SNP MSP Alex Neil has put out a press release stating he has written to the Transport Minister to ask if a Sunday train service can be introduced to Shotts.

Our man at the Scottish Parliament tells us: "Given that Alex Neil is Infrastructure Secretary, and the Transport Minister is his deputy, and occupies the next door office, there must be an easier way than writing when the Post Office is so busy."

Place your bets ...

WHILE everyone else gets very po-faced about Prime Minister David Cameron's fall-out with Europe, bookies Paddy Power are being less reverential. It has odds of 4/1 on a Lib Dem leaving the Cabinet and the calling of a General Election next year, which is fair enough. However its other Euro bets include 66/1 on the French and Germans taking their frustration out on the UK by banning us from the Eurovision Song Contest, and the admittedly quite long odds of 500/1 that Nick Clegg will have a number one single with his version of Tammy Wynette's classic D.I.V.O.R.C.E.

Elf service

MUNGO Henning passed a self storage facility in Hillington Industrial Estate where part of the sign has been ripped off in the strong winds. But it's very seasonal, says Mungo, to see a sign for "Elf Storage".

Cold response

BILL Webster was trying to lift the spirits of a woman he met at a function by hoping she had a good Christmas and New Year, but didn't get much of a response.

So he tried again by wishing her the traditional Scottish greeting "Lang may yir lum reek".

"I've an electric fire," she told him.

Whisky sour

WHISKY company Whyte & Mackay hid a bottle of their £100 whisky – the Shackleton South Pole replica whisky –- in a street in Glasgow city centre, and told customers they could download an app which would help them find it. Three weeks later it has still not been claimed.

As an old timer at Whyte & Mackay tells us: "Shows you how Glasgow has changed. I remember the days when the hint of a £10 bottle of whisky would have had the streets being dug up."

Name-dropper

OUR tale of naming babies reminds Calum Carmichael: "My friend Hugh was a student at Edinburgh University, and his Scandinavian wife was in the Simpson's Maternity Hospital. The prospective parents had decided that if they had a boy they would name him Ivor. No decision had been made if it was a girl.

"Hugh called the hospital one morning and sure enough the child had been born. We repaired to Deacon Brodie's pub to celebrate and duly asked Hugh, by nature somewhat absent-minded, if it was a boy or a girl. In his excitement he had not taken that in.

"Undeterred, we toasted the child and named it Ivor-Or."