A READER phones: "I guess we now know why the BBC chose the next Doctor Who to be a woman.

"She's cheaper."

THE GLASGOW Subway is still the place where strangers will chat. John Mulholland was speaking to a chap from Manchester who told him he had been on the Subway in order to attend his daughter's graduation at Glasgow University. He was sitting there, smartly dressed for the occasion, when the auld fella opposite leaned over and asked knowingly: "Graduation ceremony?"

"Yes," replied the puzzled chap, who then asked: "How did you know?"

"Because nobody ever travels on the Subway wi' shoes as shiny as that," came the reply.

TALKING of sartorial elegance, the SNP MP wearing a Scotland top in the House of Commons reminds retired Glasgow MP Maria Fyfe that Jeremy Corbyn once strolled in wearing a safari suit, and a Tory MP objected, with the Speaker observing that a suit was the normal dress code. Adds Maria: "When I first went to Parliament in 1987 some members objected to me wearing a trouser suit, saying the ladies should wear either dresses or skirts. Nowadays it is common for women politicians to wear trousers. Civilisation has not collapsed as a consequence."

LESS than a fortnight to the start of the Edinburgh Festival. As Fringe stand-up Steff Todd mused at the weekend: "My mum always says, 'You won't find a husband in a nightclub'. But I'm in one now and there's loads of married men."

GETTING old continued. Says a Newton Mearns reader: "Remember when teachers didn't like you using a calculator in class as they told you, 'You won't always have a calculator with you'. They got that wrong, didn't they?"

THE MINISTRY of Defence says that the next destroyer to be built at Govan will be named HMS Glasgow. We recall the previous HMS Glasgow being used for a photo-call in the early nineties when the MoD announced that Wrens would be able to serve at sea and a number of Wrens were interviewed on board Glasgow. One of the Wrens, from Hamilton, came out with the memorable line: "Lots of wives are really terrified we are going to run off with their husbands.

"If a husband is going to be unfaithful to his wife, he doesn't have to go to sea to do it."

DO you ever find insurance forms a struggle to fill in? Jim Scott was tackling one such form when it asked him about any sudden weight increases or decreases. It then came up with the impossible question: "Is there an unexplained weight loss? If yes, please provide reasons for the weight loss."

IF you are trying to understand the Cabinet infighting, Bruce Skivington observes: "How can Theresa May expect the Cabinet not to reveal what is said in Cabinet when she just told everyone that she has told them that in Cabinet?"

I TRY to slip out of the office but a colleague buttonholes me with: "Sometimes I feel like just throwing my hands up in the air."

I can't escape so have to wait while he tells me: "Then I think... but how the hell would I catch them?"