CHILDREN'S TV legend Glen Michael has written his autobiography, Life's a Cavalcade - which almost had a different title, thanks to an 11-year-old fan he once met.
The boy approached Glen in the street, waving a cartoon he'd drawn of his favourite animated character, Wile E Coyote. Defying screen convention, the coyote had actually caught his eternal nemesis, the Roadrunner, and was giving him a doing. Glen will never forget the boy's caption, which he thought about using for his book: "Beep-beep now, ya b******."
Can you dig it? HOUSE names continued. Hamish MacQueen tells us about a friend who bought a house on Mull with the Gaelic name Tobar Dubh - Black Well. He was so taken with the name that he spent days digging around the extensive garden to see if he could find the original well - but, despite his back-breaking efforts, he had no luck.
He was later talking to the local shopkeeper, who told him about the previous occupants, then added: "Before them there was an English couple, the Blackwells." "My wife's the double of Kate Moss," said the loud-mouth in the bar the other night.
"Kate's eight stone, and my wife's sixteen stone."
Heal thyself WE mentioned the actress Julie Walters being interviewed for Radio Scotland's The Radio Cafe. Julie also attended a book signing after her radio interview, and tells us that, at a previous book signing, a chap asked her if she would include "an antidote" when she signed it.
What was he meaning? Something to stop him laughing, she wondered? But the penny dropped that he wanted her to write "an anecdote".
The book is full of them, Julie told him, and he would just have to make do with her signature.
Pedant pending MORE on cheeky bar staff. Reader Stewart MacKenzie remembers being in a bar in Dublin where he asked for "the same again" and was told: "Oh no, sir, I can't give you that. But I'll give you something similar."
White and read INDIAN restaurant millionaire Charan Gill, who is trying his hand at stand-up comedy at Glasgow's Stand Comedy Club tomorrow night, was at Harthill service station last week when a chap in a van wound his window down and shouted: "Haw Big Man - good luck with the comedy!"
When Charan asked him how he knew he was taking to the stage, the white driver of the van held up a copy of Eastern Eye, the Asian weekly newspaper, which had a story about his comedy attempt.
Charan is kicking himself for not asking the chap why he was reading Eastern Eye instead of one of the more lurid tabloids associated with van drivers. He reckons it could have given him material for his comedy debut.
Out of her shell READER Mary Dixon tells us that Republican vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin is the latest American politician to be dubbed a "post turtle", after her weak performances in debates and interviews. The term apparently comes from an old rancher who explained: "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle.' "You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, she doesn't know what to do while she is up there and you just wonder what kind of dumb-ass put her up there to begin with." The only fair way SURELY time for another daft old golf joke, says a reader in a Pringle sweater. Well, what about the married couple who were playing on the ninth green when the chap's wife collapsed with a groan, pleading for help?
Hubby calls 999 on his mobile, talks to a few folk, then picks up his putter to take his shot.
His prostrate wife gasps: "I'm dying over here and you're putting?"
"Don't worry, dear," he replies, "they found a doctor on the second hole and he's coming to help you."
"How long will it take him to get here?" she asks feebly.
"Not long," says her husband. "Everybody's agreed to let him play through."
