At the Edinburgh Fringe, comedian Lloyd Langford noticed on the first night of his Underbelly show, Not A Lover, Not A Fighter, that a couple had brought their 11-week-old baby with them.

It was one of the few times in his career, he tells us, that he was grateful that a member of the audience slept through his show, and he also reckons that they'd wet themselves at least once during his joketelling.

Getting shirty Rubbing it in? Celtic? Surely not. But we do notice that the day after Rangers got papped oot of Europe, Celtic's online shop immediately e-mailed Celtic fans with the offer: "To celebrate the fact that Celtic are Scotland's only Champions League representative this season, we are giving away a free Champions League Star Ball Badge worth £5 when you order any new home or away shirt!"

Ouch.

And Leonard Bisset in Glasgow tells us about a Rangers fan going in to a southside newsagent yesterday to buy his copy of Rangers News.

"Would you like me to put that in a bag for you?" asked the newsagent, innocently or otherwise.

Buyer beware "Store staff are getting ruder," opined the chap in the pub the other night.

"I was in my local record store and asked if they had anything by The Doors.

"The guy behind the counter said, Sure. A fat security guard and a Big Issue seller'."

Miss taken With the new school term only days away, Margaret Thomson in Kilmacolm recalls a first in-service day of the new term when the head teacher announced a new member of staff was starting.

Into the staff-room burst a fifty-something lady with flowing skirts and hair who was asked by the heidie: "Is it Miss or Mrs?"

"It is miss. As yet, I am an unplucked peach," she simpered.

Alas, she just lasted a year.

Left on the shelf Our tale about company stores reminds Ken Gemmell of working in a Lanarkshire paper company where he asked the head storeman if they used the Fifo system of stock control - first in, first out.

"Naw son," he replied. "We use the Fish system - first in, still here."

High stakes Playing the card game bridge can be a serious business. We hear about one international level player in Glasgow who was badgered to take his sister along as a partner to his bridge club after she had learned the rudiments of the game.

But after making mistake after mistake, she told him cheerily: "I'm going to go home later and kill myself."

Barely looking up from his cards he replied: "Don't wait."

Failure to qualify Our stories of the dancin' remind Iain Ferguson of graduating from Strathclyde Yooni some time ago and, thinking it would impress a girl at the Stag Hotel in Wishaw on a Friday night, told her he was a BSc.

When she asked what that was, and he explained, she told him she was an MO. Not being familiar with that particular qualification he had to ask: "An MO?"

"Aye," she replied, "a Machine Operator."

Nessie camera shy WE read in the book In Fact, a collection of strange statistics, that the sightings of the Loch Ness Monster dropped to two last year, compared to being consistently in the high teens every year a decade ago.

The drop is put down to the growth in camera phones, as anyone who makes such a claim now without producing a picture would be regarded with suspicion.

And among the worrying facts in the book is that the average British commute is an hour and five minutes, compared to 35 minutes in 2003, and the Scottish suicide rate is almost double that of England.

On the plus side, the number of British adults without teeth has fallen from a third in 1971 to just 12%.