GOT, got, got, got, need, got, got, NEED, NEEEEEEED. No, it’s not a hypochondriac leafing through the pages of The Illustrated Guide To Family Health. It is, of course, the gasping, fevered shrieks that used to be heard emanating from school playgrounds the length and breadth of these fair islands as bartering, bargaining bairns searched high and low for that elusive John Chiedozie mug-shot or the twinkling Notts County badge that would allow them to claim the coveted title of The First Person To Complete The Panini Sticker Album.

In this whiz-bang, tap-and-scroll world of high-speed gadgetry and blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em gizmos, the simple process of actually sticking a bit of adhesive paper into a book, and trying not to crease the face of Leicester City stalwart Steve Lynex while doing so, has almost been shunted into the same corner of the museum which houses the mangle and the stovepipe hat.

As the high-tech tsunami thunders on, Panini this week launched its first ever digital fitba’ sticker album, a bells and whistles swap-o-ramma which will no doubt be all sleek and clean and, well, so hideously modern. For those of a certain vintage, who were reared on more modest pleasures and still consider the horse drawn plough as a magnificent feat of technological advance, the idea of the cherished cut-and-thrust of sticker swapping being played out on in the indolent, online solitude of boggle-eyed screen gazing is an appalling prospect. It’s enough to send shivers down the diarist’s John Chiedozes ...

GLORY, glory Man United? Well, not quite. Old Trafford may be the Theatre of Dreams but, according to some, it’s got the barnstorming, rip-roaring, raucous atmosphere of an operating theatre. Jose Mourinho, whose turgid brand of football has generated more stifled yawns than a lecture on the history of lintel dust, has lamented that the stadium was a bit “quiet.” The notion of putting a sheet with lyrics of chants on the seats has been floated at a meeting of fans. Rumours, meanwhile, that a delivery van with 100 boxes of The Rangers Songbook was seen parking up at the Stretford End have proved unfounded.

TALKING of the Gers, a few of the club’s players were spotted enjoying a night out at the darts in the SSE Hydro on Thursday. Well they were enjoying it until, allegedly, Brendan Rodgers turned up and started regaling them with a Bullseye-related repertoire. The Jim Bowen sign off, “here’s what you could’ve won,” had the Rangers boys glumly shuffling off ... to their speedboats moored at the Govan docks.

THINGS will be getting fizzy in the Fair City of Perth today when Dumbarton and Inverness Caley Thistle square-up in the Irn Bru Cup showpiece at McDiarmid Park. It will be Dumbarton’s first national cup final appearance in well over a century. Apparently, the tax man is keeping an eye on the Sons as they’ve been claiming for silver polish for years.

THE BBC took a boxing meander down memory lane with a recalling of the time the great Muhammad Ali fought in Paisley. And no, he hadn’t been mouthing off in the Wee Barrel pub on Love Street. In 1965, Ali took to the road with a gruelling series of exhibition fights but was booed one night by hostile fans at Paisley Ice Rink who thought he wasn’t trying hard enough. This tenuously reminded the diarist of the old, cornball pub tale about the fella who said he regretted having a one night stand in Paisley because of the booze. His pal replied that he’d had a few one night stands of his own in Paisley down the years but had never been booed.

THERE was high drama at the grand, imposing edifice of Herald & Times towers this week. As the fires raged on nearby Sauchiehall Street and great plumes of thick, black smoke billowed into the very offices of this fine organ, the police cordon to preserve the safety of all and sundry in the vicinity was extended right up to the doors through which the diarist was chewing his quill, coughing out bits of lung and pondering today’s musings. According to one PC, the cordon was put up due to concerns that some of the end-of-the-pier gags that appear in this diary on a weekly basis are so old, the entire back page gives off hazardous levels of asbestos.