CONVERSATIONS that just have to be passed on. Chris Fyfe tells us: "Was passing the bike-hire shop in Millport yesterday and heard a lassie tell her pal, 'Ah don't know if ah want to cycle all the way roon the island.' So her pal suggested, 'Why do ye no just go half way and then cycle back?'"

GREAT concert by Bruce Springsteen at Hampden the other night - even if it did snarl up south side traffic all night. We like the fan who ruminated afterwards: "Springsteen is 66 years old and played a three-and-a-half-hour set last night. I've got sore legs after walking back into town from Hampden."

And another spectator, mindful of previous events at the ground who remarked: "Hibs and Rangers fans - I've been on the pitch at Hampden for the last two hours and haven't punched a footballer. It can be done!"

PERHAPS the most popular female comedian in America just now, Amy Schumer, is coming to the Edinburgh Playhouse at the end of August. We always liked her waspish statement: "All my friends are getting married. I guess I'm just at that age where people give up."

OUR mention of the drunken behaviour of former Labour Foreign Secretary George Brown reminds a reader of George publishing his memoires. He tells us: "He gave it the title In My Way. When asked about it, Harold Wilson said it was very appropriate, because that was just where he had always found George Brown over the years."

AND John Henderson recalls: "Brown bitterly resented Harold Wilson. He disappeared for five days after he lost to Wilson in the leadership battle for the Labour Party. It turned out he’d booked a flight to Glasgow under an assumed name and was on a bender here with a TGWU official. Then in 1976 when he announced his resignation from the Labour Party, he fell over into the gutter and was picked up by the assembled press hacks. The Times the next day printed the classic opinion that 'Lord George-Brown drunk is a better man than the Prime Minister sober'.”

A READER phones to tell us: "Isn't it strange that the time you take to tidy up your house before a friend comes over is in inverse proportion to how much you value the friendship?"

A PAISLEY reader visiting Ikea heard a fellow shopper tell his partner as they looked at the bed displays: "Do you think at the pillow factory they have a meeting where they decide that the rule is going to be that pillows have to be thin enough that one is too low, but thick enough that two will be too high."

I think he's got a point there.

DEAR oh dear. A reader was at his golf-club in Ayrshire when he heard one of the more conservative of members announce: "Whenever I see a woman driving a bus I smile and think about how far we, as a society, have come in equality.

"And then I wait for the next bus."

TODAY'S piece of whimsy comes from Scot Hoad who tells us after a shopping expedition: "Baguettes you have to finish off in the oven? What a half-baked idea."