BOBSIE Mullen, mine host at the Griffin Bar opposite Glasgow's King's Theatre, likes to put jokey messages on the blackboard outside. So when the BBC reported that a glossy ibis had flown from Africa to make a rare appearance in Scotland, Bobsie wrote on the board: "GLOSSY IBIS welcome. No crapping on the floor though!" Days later he received a registered letter from an irate pensioner who wrote: "Your sign welcoming IBS customers as long as they did not make a mess on the floor is insulting. I enclose a book about irritable bowel syndrome to enlighten you on what thousands of us have to suffer."
Bobsie says the sender did not sign it so he is unable to reply, suggesting an eye test.
WE mentioned students going back to uni, and a west end reader who studied theology tells us when he was at uni folk kept on asking him why he had chosen the subject. He eventually just gave the reply: “God knows why,” which seemed to keep everyone happy.
SADLY many detractors on social media were being a tad judgemental about Jerry Hall's engagement to octogenarian billionaire and newspaper owner Rupert Murdoch. As John Richardson mused: "I guess now we'll never know what News International picked up on Jerry Hall during the phone hacking era, but it must have been dynamite."
It was surely cruel of Ian Power though to imagine the wedding ceremony as: "Do you Rupert Murdoch take this women to be a trophy wife?" "I do!"
"Do you Jerry Kerching Hall take this man for all you can?" "I will!"
JOURNALIST Mike Ritchie recalls: "As a junior editorial member on The Weekly News in Dundee, I got my first chance to write album reviews. Two LPs (it was 1972) were left on my desk from one of the senior journalists with a hand-written note, 'Don’t fancy the look of these. Never heard of them, so no more than eight paragraphs in total.'
"One was David Bowie’s 'Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars', the other was a debut release from another band who made it big, The Eagles."
AND chef Andy Cumming recalls: "My experience of David Bowie goes back to the 90s when he came to Glasgow to visit the David Hockney exhibition. He came into the Brasserie on West Regent Street for lunch with his family. I had just started a new menu and was unsure of one dish, perhaps a bit advanced for the Glasgow palate - squid ink linguine with feta cheese and sun-blushed tomatoes.
"Bowie ordered it and said it was fantastic. But yes, it was too advanced for Glasgow.
"I took it off the menu the next week."
A WAITER in the west end swears to us that he asked a girl how her meal was and she pulled out her phone, looked at it, and told him: "Not good. It only got two likes on Instagram."
SAYS reader Pat Darlington: “Interested to read the story in the Herald about the pub in Falkirk destroyed by fire. I’m sure there will be a happy ending - the pub in question was the Phoenix Bar.”
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