ABERDEEN University's Freshers' Fayre has just taken place where societies compete to sign up the new students.

One of those attending tells us: “The Polish society didn’t turn up, so the German society expanded and took over their stall.”

She added: “You couldn’t make it up. Needless to say ourselves and the French society sat back and watched it happen.”

Wake-up call

TALKING of students, Jane Crawford at St James Manse in Lossiemouth tells us that some classes at her alma mater, the Presbyterian College in South Carolina, start at eight in the morning. “One student fell asleep in the class, and the professor managed to get the entire class to leave without the student waking up.

“The prank was carried on by the next two classes, the student slumbering on two more hours. When he finally woke up, he was in a sea of unknown faces with an entirely different professor than the one who had started off the morning.”

Students will argue of course that is why you should never get up that early in the morning.

Sticky situation

NOSTALGIA alert as it is reported that the Stenhousemuir firm which makes McCowans Highland Toffee has gone into administration, threatening the future of the iconic brand which featured in so many corner shops’ penny trays.

Inevitably we are reminded of the Chic Murray line: “So there I was lying in the gutter. A man stopped and asked, ‘What’s the matter? Did you fall over?’ So I said, ‘No. I’ve a bar of toffee in my back pocket and I was just trying to break it’.”

Marvellous.

Out of touch

A MILNGAVIE reader on the bus into Glasgow realised that some folk live in a different world from him when he heard a young chap tell his pal on the bus: “Ma phone was dead for two days as I’d lost the charger.

“Everyone thought I was in the jail.”

Bite-size TV viewing

A READER perusing the TV guide this week opines: “On Channel 5, When Killer Whales Attack is immediately followed by The Big Celebrity Swim, with Ronan Keating. Ah, if only, if only ...”

Career move

A GLASGOW businessman tells us he was being shown round a call centre in the city as they were keen to have his business. Beside one of the computers a staff member had stuck up the quotation: “If a train station is where the train stops, what’s a work station?”

Appetite for change

AN economist explains to us: “If Britain has a double dip recession, America will say, ‘Oh that sounds tasty, can we have some?’”