MICHAEL Bruce was in Waterstones when he saw on display a new biography of the legendary Rangers manager by sportswriter David Leggat simply entitled Struth.
Michael mused that considering the upheavals at Ibrox in the past couple of years, a more accurate title might have been Strewth!
Buddy movie
PAISLEY-BORN film actor Gerard Butler stars in the White House action film Olympus Has Fallen. A reader who saw the film the other night heard a fellow cinema-goer comment to his girlfriend as he left: "So a guy frae Paisley stoats off at the end of the movie without the burd or the lead off the roof. Whit's the world comin' tae?"
Door steps
TENEMENT tales continued. Donald Macaskill in Glasgow tells us about two students in the 1960s who were employed by pollsters to find out the political opinions of folk in a swathe of west end tenements. The students, who wanted to get back to the pub sooner rather than later, devised a plan that if the flat door had polished brass then the occupant was put down as Tory, polished timber, Liberal, and the new fashion for terrazzo tiles, Labour. Dirty timber had you marked down as undecided.
All this was completed without a door being knocked, or a question asked.
Boxing clever
AND Stuart Miller in Linlithgow recalls that a condition of the mortgage on his top-floor flat was the replacement of a non-load-bearing sandstone support on a window at the back. The cost was going to be astronomical, including scaffolding all the way up.
Says Stuart: "I removed what stone was left, and ground it to dust with a drill. With chipboard I built a box the size of the original support, painted it a dull red and while it was still wet sprinkled the dust over it. A couple of ropes were enough to get it into place, and the inspector who came to check complimented us on the quality of the stonework."
Any more yarns?
Simple answer
COUNCILS across Scotland are sent requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act from numerous newspapers looking for stories. We hear about one council which was asked by a newspaper: "What is the oddest FOI question you've been asked?"
The council just had to reply: "This one."
House call
OUR tale of the husband with the quick retort reminds Harry Clark in Bishopbriggs of phoning a wrong number by mistake and asking, as he did not recognise the voice: "Is that Jack's house?"
The chap immediately replied: "He might have built it, but he doesn't live here."
Bouquets and brickbats
"WHEN I got home from the pub last night," a Glasgow chap told his pals, "the flowers I'd bought the wife were either squashed, broken or dying."
He added: "You could say I'm a hopeless romantic."
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