Having a skinfull

NOT everyone is impressed by the risible claim that the Queen’s Speech is being delayed because it is written on goatskin and the ink needs a few days to dry.

“That can’t be true,” phones a reader. “I always thought it was written on the back of a fag packet.”

In a spin

AS folk make their plans for the summer holidays, a Bearsden reader tells us: “Hubbie and I wanted to go back to Majorca but our teenage children moaned that they wanted to try something new.

“So I showed them where the vacuum cleaner and the washing machine were kept.”

Bill gets to the point

SAD to hear of the death of former Perth Tory MP Bill Walker, a bit of an old-style Tory who always favoured wearing the kilt when he could. We once bumped into him at a Tory conference in Blackpool where he confided that he always had a bit of an argument with security personnel to get his skean dhu into the conference hall, but he always won.

“Do you know,” he told us, “I even had the law changed so it wasn’t an offensive weapon in Scotland?’’

Seeing red

ACTUALLY, the memories are now flooding back. Bill once wore the kilt into the Commons where the always cheeky Nicky Fairbairn raised the back of Bill’s kilt with his walking stick.

After Bill had spoken, Nicky stood to raise a point of order and told the Speaker that Bill was not in full Highland Dress and added: “I happen to know he wears a pair of little red pants.’’

Sweet reply

GREAT to see so many women bus drivers these days. A reader was on one such bus in Glasgow’s Renfield Street where an irate car driver, caught unawares by the bus’s manoeuvring, shouted, ‘What’s your problem?”

The unconcerned female driver muttered just loud enough for our reader to hear: “Eating too much chocolate.”

Spot on

WE liked the comment of Scots actor Brian Cox in today’s Radio Times, discussing playing Winston Churchill, and declaring that Churchill would not have liked current Tory Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. As Brian put it: “Johnson thinks of himself as Churchill, but he hasn’t got the gumption of Churchill. He is an opportunist, and he is about as deep as a blackhead.”

Skirting the issue

MORE on that heart-breaking Scotland game as James Thomson in Jordanhill tells us: “My wife and I left the restaurant on Cathcart Road to head to the ground. My wife was in jeans and I was in my kilt. This fact was not missed by a nearby Cockney gentleman who shouted out, ‘Guess who wears the trousers in that relationship?’ Sadly he got the last laugh in the match too.”

Out of tune

GROWING old continued. A Newton Mearns reader confides: “I was at the Hydro recently and was thinking I was still young when the band came on for an encore and shouted, ‘Do you want to hear one more?’

“As the rest of the crowd was roaring in approval I was sneaking a look at my watch and thinking it was getting a bit late.”