Scene and not heard

Rick Astley is mostly very generous when he’s lending DVDs of his favourite animated films, tweets Sanjeev Kohli. But he’s never gonna give you Up.

Hold the line (1)

MARTIN Morrison received a call yesterday morning from a breezy-sounding Asian chap called Ken, who announced that he worked for the Telephone Call Blocking Company. After confirming his name, Martin was asked to confirm that he was still receiving nuisance calls. “Yes”, he responded, “Yes I am”, before putting the receiver down.

Which is one way to deal with these irritating cold-callers.

Hold the line (2)

WHILE on the subject of phone calls, Robert Gardner recalls the story of a man - let’s call him Jeff - who rang a helpdesk after he and his wife found it difficult to assemble their new computer.

The man on the phone started to talk to Jeff in computer jargon, which simply confused him even more.

Jeff listened for as long as he could and at length said: “Please explain what I should do, as if I were a a four year old”.

Fine, replied the tech on the other end. “Son, could you please put your mummy on the phone?”

Taking the biscuit

INTERVIEWS, more of. Donald Grant says: “Many years ago, when I was Chief Analyst in Macdonalds Biscuits in Hillington Industrial Estate (of Penguin, Munchmallow, Bandit, YoYo, Taxi, et cetera, fame), I interviewed an applicant for a prospective lab assistant post.

“I noticed from his application that he had had four jobs in the previous 15 months, and after discreet delving into this employment history, his answers of ‘Incompatibility’ began to ring faint warning bells”.

Donald has occasionally since wondered how successful the applicant might have been in the position. Not terribly, is our guess.

Bald truth

WE’VE been getting a stream of anecdotes related to Glasgow’s Cambridge Street, initiated by Andy Cameron (thanks, Andy). Today it’s the turn of David Donaldson, who tells us: “Jimmy Fusco, who ran a barber’s shop in the street, was short in stature and noticeably balding. At the height of the craze for the D.A. (Duck’s Arse) hairstyle, he was interviewed for Scope, BBC Scotland’s weekly radio programme. “When asked how he’d describe his own hairstyle he replied without hesitation, ‘A haircut with a hole in it’.”

Chain reaction

ANDY also mentioned Johnny Ionta’s barber’s shop, in the Gallowgate. Gordon Stewart remembers it well. Particularly the day when a customer arrived on his new motor bike. Johnny got him to bring it into the shop - and all work stopped while Johnny and his brothers looked over it.

Channels crossing

THE Robert Hardy TV film, Between the Covers, mentioned here yesterday, was, we have been told, made not by the BBC but by Scottish Television.

And finally ...

AMUSING little throwaway tweet spotted yesterday, courtesy of Nein. Quarterly, “the Internet’s leading compendium of utopian negation”:

“It was the best of tmies. It was the worst of typos”.