IT was claimed that broadcasters would consider replacing Prime Minister David Cameron with an empty chair if he refused to take part in a head-to-head debate with Labour leader Ed Miliband in the run-up to the General Election.

A reader phoned up to claim: "Already Ladbrokes have made the empty chair odds-on to win the debate if it goes ahead."

WATCHING the telly with older folk continued. Says Mike Ritchie: "For most of my secondary school days in Dundee, I used to go to my elderly aunt's once a week for my tea. We were watching the opening parade of the Commonwealth Games in 1970, and my aunt said, ' haven't seen the Russians yet.'

"When I replied that the Russians weren't members of the Commonwealth, she said, 'Well, they'll no be pleased about that'."

A TRAINER with Bikeability, the organisation that teaches Scots schoolchildren how to cycle on roads, tells us he was out with a group of pupils when he heard an argument between two of the pupils, a boy and a girl, which left the girl in tears. When he went over to ask what had happened, the boy looked remorseful and explained: "Road rage."

FORMER Oasis member Noel Gallagher had a good reception when he brought his band High Flying Birds to Glasgow's Hydro at the weekend. Gallagher explained that during his current tour he arrived at East Midlands Airport where he was met by two police officers who asked him to come with them.

They took him, he said, round to the side of a police van where one of them told him: "Don't worry, we won't taser you." "What?" asked a worried Gallagher. "No, can we just get a quick picture with you?" they explained.

FORTH Bridge anniversary continued. Entertainer Andy Cameron is reminded of the American tourist hiring a cab in Glasgow to be taken to St Andrews for the golf. En route the American was bragging about how everything was bigger and better in the States, slagging off the M8 as not much more than a cart-track compared to the six-lane freeways in the States. Says Andy: "As they were crossing the Forth, Mr America looking over to the rail bridge and says, 'Hey cabbie what's that over there?' 'Ah don't know,' says the cabbie, 'It wisnae there this morning'."

WE mentioned Jack Vettriano making a mistake in his book signings, leaving off the letter 'e' in a dedication, so on a tenuous connection, Lizanne MacKenzie tells us: "There was the no doubt apocryphal story about the Yorkshire stonemason asked by a widower to work on his late wife's grave-stone. He wanted under the personal details, to have engraved 'She was thine'. However, when the work was completed, he was dismayed to find the stonemason had engraved 'She was thin'. 'You've left off the e', he complained. The stonemason apologised and said he would correct it. When the widower returned, he found the engraving now read, 'E, she was thin'."

Sorry about that.

OUR story about the Ship Inn in Irvine now serving chips reminds Bill Longdon in Kilmarnock of kidding on with the late owner Ian Murray about Rangers, the team of which Ian was a great fan. When the bill came, a beaming Ian presented Bill with a bill for £16.90, which is a bit of an in-joke about Rangers of course. Adds Bill: "On reflection I could probably have had a slap-up, five-course meal for the same price, that day."

THE Herald's sports pages reported that Rangers legend John Greig was making a return to Ibrox. Quite a few readers contacted us to say that they knew the Rangers side were in a bit of bother these days, but didn't realise their current full-backs were that bad.

Pic capt:

A theological point spotted at this Irish-themed pub.