TOM Rafferty tells us of a friend travelling on the train from Glasgow to Aberdeen. Says Tom: "The chap sitting next to her wanted to buy his ticket with a debit card, and when he held it up, the ticket seller remarked, 'Oh TSB? Dodgy.' The traveller acknowledged that if the ticket seller meant they were partly responsible for the crash of the economy then they were indeed dodgy. But the ticket seller replied, 'No, I meant they don't work in my machine'."

SUPERMARKET Sainsbury's tried to claim it was the biggest seller of vinyl records on the High Street. HMV set the record straight as it were by pointing out that they have four times the market share of Sainsbury's. We just liked the fact that HMV then added: "For the record HMV sell more Orange Juice, Meatloaf, Cream, and Jam than Sainsbury's. We also have some Smashing Pumpkins."

DREADFUL news from America with the Orlando shooting. As one American sadly commented: "I don't know why these shootings keep happening, we've tried literally nothing."

And another pointed out: "Waiting time for a gay man to donate blood: one year of no sexual contact. Waiting time for a psychopath to purchase an assault rifle: three days."

AND actor George Takei of Star Trek fame was not enamoured of Presidential hopeful Donald Trump trying to make political capital out of the shooting. Commented George: "Trump says club goers should have been armed. Yet he doesn't allow guns on Trump properties. He may be ignorant, but he's not THAT stupid."

STAND-UP Bennett Arron, a regular at the Stand comedy club in Glasgow, also does a number of corporate gigs for companies around the UK which can be quite lucrative for comedians. He tells us however: "The weirdest feedback I received from a corporate gig was, 'Thanks for hosting our awards. You were funnier than we expected'. There is nothing like having low expectations."

A READER in a Glasgow pub at the weekend heard one young toper declaim: "So the top three reasons for needing witnesses - crimes, accidents and marriages. Need I say more?"

TRYING to dodge my colleagues while the football was in yesterday afternoon, but one of them finds me and declares: "My girlfriend goes on and on about the fillings of duvets and pillows." I know there is more to come, so I stand there until he adds: "So I said to her, 'I've told you before, don't talk down to me'."

A BEARSDEN reader contacts us to ask: "Do you think it's called a remote because those are the odds of you finding it when you want to change the channel?"

TODAY'S piece of whimsy comes from a reader who tells us: "Whenever I see someone with their jumper tied round their waist I always imagine that they are being hugged by a short ghost."

WE mentioned the Edinburgh Fringe seeking a name for the owl on the cover of their programme. John Mulholland goes a step further by suggesting they rename the festival "Edinburgh's Got Talons" with thanks to Simon Cowl.