THIS is one conversation we'd dearly love to have eavesdropped upon.

A flavour of it can be gauged from a summary helpfully posted on Facebook by Glasgow's Grosvenor Cinema:

"To the 'festively merry' gentleman who just popped by to ask a few questions (and has lived in the West End all his life, apparently):

Yes. This is a real cinema.

Yes. We show real films.

No. You can't take a nap in the screen.

Yes. We serve popcorn 'n' that.

No. It's not just 'fake films' that we show.

No. I swear it's not just a really quiet bar that sells sweets.

We've been here since NINETEEN TWENTY ONE... sheesh!"

Role calling

A GOOD crop of unusual names today.

Matt Duffy, in Dunoon, writes: "My father had a cousin called Willie Currie and he married a girl called Etta." Then there's this, from Alan M Black: "Many years ago, I worked for a company within a large, nationwide road haulage group, where the company secretary's name was Austin Laurie."

Jean Edmondston, in Prestwick, recalls that a friend once taught English in a rather posh Glasgow school, and in her class was a pupil called Anne Watt Dunnett. And Russell Smith says that, many years ago, he came across a woman in Paisley by the name of Etta Cherry.

More tomorrow, if the editor hasn't become bored with them by then.

Rave review

RONNIE Somerville spotted, on the BBC website, the following headline: 'North Korea's Kim Jong-un makes rare New Year speech.'

"I'm glad it was a good speech," Ronnie adds, sagely.

Fresh topics

JIM Foy can just about recollect his Hogmanay experiences. "I went into town," he writes, "but all I could hear was 'Polo, After Eights, Extra Strong', over and over and over again. So it was just the usual – people drinking too much and talking mints."

Small pleasures

In a year of conspicuous highs and lows – not to mention a 4-3 defeat by St Mirren last weekend – Dundee United Football Club has asked its fans, via Facebook, for their club highlight of 2012.

One Arab, clearly not keen to allow the team's wayward form to get him down, showed where his real priorities lay: "I bought two pies, two Bovrils and a packet of cheese 'n' onion McCoys once. Did not get charged for the McCoys. Buzzing."

Soap dodger

OUT of the mouths of babes. Mike Ritchie tell us that he and his six-year-old son Adam were watching a cleansing crew emptying the bins.

"I wouldn't like to be a bin man, Dad," said Adam.

"Why not?" Mike asked.

"Well," said Adam, "when you finish work you would have to take a shower in the afternoon and that would be terrible."