Mentally challenged
EXCITING University Challenge episode this week with Edinburgh University beating the Open University on a sudden-death question. A reader tells us: “I was talking to a friend last night, who was telling me she and her husband had been watching it. At the end of the programme, her husband asked, ‘I know where Edinburgh is, but where’s Open?’”

Teenage angst
A BEARSDEN reader swears to us that his teenage daughter came home and told him: “I just saw an old woman sitting on the bench outside the shops, staring at nothing, and it made me so sad. I wonder what happened to her phone?”
 
Beef with landlady 
LANDLADIES continued. Says Alastair Cherry in Clarkston: “As a young man, my father was sent with another fruit market trainee salesman to Edinburgh Fruit Market where they shared digs. The landlady asked what their favourite meal was, and that night there was a plate of lambs’ liver awaiting them. And the following night the same, so that by Friday they had no desire to see another plate of liver.
“They asked her if she could cook something else and she asked them what they would like. They told her corned beef, and so got corned beef and chips every night till Friday – when they left and got new digs.”

Shaggy dog story
WE asked for signs you are getting old, and Ian Forrest in Laurencekirk says: “A girl with a dog is coming towards you and you’re more interested in the dog.”
 
Trumpeting the news
WELL we can’t avoid the American election result any longer. A reader pleads: “Can we go back to the day before when the day’s worst news was missing chocolate triangles in bars of Toblerone?”
And stand-up Fred MacAulay sums up yesterday morning with: “I set my alarm for 6am. Woke up in 1939.”

Thistle do nicely
LOOKING for something positive from the result, a reader sees a betting firm work out that if you put a £5 treble on Leicester winning the Premier League last season, Britain voting for Brexit, and America voting for Donald Trump, you would have won £12.5 million.
Says our reader: “I’m now off to put my treble on Ed Balls winning Strictly, Honey G winning The X Factor – and Thistle winning the Premiership.”

Can’t face it
ALSO being positive was the chap in the Ayrshire golf club yesterday who said: “What a great day it’s been on Facebook with no pictures of dogs, weans, or meals because everyone is too busy being shocked and outraged.”

Moving house
WHAT happens when Trump finally takes over in the White House? A forlorn hope from Mark Simpson who asks: “Can Obama not just turn the telly up really loud and pretend he didn’t hear the doorbell?”
And we don’t think the chap was serious who wrote to the Facebook page of Mr Trump’s golf course in Aberdeenshire: “With Donald’s recent appointment as president of the United States, does that mean his Saturday shift behind the bar is available? Just thought I’d ask for a mate.”

Team Hillary ...
Dave McFarlane in Motherwell opines: “How bad a politician must Hillary Clinton be to lose to Donald Trump for goodness sake? She’s the Scottish football team of politics.”