OUR mention of the late great Scots comedian Chic Murray reminds fellow entertainer Andy Cameron of travelling with Chic to Aberdeen to record a TV show with Grampian Television. Says Andy: "We stopped for a cup of tea in Laurencekirk and the lady who owned the tea room was obviously a fan of my radio show. As she placed the bill on the table Chic picked it up and declared, 'Excuse me dear, you can't expect Scotland's top entertainer to pay for his tea.....Andy will get it' and he handed me the bill."

THIS week's big star at Glasgow's Hydro was veteran American crooner Barry Manilow. Great show apparently. He's had a few bits of face surgery over the years which is why one fan declared: "Plastic - but still magic!" Anyway, fellow fan Fi Gilmore reminisced after the Glasgow show: "Twenty years ago I went travelling around the world. Tonight I am seeing Barry Manilow.

"Think the tickets cost the same."

WRITER Hugh McMillan has brought together a collection of irreverent stories about Dumfries and Galloway in the book just published by Luath Press "McMillan's Galloway". In it he tells of the Dumfries local, famous for being an excellent fishermen who was notoriously poor at having permits for it, being asked in the pub if he could secure a large salmon for someone willing to pay him for it.

Writes Hugh: "He was expecting it the following weekend or something like that. Willie rubbed his grizzled chin and replied in his Galloway Irish lilt that it was a distinct possibility and could we just wait there? Within ten minutes he was back with a giant salmon in a bin bag, headless and gutted. My friend paid him the money and Willie scarpered to one of his other haunts, leaving us to deal, ten minutes afterwards, with the chef of a nearby hotel who had been about to cook it for a wedding banquet when it had vanished from the kitchen table."

HUGH also mentions in the book our old journalistic chum Phil Mulvey, who sadly died in an accident in Vietnam a few years ago. When Phil was working in Dumfries, says Hugh, "he had the job of editing a hugely respectful obituary of a local bigwig, notorious in the town for his drunkenness. Of course the paper was only meant to reflect the respectable side of his life but at the end instead of ‘sadly missed’ Philip substituted ‘sadly pissed’, claiming it to be an unfortunate typing error."

A NEWTON Mearns reader sends us a telephone message received by a friend from her mum who explains that she had to bring the girl's sister home from primary school early as she was very sad, and had a "very hard day". Mum went on to explain that the wee sister had taken her two pet snails to school, had taken them out her bag in class, and they were then thrown out the window by the classroom assistant who assumed they had somehow wandered in from outside.

Although the sister was now laughing heartily her mum ended the message: "Please act sad about it when you get home."

A READER tells us he was in a Glasgow pub at the weekend when he heard a young lad tell his pals: “My New Year’s resolution was not to have any sex this year.

“Apparently.”