A STUDENT from Glasgow returning to university in Leeds tells us about the perfidy of mothers.

The student explains that before returning north from Leeds for the Christmas holiday, her mother insisted on the phone: "Bring your laundry with you. I don't mind doing it."

But after returning home she heard her mother on the phone to a friend: "Typical student. She walked in the door with a big bag of washing for me to do."

Trigger action

ACTOR Roger Lloyd-Pack, who died yesterday, was a Londoner, but he got married in Aberdeen simply because he was appearing in a play there when he and his long-time partner realised they had been together for 25 years, so they thought the best way to celebrate was to get married.

He was of course best known for playing the dim-witted Trigger in Only Fools And Horses, but as he once explained: "People never stop shouting 'Trigger!' at me in the street. The other day I jumped some lights on my bike because someone was hollering at me. A police van pulled me over, and when I stopped they also shouted 'Trigger!' It can be very annoying."

Tunnel vision

TALKING of perfidy, a reader on a Glasgow train heard a chap on a mobile phone, presumably bored with the conversation, announce: "I'll have to go now - we're going into a tunnel." There was, of course, no tunnel. However, what stuck in our reader's mind was the elderly lady sitting opposite who looked out of the windows at the clear sky with growing puzzlement.

Ice breaker

ONE of the highlights of the Glasgow Comedy Festival is the evening of New York stand-up performers flown over by United Airlines. This year one of them is Dave Fulton who on a previous trip to London tried to explain Canada to his audience. As he put it: "Canada's only job is to protect America from ice. That's all they've got to do.

"Because we don't have a Scotland."

Paying the penalty

AS ithers see us. A reader sends us a cutting from the London edition of the listings magazine Time Out in which someone claims: "Being fancied by someone ugly is like winning Scottish footballer of the year."

Street wise

AH the banter of a Glasgow pub. A reader hears a chap tell his pals: "I hate street performers. But then again, I'm a mime, so I can't really talk."

In stitches

A COLLEAGUE e-mails us in order to claim: "Thought my wife was happy to fully repair my suit. Or at least sew its seams."

Oil in troubled waters

A READER hears a chap in a Glasgow pub declare: "Am I the only one that's worried that if we become independent that America will invade us for our oil?"

So time we think to air any other daft or specious independence arguments that have made you smile. Let us know of any.