PORTMANTEAU words.

John Duffy and Chris Hawksworth simultaneously offer "testiculating", defined as gesticulating while talking – well, you get the picture. Andrew Foster, in Ontario, suggests "bureaucrap". No elucidation required, we think.

Life in the fast lane

SO there was Irene Cairns driving along the M8 when a yellow car brushes past her on the outside lane. It wasn't so much the distinctive colour, or the fact that the driver was female, that caught her attention as the number plate.

W1 TCH, it read. A novel variation on the usual vanity plate, then.

Cleaning up

JIM Connell relates a female friend's confession, in hushed tones, that she had developed an attachment for her Dyson.

Cue an awkward silence. How do you respond to an admission like that? Jim decides the best way to break the ice is by volunteering his own penchant for an electric toothbrush and a marigold glove.

At which point the friend stops him with a look of surprise on her face – and explains that, no, she had invented a new crevice tool and was writing to James Dyson.

Oh, that kind of attachment, Jim realises, slightly too late.

Full of hot air

THE Herald's report about Vancouver's (since lifted) ban on noisy outdoor pipers contained an interesting line.

A pipe major was quoted as saying: "Bagpipes are not really that loud. When my next-door neighbour starts his lawnmower, it's far louder than I would be if I blew my bagpipes up."

"Having a keen ear for music," declares Alan Briggs, "if I were his neighbour, I'd encourage him to blow up his bagpipes – as long as the tiles weren't blown from my roof in the process."

Toast to a roast

WE hear about a man being grilled by a security guard in a supermarket near Partick.

Says the guard: "I saw you wandering up and down the wines and spirits aisle and you definitely put something in your bag. Open your backpack so I can check."

The man obliges. The guard peers inside: "Can you explain why the inside of your pack is covered in tinfoil?"

Iain M Todd, who passes on the story, says he assumes the tinfoil is used to block the signal of the security tag on the bottles when you walk out with them.

The man responds with admirable sangfroid. "Someone," he says indignantly, "has stolen my roast chicken!"

"Brilliant," observes Iain. "Must remember that excuse when I get caught stealing whisky."

Incoming call

ON the same lines, Gordon Airs tells us about a young man who insisted he had not stolen a barmaid's mobile phone from her handbag in a pub near Port Glasgow.

It wiznae me, he pleaded, all innocence.

The barmaid's friend solved matters by phoning the missing mobile ... and it rang in his back pocket.

Says Gordon: "He quickly surrendered it – and suddenly remembered he had to run a 100-yard race."