Illuminating name

WITH many people working from home nowadays, offices have largely become a thing of the past, condemned to the grey wheelie bin of history, along with the horse and cart, the Zeppelin airship and Phillip Schofield’s career. Sorry, that last comment was unnecessarily cruel… the Zeppelin is bound to get another shot at the big time.

Offices may be largely kaput, but our correspondents have fond memories of them, which they’re sharing with us.

Says Mike Watson: “What I miss the most is those kindly office nicknames, such as the fellow known as Lantern, because he wasn’t very bright and he had to be carried.”

Miffed monsters

WE mentioned a certain Mr Schofield in the above story. His squabble with former chum Holly Willoughby seems to have led to his fall from grace, which is inspiring our readers to recall similar TV tantrums.

Says reader Marvin Wallace: “Who can forget when the Daleks threatened to down tools because they weren’t given their own make-over programme on BBC1. They were desperate to replace the  screech of ‘Exterminate’ with ‘Exfoliate’.”

Weighting for explanation

OUR pugnaciously pedantic readers are growling about gruesome grammar. Says Tom Bain from Uddingston: “I can't remember the 'amount' of times (probably many hours) I've listened to football commentators telling us about the amount of goals that have been scored by particular strikers. Unfortunately, they never tell you what that amount is, so you have no idea whether it would be based on the weight or the volume of an average football.”

📖 Sign up to the Herald Diary newsletter and get the sublime and the ridiculous sent directly to your inbox.

👉 Click here to sign up

Predictably poor

ASTUTE reader Steve Smith gets in touch to say: “For all those people who have great faith in the power of mystics, isn’t it a bit suspicious that you never see the newspaper headline ‘Psychic Wins Lottery Yet Again’?”

Toilet training

“FOLLOWING years of polluting,” says Bryce Drummond from Kilmarnock, “water companies in England are promising to improve their systems. Are they sincere, or just going through their motions?”

Early energy

LESS-THAN-ENERGETIC reader Margaret Whitehead lives opposite a gym, though she isn’t a member.

When she got up to use the bathroom at 6am the other morning, she noticed through the window a great procession of cars and pedestrians already hurrying to use the gym facilities.

Impressed, she returned to bed and said to her hubby: “That’s dedication.”

“No,” countered hubby, snuggling deeper under the duvet, “that’s stupidity.”

Colourful query

QUESTION of the day from Rosemary Blake, who asks: What’s blue and smells like red paint?”

The answer is… “Blue paint.”