Losing their dignity
OUR tales of bands remind Billy Sinclair: “When Glasgow was European City of Culture in 1990, 
I was in the reception of the media centre in St Enoch Square when Deacon Blue came in for a press call. No matter who you were, you couldn’t get past reception without signing in. 
“The receptionist asked for their name and Ricky Ross told her, ‘Deacon Blue’, which she wrote down. But as the band went past her she called them back saying, ‘I’ve got Deacon’s name’, pointing at Ricky, ‘but I need aw youse names before you can go through’.”

Taking a shot
BILL Lothian was playing in a seniors golf tournament at Dunbar which was a “shotgun foursomes” where 18 groups start off on different tees at the one time, signalled in 
the past by firing a shotgun that everyone could hear.
Says Bill: “Organisers said it would be launched by the sound of a horn, then explained in the pre-competition instructions, ‘We have tried launching a rocket to let everybody know when to start in the past, but unfortunately this led to the Dunbar lifeboat being wrongly called out’.” 

Bean there, done that
FORMER Hibs star Jason Cummings was the hero this week when Nottingham Forest put Newcastle out of the Carabao Cup (ie the old-style League Cup) by scoring two goals in quick succession.
We still fondly remember Jason being interviewed after scoring for Hibs against Hamilton and 
declaring on TV: “It was some 
zinger from myself. I opened a can 
of beans there!”

Screen sensation
PARENTING continued. 
A Bearsden reader tells us: “I said to my daughter last night, ‘Have you any idea how much time you waste every day on your mobile phone?’ Without looking up from her phone she told me, ‘I don’t know. Do you want me to Google it?’”

Creaking tale
OUR old chum Val McDermid, arguably Britain’s leading thriller author, was explaining to fans at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, that readers these days expected a bit of character development in a series of books. 
As she put it: “In the Golden Age it didn’t really matter what order you read Miss Marple in – the only thing that happens is Miss Marple’s arthritis gets a bit worse.”

Not in Fife
INCIDENTALLY, Val, from Kirkcaldy, also spoke about one of her main characters, DCI Karen Pirie, who works in Fife.  Explaining Karen’s stoicisim, Val said: “There’s 
a desire not to go off her head with grief and sit on the western breakwater down at the Firth of Forth weeping like The French Lieutenant’s Woman. She’s really no like that. She’s fae Fife. We don’t go in for that sort of thing.”

Bit of a pane
A WEE spell of warm weather there. A  Renfrewshire reader tells us he woke up naked in bed the other morning with the covers kicked off during the night because the weather was so close. What had woken him was the thump of the window cleaner’s ladder being positioned against the bedroom window.
Unable to grab the sheets that were now on the carpet, he quickly rolled off the bed on to the floor opposite the window, planning to lie there in the buff until the window cleaner was finished.
It was only after a minute or so that he looked over and realised there was a huge mirror on the opposite wall, and in it he was staring into the eyes of the cleaner wondering what on earth he was doing.