Courting trouble

OUR tale about incorrect punctuation reminds a Glasgow lawyer: "There was much hilarity directed at the late and greatly missed Joe Beltrami in the bar common room in the old Sheriff Court in Ingram Street following a report on a plea he had delivered on behalf of a client. What the article meant to say was, 'Mr Jones, said Mr Beltrami, appeared to have lost control completely and acted In the most outrageous manner.' Unhappily the commas were omitted - poor Joe was the butt of much humour for weeks."

Not cricket

MUCH bemusement over the BBC the other night making a story about a cricket ball the main news item, as if there was nothing else important happening in the world. However the tale of the tampered cricket ball was also taken very seriously in Australia. A reader on holiday in Brisbane tells us that someone moved shamed Australian cricket captain Steve Smith's autobiography, My Journey, into the True Crime section in the local bookstore.

Hair raising

OUR B&B stories remind Jim Scott in Singapore: "My wife and I, before we were married, went to Blackpool for a romantic weekend. It started badly when we got to the B&B and had to keep climbing the stairs until eventually we got to the garret. The woman opened the door and hit the bed, a single bed. It was an L-shaped room and the other bed was about half a mile on the other leg. The room had the tiniest wash-hand basin I have ever seen, it was like a cup with a tap. The sheets were Brentford Nylon. Every time you moved there was a blue flash of static. When we got up in the morning our hair was standing straight up. I have never been back to Blackpool since."

Put a lid on it

WE asked about making small-talk at receptions, and a reader was surprised at one such function in Glasgow noticing a woman going up to the buffet table, and surreptitiously filling a Tupperware box she kept in her handbag with some of the sandwiches. He wondered if she had specifically packed the plastic box or whether she always kept it in her handbag on the off chance.

Bit of a shock

A PERPLEXED reader phones to tell us that the office building where he works has a box in the reception area with the sign "Emergency Defibrillator" on it and he wonders why it is described as an emergency one as he cannot think of what other occasion you would want to use a defibrillator.

Barking mad

MOST dog owners can identify with Josh who explains: "A character on TV opened a bag of crisps and my dog came running into the living room thinking it was me, so now she’s playing with a ball she found and is acting like that’s what she wanted all along."

Bedtime story

AFTER the story about the alarm in the bar going off when a woman raised the kilt on a toy Scotsman in the loo, Brian Donohoe in Irvine swears to us: "In the Glenburn Hotel in Rothesay there used to be a bell on the ceiling in the bar which was directly below the bed in the Honeymoon Suite. When a honeymoon couple retired for the night, and the bell rang, the punters left in the bar got a free drink."

Feeling blue

NORMALLY we eschew Viagra gags but after the news story in The Herald about the blue pills now going on general sale in Boots the Chemist, we will allow reader Russell Smith, just this once, to beat many of you to it by declaring: “Viagra goes on sale for £5 per pill? That seems a bit stiff."

And he adds as an alternative: "Good news that Viagra for erectile dysfunction is going on sale for £5. If that means I will be better able to assemble purchases from Ikea it’s cheap at the price."

Sorry, no more.