GUEST speaker Isobel Rutter, at Jewish Care's charity lunch at the weekend in Giffnock, said her pals had been enouraging her to try out a dating website in order to meet a future partner.

But as Isobel explained: "I prefer to find men the old-fashioned way - through alcohol and bad judgement."

Talking proper

TALKING posh in shops, continued. Murdo Macdonald tells us that when Michael Munro's book of broad Glasgow humour, The Patter, was published, his pal Allen McCulloch heard a woman in a bookshop ask in a posh accent: "Do you have that book on the Glasgow vernacular?"

Seeing red

WE asked for your tales of the Highlanders' Institute in Glasgow, and Ronnie MacQuarrie fondly remembers: "In the early seventies we attended a fundraiser there for the International Socialist Workers Party. Soon after we arrived we abandoned the bar when the comrades at the next table competed to show their revolutionary fervour by biting chunks out of beer glasses.

"We hadn't been in the hall for long when a fight broke out on the dance floor. When some of the class warriors in the balcony threw themselves into the pile of bodies below, we decided it was time to leave."

Happy days!

Hard spell

WISE words overheard in a Glasgow school staff room last week. "We've really lowered our expectations of what we mean by the word magic when we began using it to describe markers."

Stirring it

AS the search continues to find a site to replace Glasgow's Barlinnie Jail, we're reminded of Robert Jeffrey's book, The Barlinnie Story, in which he tells the classic tale of the newly appointed prison chaplain at the Bar-L who, peering at the mucky cup in which he was served tea, asked the trustee if the cup could get a good wash.

When the old lag brought the tray of tea into the meeting room, he inquired politely: "Who wanted the clean cup?"

Foreign body

GLASGOW authors Elly Grant and Zach Abrams arrived back from a trip to the south of France only to find when they unpacked the next day a large colourful butterfly escaping from their luggage. We don't know if we should forgive them for telling pals: "We think it must be of the Tortoiseshell variety, as Monarch have no scheduled flights into Glasgow."

Paisley patter

A READER watching the national weather report on the telly at the weekend tells us: "The forecaster was talking about wet weather at the Celtic game. In a precise French accent, he said they were playing 'San MerREN'. Some viewers must have wondered what this strange French team was, only to find the team were closer to home. It was of course St Mirren."

Ship jape

GORDON Phillips in Ayr tells us about a recent Caribbean cruise where an American passenger buttonholed the captain to tell him she was quite alarmed to see some water coming down the stairs. The skipper cheerfully told her it was nothing to worry about - but if she ever saw water going up the stairs she should contact him immediately.