Russell Leadbetter

The whole tooth ...

SPOTTED on a dental-supplies van in Glasgow: a sign reading "No teeth are kept in this van overnight."

Poles apart

ELECTION news. We liked this tweet, the other day, from Rory Bremner.

Q: 'What do you think of the polls, Mr Farage?'

A: 'There's too many of them and they should go back to their own country. Next question?'

Otherwise engaged

STILL with the election. A reader recalls canvassing for the SNP, many years ago.

Early one evening - 6.30 or so - he knocked on a door.

He recalls: "I was met by a dishevelled guy, who told me: 'Gonny come back - am oan the joab! Fifteen minutes, okay?"

Adds our reader: "I didn't return, although I did wonder what the job was."

Blair causes a stir

"AS Tony Blair jumps to Miliband's defence, Labour risks having too many cooks," Have I Got News for You tweeted yesterday. "Although that's now at least one per kitchen."

Try putting these on your business cards

A DIARY colleague, new to LinkedIn, was bemused to read the job description of a suggested new contact. Not content with being a Guerrilla Idea Generator, the bloke is also a Disruptive Experience Engineer. "Try as I might," our colleague admits gamely, "I genuinely cannot think what either of these jobs entails."

Any Diary readers with ideas for job titles that flatter to deceive?

A groan of Diary readers?

SO, we asked yesterday, what is the best collective noun for Diary readers?

"Diarytribe," suggests Russell Smith.

"A column," says Neil Armstrong (Ian Gilbert later had the same idea).

"Given the standard of jokes (and based on years of personal experience) the collective noun for Diary readers has to be a Groan," says Stuart Russell. "Sorry....couldn't resist."

Bill Taylor says it depends on their gender: "You would have a 'chortle' of males, a 'giggle' of females. A mixed group would probably be a 'chuckle'. A really big mixed group would be a 'muckle chuckle'."

Any more?

Gossip from the 19th hole

WHILE on the subject of collective nouns, Kenny Hardie volunteers a succession of vacuum cleaners and a brouhaha of beer.

Jim Torbett, in Troon, emails us: "At the bar in a well-known Ayrshire golf club, discussion was taking place on collective nouns," he writes. "Someone said, 'What's the collective noun for a group of Past Captains?'

A retired school teacher suggested: "A scunner."

Keep 'em coming.

Anyone know the Italian for 'Action!'?

AS more than one person observed yesterday - in terms of this planned new film about the flight of Bonnie Prince Charlie, are they going to get an Italian actor to play him?

Quick-fire way to make a crust

NEWS that Don McLean's original manuscript for his enigmatic 1971 hit, American Pie, has sold for $1.2 million at an auction in New York prompts reader Eric Simpson to wonder: "Would I make my fortune with a song entitled Ta Ta Scotch Pie?"