Come again?

HAVE you got one of those electronic devices that you give verbal instructions to? A Whitecraigs reader tells us: "I’ve had to repeat everything I’ve said to Alexa today - it's like we’re married."

Getting up

IT'S over 40 years since the death of the great Glasgow folk singer Matt McGinn, but his daughter Eleanor tells us about a curious surge in interest. Matt won a song-writing competition judged by American Peggy Seeger who introduced him to her brother Pete who recorded Matt's song Get Up, Get Out, about struggling to get up for work, with The Weavers. Years later it was covered by a French hiphop group Chinese Man as Get Up and that version has now been picked up for a huge advertising campaign by a French telecommunications giant, and on YouTube alone the track has been listened to 15m times.

Matt, we think, would have been astonished.

Pea stains

WE asked you to reveal your embarrassing moments, and retired cop Ronnie McAlpine confesses: "Back in the seventies I was attending the A Division dinner dance at the then Albany hotel. The waiter came with the soup, green pea, and promptly dropped it on my lap. He then hurried me to the Gents where I had to remove my trousers whilst he attempted to clean them. Meanwhile several of my colleagues visited the Gents and then returned to their seats passing on my embarrassment.

"On finally returning to my table the waiter came back bearing another bowl of soup. I hate green pea soup."

Chew on that

THE grouse shooting season began this week, and we recall two American ladies on holiday near Inverness who asked if they could go on a shoot. The hotel said it would be very expensive but they could volunteer to be beaters for the day. They were delighted, but then puzzled when they were told they had better take a piece with them. "A gun?" they asked anxiously.

Getting lippy

A GLASGOW reader swears to us that a fellow toper in his local was being asked how his date with someone he met on-line had gone. "You know she said she had an infectious smile?" he told his pals. "Turned out it was cold sores."

Hot stuff

WE mentioned pet hamsters last week, and Amy Kinnaird in Ayrshire tells us: "I once bought a hamster and cage when I was teaching eight-year-olds. The children took it in turn to take it home to look after over the weekend. One morning a granny came to see me and asked that her grandson not be allowed home with the hamster again as, 'I nearly ironed it when it ran across the ironing board'."

Scotch that

A READER in Arizona of all places sends us a link to a joke page in her local newspaper which tells us about our national drink: "I went to the liquor store Friday afternoon on my bicycle, bought a bottle of Scotch and put it in the bicycle basket. As I was about to leave, I thought to myself that if I fell off the bicycle, the bottle would break. So, I drank all the Scotch before I cycled home.

"It turned out to be a very good decision because I fell off my bicycle seven times on the way home."

All that jazz

THE Herald's Those Were The Days picture of jazz evenings at the Admiral Bar remind John Woods in Irvine: "I prefer the way jazz was described by Tom Shields in a Diary column years ago when he wrote, 'Jazz - twelve different musicians playing twelve different tunes on twelve different instruments all at the same time'."

A bit harsh, surely.