A READER tells us about taking `an elderly relative to Crosshouse Hospital, Kilmarnock, where the doctor taking notes asked her for her next-of-kin's telephone number.

"That will be my daughter," she replied.

"And the phone number?" asked the doctor.

"Button one," she told him.

Deadly earnest

NEWS of the huge price increase by British Gas was being discussed in a Glasgow pub the other night. "Just tae spite them," declared one toper, "if I die of hypothermia this winter I'm gonna be buried and no' cremated."

Happy medium

A GLASGOW reader thought it was astute of someone on the internet, giving a guide to foreign visitors to British cities, who said about Glasgow: "It is impossible to tell whether people are angry or happy." Edinburgh, incidentally, was "basically London, but slightly more Scottish".

How to clear a pub…

SINGER Susan Boyle will be appearing at the Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow, on Sunday night, along with Darius Campbell and Karen Dunbar, in a charity night for the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice.

We well remember after her sensational Britain's Got Talent appearance two smartly suited chaps were seen wandering around her home village of Blackburn, West Lothian. They went into a local pub where they asked the barmaid why the premises were so empty. When she asked where they were from, they said American television company CBS, wanting to do a piece on Susan.

"CBS!" she told them. "We thought you were DSS, which is why everyone bailed."

Getting the hump

OUR tale of the gardener yesterday reminded Donald Grant in Paisley: "On a hot summer's day a few years ago, my elderly aunt, who lived in Mosspark, answered the door and a guy asked if she wanted her garden 'tidied up'. She agreed but then half an hour later she answered a knock at her back door to be confronted by the guy who said: 'Excuse me missus, ah'm not a camel! Ah could dae wi' a drink'."

Sugar maddies

ESSAYS continued. A former modern studies teacher in Drumchapel, Glasgow, recalls a student writing: "MPs and councillors met constituents at their Sugaries."

Presumably that's where they tried to sweet talk them.

Hungry for love

THE path of true love was not going well for a young chap overheard by a reader on a bus in Glasgow the other evening. "Of course I have feelings!" he was declaring down his mobile phone.

He perhaps spoiled the moment by adding: "Just now I'm feeling hungry."

Fergie's timely ending

SIR Alex Ferguson's latest autobiography is published today, although excerpts were revealed yesterday. As someone who has watched a few Manchester United games tells us: "I had a quick look at his book. The last chapter just goes on and on until United score."

Pilau talk

A BOISTEROUS stag night ended in a Glasgow Indian restaurant where the groom fell asleep while eating his meal. When he came to and asked his mates if he had been asleep long, his best man rather wittily told him: "You were out for the count as soon as your head hit the pilau."