WE hear about a class where the pupils were asked where they were born, and one youngster replied that his father had told him he had been born in the "Rock'n'Roll Maternity Hospital".

Patiently the teacher pointed out that, either he had misheard his father, or perhaps his father had been joking, and that he had in fact been born in Glasgow's Rottenrow Maternity Hospital.

But the pupil replied: "Now you're joking, Sir. Nobody would give a hospital a name like that."

Hoose there? OUR story about the wee woman moved to an anonymous council housing scheme reminds Sam Purdie of the chap in New Cumnock who, having recently moved there, returned to a maze of identical houses after a night out, and was forced to roar: "Mrs McClatchy, come out and claim your husband."

Salty dialogue A FLURRY of restaurant stories to end our competition. Kenny Dreghorn tells us about the customer at a posh Troon hotel being served boiled potatoes. He told the waitress he had asked for "sauteed potatoes".

"There's salt oan them," she cheerily replied.

And Bill Campbell confirms the stereotype that some Chinese restaurants have a reputation of overly swift, abrupt service. His party had been served a drink at the bar, and their order taken, when moments later the waitress tells them their table is ready.

Bill replies that they will be over when they finish their drinks.

"OK," she replied. "But your soup is getting cold."

Bum deal BUT the winner of dinner at Glasgow's Gamba restaurant is Alasdair Macdonald of Glasgow who was having a coffee in Glasgow's west end which was being prepared by a barista who was training a new member of staff.

As she finished making Alasdair's coffee, she poured in the warm milk and finished with a flourish that left a pattern on the surface.

Alasdair tells us: "She said, See, we make a heart!' but the soor-faced trainee who was looking at the cup from the other side, and observing an inverted cardioid, bellowed, That's no a heart! That's an arse!' "Turning to me, who had to drink this beverage, she aggressively queried, Sure that's an arse, no' a heart?'"

"See sophistication?

Ye cannae beat the west end."

Pin doctor A LITTLE vignette from the Ayrshire town of Stevenston where reader Clive McIlwaine was walking up the main road. Says Clive: "I passed a tracksuit-clad father and young son standing waiting. Across the street was Mrs Tracksuit at a cashpoint machine who shouted Haw, I've furgoat ma pin'.

"Aw doll, whit's yer favourite year?' "Eh, 1690. Ya dancer, I've goat it'."

Strewth hurts RECENTLY elected to the Australian Parliament is Doug Cameron, who emigrated from Bellshill in the early seventies.

Despite 30 years of sunshine since then, Doug still remembers as a 13-year-old collecting newspapers from Bellshill Station in the middle of winter for his paper round.

On his way to deliver them in Mossend he was sliding on the frozen pools on a building site when the ice broke and he plunged up to his waist in frozen water.

By the time he finished delivering the papers his legs were bleeding from the chaffing from his frozen jeans.

So there's no real puzzle about why he went to Oz a few years later.

Mind you, working in a Sydney dockyard on his first week he was chatting to a fellow fitter, a Greek, who said to Doug after a while: "Why you no speak good English like me?"

But that's Bellshill for you. "I gave the wife a ring for her birthday, but she still wasn't pleased," said the chap at the bar the other night.

"I think it was because I rang her from the pub,"

he added.

Negative reaction WE asked a physicist for a joke to mark the successful start-up of the Large Hadron Collider and he told us: "An atom said he thought he had lost an electron. Are you sure?' asked a fellow atom. Aye, I'm positive,' he replied."

In fairness, he added that there weren't really that many gags in physics.