IT will soon be office party time, and the difficult decision on whether you should take your partner to it.

One wife confessed to us: "I remember one year going up to my husband's boss and telling him that I heard his fan club could hold a meeting in a telephone box. Don't think I did much for hubby's promotion prospects."

Don't drink and fly

PILOTS continued. Says Tom Graham in Barassie: "Flying from Edinburgh to Norwich, I declined the stewardess's offer of a drink. Changing my mind later, I stopped her as she was passing and said I would have a lager. She instantly handed me the one she was carrying saying, 'Have this one. I'll get another for the pilot.'"

Literary constructivism

WE mentioned intellectual jokes and a reader tells us: "An Irishman starts work on a building site and two English workers think they'll have a bit of fun with him. 'Paddy,' one of them shouts over,' we have to make sure you know a joist from a girder.' 'Ah, sure, I do,' the chap replies, 'Twas Joyce who wrote Ulysses and Goethe wrote Faust.'"

Smile for the Camera

RODDY Frame of Aztec Camera fame took the crowd at Glasgow's Concert Hall back to 1983 in order to play tracks from his debut album that came out 30 years ago. To help the crowd, who were all of a certain age, to get in the mood of the early eighties, Roddy told them: "Sit back and think about the one you love; not the one you're with tonight who you're not too keen on."

Ae fond kiss

WE mentioned the death of High Road and Balamory actress Mary Riggans at the age of 78. Fellow actor Jimmy Martin, who played Eric in Still Game - one of the few actual pensioners in the production - recalls: "Mary and I appeared as tenement neighbours in a small film and the script called on us to have a kiss. Mary just told me, 'Ach well Jimmy, let's go for it,' and our embrace had the younger members of the crew shouting 'Wow!'"

One from The Diary

AS if Christmas shopping isn't harrowing enough, I'll be signing copies of The Herald Diary book in Waterstones Newton Mearns tomorrow at 1pm. The book includes the story told to us by a Glasgow pharmacist of a woman wanting advice on constipation after she had spent long hours in the bathroom with nothing happening.

"Did you take anything?" asked the chemist. "Well I took a magazine," she replied.

Numbers game

WE noted Scotland falling behind in mathematical skills. Lynne Mack from Alva bought ten little rounds of oasis at 15p each to make Christmas table decorations. She says: "I stood patiently with the £1.50 in my hand while the assistant carefully wrote down 15 then, underneath,10. Drawing a line, she wrote 15 then put a 0 underneath and inserted 15 before it. Drawing another line she added the figures together and said, 'That'll be £1.65 please.'"

Running rings round us

WE end our annoying football commentators with Jim Cook in Airdrie telling us: "Pundits who annoy me are the ones who say Inverness or Aberdeen or whatever is 'a difficult place to come to'. Yes, it's the confusing ring road before you hit the town."