THE Herald reported that the Scottish Geodiversity Forum is asking the public to vote for Scotland's most important fossil. Reader Bob Wallace innocently asks: "Is that the Scottish Labour Party, if the polls are anything to go by?"

GETTING a bit jaded with all the parties already? An exasperated reader tells us: "I was just about to go and remind my neighbour's visitors to slam all their car doors as many times as possible in five minutes, but there's no need."

IT is the nature of the business that newspapers and magazines have to put in the occasional correction. One of our favourites this year was in the on-line news magazine The Slate which stated: "We quoted photographer Tom Sanders as saying it takes him five years to get on the dance floor. It should have read 'five beers'."

STAND-UP Alun Cochrane, a favourite of the Edinburgh Festival, and appearing in Sky Living sitcom Trying Again, has confirmed he will be appearing at the Glasgow Comedy Festival this spring. We recall Alun telling an Edinburgh audience that he was not a fan of recycling. As he put it: "I used to like it in the days before recycling when the amount of alcohol I drank in my own home was a secret. Now the whole street sees a bucket cascading with bottles. The next door neighbour looks at me and I tell her, 'We had a dinner party, Margaret' but she's thinking, 'You haven't had a dinner party - you don't like people'."

JIMMY Martin, the Still Game actor who actually is a pensioner, was telling the assistant in his local newsagent's that he had a hectic few days playing Santa, and after dealing with so many youngsters he jokingly added: "So next year I'm going to be King Herod or the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." "Oh where are you playing that?" asked the assistant, perhaps not a big fan of irony.

I HAVE no idea why readers know so many toilet roll stories, but Tom Fadden recounts that many years ago a friend of his using public toilets would unroll the paper further than he needed, gouge a hole in it, then write below "Kilroy was here" before carefully rolling it back up again for the next user to discover.

DID you get many books at Christmas?. We like the observation of Katie Oldham who mused: "Ever realise how surreal reading a book actually is? You stare at marked slices of tree, hallucinating vividly."

WE have a winner! Yes, thank you to the hundreds who submitted suggestions for our film title competition. We could have run it for months, but you can get too much of a good thing. Most entries could have won, but the meal for two at the very stylish Western Club restaurant in Glasgow goes to George Frier in Newlands for being bang up to date with The Imitation Dame - Benedict Cumberbatch tries his hand at panto. Runner-up prize of the new Diary book, Another Stoater, goes to David Perrie in Cumbernauld for making us laugh with Grief Encounter - Man meets a woman at Central Station only to discover it's his ex-wife. And it wouldn't be a Diary competition without a rude entry so another book to Grant Young for Enema At The Gates - Gut-churning tale of bad pies sold at football ground.

Sadly Robert Bennie was too late with his entry Ken Hur - Charlton Heston meets his true love in the Falkirk Coliseum.

FOR sheer daftness at this time of year, a reader in Rhu declares: "It's 360 days to go until Christmas yet some of my neighbours already have their decorations up."