MONTY Python's John Cleese has his autobiography So Anyway … published this week in which he talks about his first appearance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with fellow Cambridge students.
The show didn't start as there was no audience, then the manager of the venue announced "You're on!" as the audience had arrived - a young couple. John says they were seated in the middle of the front row, and when the young woman realised there were more people on stage just feet in front of her she burst into tears.
Recalls John: "We made the decision to bring the show to an early end, allowing the young woman to run wailing into the street, pursued by her boyfriend who clapped our performance over his shoulder as he disappeared."
Happy days.
Comic nonchalance
TALKING about autobiographies, Clydebank comedian Kevin Bridges is launching his this week in Glasgow, and bookshop Waterstones held a competition where people could send a tweet saying why they wanted to meet Kevin with the winners being able to do just that at the book launch. We liked, among the gushing pleas of fans, the chap who merely wrote: "Might as well. Nothing else planned."
Stranger danger
TWITTER is of course becoming increasingly popular amongst internet users. However as one reader opined: "Twitter must be the only place where people get excited about a stranger following them."
Football fan has bottle
OUR staying sober for October stories remind David Speedie in New York of being at a Scotland football international at Hampden while sober, and while wearing his St Salvator's College scarf from St Andrews University, which is black, with red and yellow stripes.
Says David: "At half-time a well-refreshed wee punter in front of us produced a half bottle from his pocket, rubbed the neck on his sleeve with great care, and offered it with, 'Here, pal, hae a drink.' I politely declined. He persisted, 'Naw, come oan, pal. If you watch Partick Thistle, you need this mair than me.'"
A friendly quip
SCOTLAND has been voted in the top 10 friendliest countries in the world by readers of the travel guides Rough Guides. Others in the top ten include Cambodia, Laos, Fiji and Sri Lanka."
"Was it only open to Third World countries?" asks a reader in London.
Vanishing (love) act
OUR gag about the drunk doing push-ups in a Glasgow pub encourages Russell Smith in Kilbirnie to tell us: "A friend told me he was doing push-ups in a bedroom in a Spanish hotel when the maid walked in, looked, and said, 'Excuse me sir, the lady, she has gone.'"
Heated exchange
THE HERALD'S sports story that former Celtic manager Neil Lennon is being lined up to take over as manager of Saudi Arabian club Al-Ittihad was being discussed in a Glasgow pub last night with one football fan emphatically stating that it wouldn't happen. When asked why, he explained: "A ginger in that heat?"
Juggling children
"DO you think," says a reader watching some street entertainment in Buchanan Street, "that all jugglers started off as young kids who didn't have any friends to play catch with?"
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