Herald Diary: Underground humour

Chips are down

A REMINISCING reader once told us: "As a student in the seventies I used the 'shoogly' every day. The late-night trains had a conductor who, summer and winter, wore an ankle-length overcoat with his whistle attached to a chain that reached the floor. He would wander up and down the carriage helping himself to chips from passengers' carry-out suppers, so presumably offsetting his wages by never having to eat at home.”

Looking back

WE recall an author writing a tour guide to Glasgow explaining that he took the Subway from the town to Partick but nodded off and came to at Govan. As he wrote: "Govan is one of the larger stations and has an entrance either end of each platform. As the train pulled into the station I noted a train pulling into the opposite platform. I jumped off, ran up and down the stairs and just caught the closing doors of the train.

"Looking round I realised I had run down the wrong stairs and got back on the same train.”

Move on up

A READER once heard the Tannoy announcement on a packed train at Hillhead: "Could passengers please move up the carriage?'' When no one moved this was followed by an even more deadpan announcement: "Could passengers please assist the passengers who are deaf to move up the carriage?’'

This was perhaps topped by a Bearsden reader on the New York Underground who heard the conductor trying to cajole passengers to move up the train: "Will all the beautiful, smart people please move up the carriageway, and all the ugly, stupid people remain at the doors.”

Budding comedian

YOU can just imagine... a reader was on a packed Subway on a Saturday afternoon full of Rangers fans going to Ibrox. At West Street a solitary woman with weans and shopping pushed her way on. Said our reader: "She looks around, and says, 'Is there a match on today?' 'Naw, missus, there's a flooer show at Bellahouston Park'."

Gulp

OK, I admit you have to be a bit long in the tooth to remember the old Subway before it was modernised, but for those who do here is the best description of its unique smell given to us by a reader: "Warm and slightly stale, a sweet and musty mixture of fag and pipe smoke, vinegar in newsprint chip-pokes, damp and decaying brickwork, Brylcreem, and Alberto VO5, all cut through with the acrid electric smell of hot insulation and burnt carbon.'' Now that's nostalgia.

All lit up

SWEET story told by stand-up Kevin Bridges who did his first gig as a 17-year-old at The Stand comedy club in Glasgow's west end. Kevin needed an adult with him as he was under 18, so his dad went along, and parked near the Subway station. To take Kevin's mind off his first gig, he pointed over at the Kelvin Bridge illuminated sign and said: "There, your name up in lights already!”

What goes around

WHEN we did stories on nicknames, a reader told us: "In the factory where I worked there was a supervisor whose nickname was Subway - due to the fact that he came round every ten minutes, to check up that you were working.”