The final countdown

SADDENED by the death of Lisbon Lion Tommy Gemmell.

We always liked Tommy’s reply when he was ever asked what it was like to score in a European Cup Final. “Which one son?” he would say as he did indeed score in two finals.

Our sports colleagues tell us it was always fun when Tommy went on to manage Albion Rovers.

At the end of the game he would invite any press there – usually about two – into his tiny office and offer them a drink.

For some reason a whisky bottle and a vodka bottle were screwed to the wall with optics, which is how we would like our office to be.

Not to be scoffed at

AND writer Meg Henderson recalled: “Tommy was a daft big laddie. The team bus arrived at Celtic Park and the players trooped off, with Tommy grabbing a pie off the supplies which had arrived to sell at half time. The powers-that-be sent someone after him, not because he’d eaten a greasy pie just before a match, but because he hadn’t paid for it.”

Dumbing down OUR occasional foray into wedding speeches reminds a Killearn reader: “The best man in his wedding speech said that 20 years ago the mother of the bride had sent her to bed with a dummy, and tonight history would be repeating itself.”

One for the road

SO what’s been happening on the streets of Glasgow? Well Amy Neil explained on social media: “Just seen a drunk woman get knocked down in Glasgow, then two seconds later stand up and shout, ‘It’s awrite – I stayed loose.’ Is this for real?”

Bit of a circus

THE Herald’s archive picture of a Kelvin Hall circus elephant reminds retired journalist Graham Scott: “The late Rodney Duncan of the Evening Times was sent to cover ‘a day in the life of the circus,’ in which he lay on his back while an elephant stepped over him.

“Unfortunately, said elephant dropped what in the photo looked like a brick on Rod and his suit on the way over.

“After initial amusement, colleagues forgot about it until a week later when, in Ross’s Bar, a certain smell made clear to anyone near him that Rodney had not bothered to have the suit cleaned.”

Nothing changes

A GLASGOW reader was in his local supermarket when he noticed that even the gents’ toilet had a baby changing shelf that you could fold down.

He just passes on the fact that even that was not free of graffiti as someone had neatly written on it “Place sacrifice here”.

Losing your marbles

NOSTALGIA alert as David Stubley in Prestwick says: “Am I alone in thinking that as the R&A are now permitting dropping the golf ball from as little as one inch there will be a lot of golfers who will be grateful for those years at primary school playing jorries?”

In soapy water

TODAY’S piece of daftness comes from an Ayr reader who says: “Was out washing the car at the weekend with my son.

“Wife says I should use a chamois next time.”