SCOTLAND'S football team fortunate to leave with a draw at the crucial European qualifier in Dublin.

Those cheeky bookmakers Paddy Power were winding up the fans before the game with a large poster of Mel Gibson in Braveheart mode but with green instead of blue face-paint and the large headline: "You may take our points. But at least we have our freedom (ya wee pussies)." And they say sport and politics don't mix.

WE mentioned the death of film actor Christopher Lee. Scots journalist Allan Brown, who interviewed Christopher for his book Inside the Wicker Man, tells us: "Famously, Lee held the record for having appeared in more movies than any other actor - his answering machine featured the message, 'You've reached Christopher Lee. I'll do it'."

Added Allan: "Lee always stuck unfailingly to the line that of all his films his favourite, his proudest achievement, was The Wicker Man. And what was his second favourite, I asked. The Man With The Golden Gun, perchance? His turn as Mycroft in Wilder's The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes? He mulled the question at length then his face brightened. 'On balance,' he said, 'Gremlins II, I think'."

A WHIMSICAL note from a reader who phones to tell us: "Poetry would be a lot harder if violets were orange."

LATEST blockbuster film released is Jurassic World, the latest in the Jurassic Park films - you would have thought by now the park owners would have worked out it was a bad idea. Anyway, a reader felt a bit deflated seeing the film in Glasgow at the weekend when she heard a young cinema-goer announce: "The original came out in the early nineties. So anyone whose seen that is like really old."

TV historian David Starkey is in the news for again comparing the SNP to German Nazis, and claiming the Scottish Saltire is like a swastika. An astute reader tells us: "If David Starkey wasn't famous, he'd be one of those people with a plastic bag full of empty cans shouting at traffic lights."

READERS continue to offer help to actor Billy Boyd who wants to set a film in Glasgow. They suggest:

Calton A Hot Tin Roof (Ron Cairnduff).

Spartickus (David Donaldson).

Shawlands of the Dead (John Mulholland).

The Secret Arden (Iain Grimmond.

We Need to Talk About Kelvin (Robert Inglies).

Final suggestions tomorrow.

QUEEN'S Birthday Honours List and Jim Murphy's last days as Scottish Labour leader at the weekend. As Nationalist blogger GA Ponsonby rather cruelly put it: "How come Lenny Henry got a knighthood when more people laughed at Jim Murphy? Life just not fair Jim."

"I DON'T normally use the toilet with the door open," opined a toper in a Glasgow pub at the weekend, who then added: "But I didn't want to miss any of the in-flight movie."

A COLLEAGUE feels the need to wander over to our desk and interrupt us with: "Piracy is killing the music industry. You try playing the guitar with a hook."

Pic capt:

A street in Colfax, California, which is frequently snapped by Star Wars fans.