CHRISTMAS parties continued.

A reader in a late-night taxi queue in Glasgow heard a tipsy young woman ask her pal: "Is it getting cooler, or am I wearing fewer clothes than when I went out this evening?"

Christmas present? No

A GLASGOW academic admitted to colleagues he was in the doghouse after dutifully writing out the family's Christmas cards using the list from last year, and posting them.

Instead of being praised by his wife when he told her, however, she shrieked: "I hadn't de-deaded the list yet!"

Yes he had not checked that everyone on the list was still all present and correct, and had managed to send Christmas cards to three people who are now deceased.

Where there's a will

A MILNGAVIE reader tells us he had occasion to visit a lawyer, and while he was there he said he thought it was perhaps time he had a will drawn up.

"Yes, leave it all to me," said the lawyer who added: "Sorry, I tell that joke to everyone who comes in wanting a will."

Cool response

OUR tale of the apprentice convinced he was being wound up when asked to fetch a monkey wrench, reminds a reader of being on a cargo ship when the new deck boy was sent to the engine room for "a bucket of steam to prime the capstan".

The wily lad came back with some hot water in the bucket and declared: "Sorry, Bosun, it has all condensed."

Cracking line?

ACTOR Ford Kiernan will be on the telly on Hogmanay with a programme about the Dandy comic, inspired by the new book, The Art and History of the Dandy.

Ford was filming for the show at the Edinburgh Book Festival, where he bumped into ex-Python Michael Palin, and showed him a Dandy Thunderbang – you must remember them, the stiffened paper triangles which made a loud bang.

Palin inspected the Thunderbang before opining: "You don't get one of those with the Times Literary Supplement, do you?'

Healthy reading

AN EDINBURGH reader says he was Christmas shopping in a bookshop when a woman came in and asked if they had any gluten-free cookbooks.

"I think they're just paper and ink," quipped the assistant.

Heading for a Fall?

NEWS that the Pope is using an iPad to send tweets has worried one of our readers.

"Doesn't he remember that the last time Adam and Eve used an Apple, it didn't end well?"

21-12 vision

AND a note of sympathy from a reader: "Don't worry Mayans, if you get it wrong today, it's not the end of the world."