SO it's been announced that the 2017 Tour de France will begin in the German city of Dusseldorf. As John Cleese has observed on social media, this isn't the first tour of France that originated in Germany.

DEFINITION of good news/bad news: we hear of a young Scots bloke who was more than happy when he opened an envelope from his dad on Christmas morning to find it contained £60 in crisp £10 notes, but was crestfallen when his dad then asked him for his digs money.

THE increasingly bile-filled Donald Trump has tweeted boastfully: "I will do far more for women than Hillary, and I will keep our country safe, something which she will not be able to do - no strength/stamina!"

Which did not escape of Veep creator Armando Iannucci, who replied smartly: "Will you do anything to change how you come across as a thoroughly unpleasant individual?"

OUR thanks to the reader who alerted us to website of DXV by American Standard, a flagship portfolio of luxury bath and kitchen products. Its website speaks of a range of technologically sophisticated products such as the AT200 Integrated Electronic Bidet Smart Toilet, the features of which include heated seat, a soft night-light, a two-nozzle water spray and even a metal remote control. What caught the reader's eye, however, was that the range goes under the slightly worrying title of The Contemporary Movement.

ANOTHER reader flags up an intriguing passage from a book, The Secret Player: The Hidden World of Professional Football, written by an anonymous English Premier League footballer who was a columnist for Four Four Two magazine.

The passage concerns a testimonial match his club played against an un-named Scottish club. By way of thanks, the players all received a watch. Trouble was, it was the sort of watch "that the Shopping Channel would struggle to shift - horrendous, plastic things." The players weren't shy about showing their feelings, either. "We had a drink after the game and I was one of the last to leave the bar," writes Anon. "As I did, I saw at least eight watches had been left behind."

STILL on football, the Diary admired the response of a Dundee United fan when the club posted, on its Facebook page, news that its Boxing Day match against Motherwell had been postponed because of a waterlogged pitch. "***," his terse response began, "now gotta spend the day with my in laws." He wasn't as disgruntled, however, as the fan who wrote that he had travelled from Australia to watch the game.

DAVID Cameron visited flood-hit York yesterday and, on the subject of flood defences, said: "We have to look at what's happened in terms of the flooding, what flood defences have worked and the places where they haven't worked well enough, and see if there's more that we can do."

The Green party leader, Natalie Bennett, later described this as a "wholly inadequate response." Diary reader David Stubley gets in touch from Prestwick: Cameron's wait-and-see response, he says, "is actually caused by him deciding whether the floods are the fault of nasty Scots or the European Union."