What’s in a name

LOOKS like another cold week according to the weather forecasts. Reader Kenny Kerr in Cleland reads about the cold snap on the BBC website and notices the Met Office forecaster is Craig Snell. Says Kenny: “I wonder if viewers in England appreciate Mr Snell’s apposite name.”

Flushed with success

GROWING old continued. An Ayrshire reader hears an old chap at his golf club declare: “Not to brag, but I just went into another room

and actually remembered why

I went in there. It was the bathroom, but still.”

Blue do

GERMAN newspapers reported that the Berlin Wall has now been down longer than it actually existed, if you can follow that arithmetical conundrum. It reminds us of the Scottish doctor who told us about being at a medical conference in Berlin in the eighties where a local medic took him to see the wall. He told us: “Directly opposite was a tower with an East German armed guard. Between us and the wall was

a fence, then a no-man’s-land of bare ground. Directly under the guard, written on the wall was ‘Gers Ya Bass’.

“I started laughing. My German friend asked what was so amusing, and I explained. He was dumbfounded. ‘You mean that someone risked his life to write a football slogan on this wall, where so many have been shot? This has been on the wall for a year – we had no idea what it meant, or even the language it was in’.”

Losing your bottle

MUCH discussion in the financial pages about cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin dropping swiftly in value.

As comedy writer Robert Florence explains: “In Glasgow, a ‘cryptocurrency crash’ was when you dropped one of your gingie bottles.”

In the pink

BIG sporting event in America the other night was of course the SuperBowl. Singer Pink fought off a bad cold to sing the National Anthem, and did very well although one viewer of the match took to social media to declare: “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. Pink sucks and if you like her singing you’re dumb.” But the good thing about social media is that the stars themselves can use it, which is why Pink later replied: “Yeah, but at least I suck while singing our country’s National Anthem, and you just suck by yourself on a dirty couch.” Ouch!

Lost for words

TALKING of singing, a Bothwell reader emails: “I hate it when I’m singing to an old song on the radio and the artist gets the lyrics wrong.”

Drawing blood

OUR stories about barbers reminds an Ayrshire reader of the tale of the minister who was getting shaved by the local barber who had obviously been out on a bender the night before as his hand was shaking and he nicked the minister’s chin a couple of times, drawing blood. “That’s the whisky that causes that”, said

the minister disapprovingly.

“That’s right,’ replied the barber. “It does make your skin awfy tender.”

Lips are sealed

TODAY’S piece of daftness comes from Stu, who says: “I swapped the lip balm in my wife’s handbag for a Pritt stick. She’s still not talking to me.”

Doctoring your words

FINALLY, we have to admit our garrulous colleague actually came up with something clever. He came over to tell us: “I’ve just become a Professor of Palindromes with a reputation for being argumentative. I’m now known as Dr Awkward.”