Dial E for Etiquette

A WHITECRAIGS reader says he did not know whether to laugh or cry when his teenage daughter sat at the dinner table with her mobile phone and asked: “Which side of the plate does the phone go on?”

The plane truth

THE big news story is that Heathrow Airport is given approval for a third runway, even though Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said he would try to stop it. A reader phones to explain: “I believe Boris Johnson when he says he’d lie in front of bulldozers. He lies in front of TV cameras and journalists, so why not?”

Laughter the best medicine

A NEWTON Mearns reader anxiously phones: “It’s not even Hallowe’en, yet I’m told the new Herald Diary book is already in the window of our local Waterstone’s. Can this be true?”

Hard to believe I know, but already heading to bookstores is this year’s Diary compilation entitled “That’s the Sealiest Thing I’ve Read” - it’s got a cute seal on the cover. It includes the story of the supermarket customer being stopped from buying multiple packs of paracetamol because of the suicide risk.

The customer pointed to his other shopping and argued: “If ah wanted to kill masel, ah widnae waste ma money buyin’ soap powder, would ah?”

Check it out

TALKING of Hallowe’en, a Bearsden reader on the bus into Glasgow heard a young chap heading to his supermarket shift tell his pal: “Whenever someone is buying a Hallowe’en costume I point at their face and ask if I’ve to charge them for the mask as well. No one’s complained so far.”

Rearing up on television

TODAY’S piece of whimsy comes from Glenn Moore, who says: “My ambition is to put on enough weight that I become one of those anonymous bottoms you see when there’s a story about obesity on the news.”

It’s snow fair

AN AYR reader was passing the Gaiety Theatre in the town when a young girl pointed at the pantomime poster and asked her mum: “What if Snow White just pretended to be sleeping as she was fed up cleaning the house for those lazy dwarfs?”

Lure of the gadget

GETTING old continued. Says Dave Carson in Dumbarton: “I’m increasingly looking at these wee gadget catalogues that fall from the papers and thinking, ‘You know that really looks quite useful’.”

Making an ass of himself

AS bowling clubs close down for the winter, keen bowlers turn to the indoor clubs. A member of one such Glasgow establishment was heard this week declaring: “I wouldn’t say that new member can talk, but there’s a donkey in the gents’ changing with its two hin’ legs missing”

Carry-out consequences

A WEST End reader heard a student in Byres Road confidently tell his pal: “My mum said I should start cooking instead of buying carry-outs and asked me to name one good thing about not cooking. I told her I never had to worry about leaving the oven on when I go away for the weekend.”