings and goings at Westminster. John Henderson tells us: "I love the rumour that the first inkling at 36,000 feet Priti Patel had that she was going to be sacked, was when she ordered a large gin and tonic, and her departmental credit card was declined."

Heart problems

AS we run out of appointments for our GP stories, David Geyer in Kilcreggan says: "My father was a GP who coped with growing deafness by amplifying his stethoscope through his hearing aid. On one occasion he was checking a patient's heart when the batteries in his hearing aid ran out, and he startled the patient by declaring, 'No, I don't hear anything there'."

Page turner

WE mentioned a reader getting an author's discount after explaining in the Glasgow bookstore that he had contributed stories to the latest Herald Diary book, subtitles Somebunny Loves You. Reader John Love tells us: "I also spotted the Diary book in Waterston's and wondered if any of my stories had made it into the sacred tome. However after I had leaved through it for about two hours I was escorted to the door."

What's he driving at

SOMEHOW we get into a discussion with a colleague about driving, and he suddenly announces: "I'm rubbish at reversing the car out of the driveway. My wife will back me up."