JOHN Fisher's updated book on British comedians, Funny Way To Be A Hero, recounts how Edinburgh's Ronnie Corbett met his future stage partner Ronnie Barker when Corbett was working between jobs as a barman in a London club for actors.

Because of his lack of inches there were two crates behind the bar which he stood on, one with the name Agnes and the other with the name Champ.

It was only when Barker asked him who Agnes was that Corbett explained it was a crate marked Champagnes that had been sawn in half.

Your number's up

WE'VE mentioned spell-checkers before, but Ian Szymanski in Helensburgh gives us one of the crazier outcomes. A friend of his lives in a flat with the traditional designation 2/2. A computer managed to correct this on a letter to her with the flat number February 2nd.

Fit for a princess

OUR story of the toilet built for a royal visit reminds Alex Bowman in Yorkhill: "I remember reading about Maryhill Station where it was claimed that when Princess Margaret visited the station they put new toilets in, and after she left they took them back out.

"And there's also the story of when royals visited Fort William. It's claimed they bused all the local drinkers to Inverness for the day and gave them drink to keep them out of the way."

Any more favourite royal visit stories?

Hair raising

THE new Stobhill Hospital in Glasgow is only one of two UK hospitals to be included in a list of architecturally impressive hospitals in the world. It reminds us of when a Glasgow taxi driver had to take a member of staff there who was in a rush as she was running late. She asked if he had an electric socket in the front which many new taxis have. When he said he did, expecting a request for a phone to be charged, she passed him instead a hairdryer and asked him to plug it in.

Telly vision

ROY Gullane tells us: "I was talking to a friend who is now the proud owner of a new flat-screen telly. 'I tried out a 3D telly as well, but I really wasn't impressed - the picture was all blurry,' he told me. I asked him if he'd bothered to put the specs on. 'Specs? What specs?' he said."

Damp squib

"Wife told me to take the kids to a firework display," said the chap in the Glasgow pub. "But they weren't impressed.

"Mind you," he added, "it was only the one behind the counter at Tesco's."

A real belter

KEVIN Wyber, who is producing the show The Mungo Boys, following the lives of former pupils of Glasgow's St Mungo's Academy, tells us the old Townhead school had a separate staircase for the teachers, nicknamed the Scala Sancta, and woe betide any pupil who tried to use it.

Legend has it, says Kevin, that the then heidie, nicknamed Farmer Kelly, mistook a fresh-faced new teacher on his first day of school as a pupil and belted him for using the stairs.

The show, at the Scottish Youth Theatre in Glasgow from tonight for three nights, reminisces about the school as well as playing music from a school band of the time, the Alainn Folk.

It spells disaster

SCOT Paul Allan won the UK Scrabble championship at the weekend. A reader phones to ask: "Do you think he celebrated with a night on the tiles?"