What are the odds?
GLASGOW comedian Scott Agnew passes on: “Old boy in Tesco to checkout boy, ‘There’ll be nae self service for me son – too bliddy complicated. And just you pack they bags fur us, cheers’. 
“He then steps back, produces a smartphone, and skelps £20 away on his Skybet app.”

Word of advice on the ward
HOSPITAL DJs continued. Says Jim Hair in Dalry: “Years ago in more simple times the treatment for both mouth ulcers and haemorrhoids was an iodine solution applied with a small paintbrush. One young chap admitted with mouth ulcers was visited by the hospital radio volunteer who asked if he had any requests. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘Tell thae nurses to start their rounds at this end of the ward’.”

Time flies
WISE words from James Withers, chief executive of the promotions body Scotland Food and Drink, at a lunchtime event in Glasgow this week when he asked industry leaders what their strategy might be for 2030. He then added that it might be difficult to guess what it might be for 20:30 that night as the world is changing so fast, never mind the year 2030.

Paws for thought ...
A READER swears to us after our story about that great sports store Greaves closing their Sauchiehall Street branch that her pal went in there to buy table tennis balls. When the assistant asked if she wanted practice balls or the higher-grade one star or even three stars, she replied they were just for her cat to play with.
“How does it hold the bat?” the assistant immediately came back with.

Class act
THE news that there is a courgette shortage due to a poor harvest in Spain reminds a reader of the class of first-year pupils in Glasgow being given a sex education lesson by a nurse. She held up a condom and asked what it was. Everyone in the class knew. She then took out a courgette to show how to apply said condom and someone asked: “What’s that?”

Evasive action
A READER writes to us – yes, we still get letters: “On seeing Mrs May holding tight to Mr Trump’s hand – is that not what any sensible woman would be doing?”

Trump faces the music
TALKING of Mr Trump, The Herald’s quotes of the day yesterday included  Downton creator Julian Fellowes: “I am sure we are heading for Trump the Musical.”
We wondered what songs would be in it, and immediately thought of a Dylanesque Hey Mr Tangerine Man. But we know our readers can do better than that ...

We’ll meet again
THE news that forces sweetheart Vera Lynn is to release a new album at the age of 100 reminds us of the story she told that, during the Second World War, determined to do the right thing for the troops, she wrote personal messages by hand on thousands of portrait photographs requested by serving personnel. Many of the soldiers’ wives and girlfriends did not believe the singer would be so kind to a stranger, so she was regularly accused of having affairs with men she had not actually met.