JOHN Cochrane reads the headline on the BBC website "Man sentenced for smashing teeth" and he hopes that the chap doesn't have too smart a hairstyle also, in case that was held against him as well.

ELECTION stuff, and reader Mike Fagan is astonished at all the scare stories written by the more hysterical of the English press about SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon. Opines Mike: "It's a good thing that Nicola went to her local Greenwood Academy in Dreghorn rather than Irvine Royal Academy just up the road as no doubt one of the papers would have the headline 'Sturgeon once in the IRA'."

BELLAHOUSTON reader Melvin Haggerty had a delivery man at his door and Melvin apologised for taking so long to get to the door as he was getting ready to go to the theatre. "What are you going to see?" asked the chatty delivery driver. "Anything Goes," says Melvin, referring to the Cole Porter musical come\dy at the King's Theatre.

"You mean you're not going to choose until you get there?" asked the puzzled chap with the parcel.

NOT all kids get it easy. A shopper in a Partick supermarket heard a little one in a shopping trolley ask his dad who was pushing it: "Can I get a treat?" His father kept on pushing and told him: "You're getting a hurl in a trolley - that's yer treat."

OFFICE banter continued. Says John Mulholland: "A new member of staff was telling her colleagues that she was so scared of spiders she couldn't even look at a photo of one. 'What about the wee plastic spider I've got on my desk?' asked a colleague. 'Ah'm tellin' ye,' said the girl, 'if that comes anywhere near me, ah'll kill ye!' 'That's some phobia you've got,' said the chap. 'Are you ok with clowns?' 'Aye, why?,' she asked. 'Because this office is full of them,' was his quick reply."

WE mentioned mistakes about Scotland in books, and a reader tells us: "I picked up a 'Taggart' paperback a few years ago, and, my head full of images of Mark McManus and co. stalking the gritty streets of Glasgow, proceeded to read it. I got as far as the hero going into a pub and ordering a pint of BITTER before I decided it was not for me and took it back to the charity shop."

OUR town motto stories remind David Speedie in America: "Philadelphia, my adopted home Stateside, has a bit of a self-esteem problem. At one time in the 70s, not the best of times for US cities in general, a tourism slogan was advanced, 'Philadelphia is not as bad as Philadelphians say it is'. I joke not."

A GLASGOW reader swears to us he heard a teenage girl in a city centre coffee shop tell her pal: "I was so hungry at lunch I didn't take a picture of my salad. I just ate it straight away."