GLASWEGIANS are quick to give funny names to new structures – the Armadillo, the Squinty Bridge – but they have some way to go before they match Dublin's aptitude for nicknames.

A new book, Dublin's Strangest Tales by Michael Barry and Patrick Sammon, details a statue in O'Connell Street, commissioned in 1988, of Anna Livia Plurabelle, a character of course in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

The statue had a fountain and its waters were supposed to represent the flow of the River Liffey. But Dubliners singularly failed to appreciate the aesthetic. They referred to the statue as "the Floozie in the Jacuzzi".

The result? The statue now languishes in an obscure little park some distance away.

That's gratitude

YOU'LL remember the story a few weeks ago about a Sainsbury's check-out assistant refusing to serve a customer who was talking on her mobile phone.

Fair enough, you might have thought. But the boot is sometimes on the other foot. From Wishaw we hear of a grandfatherly type in a supermarket with a trolleyful of groceries who failed to get a greeting from the check-out girl.

Not a word was spoken as she scanned the items. When he asked how much he was due, she merely pointed to the till display. Still silence reigned. Transaction complete, our friend decided to remind her about common courtesy.

"Does anyone say thanks any more?" he asked.

At which the girl uttered her only words: "It's written on your ticket."

Exit a wondering grandfather ...

Recycled joke

AND still the puns flood in, with John Gallacher, of Alloa, suggesting that people who are obese should be sent for waist recycling.

Malcolm Campbell, in Dumfries, mentions the cinema in the Basque country which went up in flames one night. Unfortunately it only had one door, and there were many casualties. All of which suggests that you shouldn't put all your basques in one exit.

Even the Duke of Edinburgh gets in on the act. Sandy Lawson recalling that the Duke once witnessed a ramshackle throne collapsing when an African king sat on it and remarked: "People who live in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones."

What are the odds?

AND Annemarie Kennedy, in Saltcoats, claims she recently sent a list of 10 puns to a certain newspaper, hoping that some would be featured.

"Unfortunately," she notes, "no pun in ten did."

Lost connection

OVERHEARD in a particularly busy Glasgow A&E department recently, with the staff running hither and yon: "Do you have wi-fi here?"