GOK talk
A DIARY tale about medical acronyms inspires Russell Smith to get in touch. “The most common, although not necessarily annotated, medical acronym is GOK,” says our well-informed reader. He adds that it stands for God Only Knows, which must be what hospital medics scribble on bed charts when they have no idea what is ailing the hapless soul laid out on the mattress next to the Lucozade, flowers and grapes.
Of course, the word gawk also means to stare rudely, while one of the most successful reality TV performers is a certain Gok Wan.
Surely all of the above information leads to an incontrovertible fact. At one point in time a doctor must have said to a colleague: “Let’s have a gawk at the GOK over there. Good heavens, is it Gok Wan?”
Handy virus
CORONAVIRUS update. Edinburgh comedian Liam Withnail says: “Cool that everyone's learning to wash their hands. Now we just need a disease that's spread by chewing with your mouth open, or listening to music out loud on the train.”
Payback time
A RECENT Diary anecdote about Harry Lauder’s stinginess could be taken as a slight on the Scottish people, who are often described en masse in such terms. Luckily Gordon Fisher from Stewarton is around to point out that chortle merchants from down South can be equally parsimonious.
He reminds us of a tale told by Eric Sykes, who once shared a taxi with that fez-festooned funster, Tommy Cooper. The cabbie wasn’t starstruck in the least. In fact, he was rather rude to his passengers.
At the end of the journey, Cooper informed Sykes he would take care of the fare. Exiting the cab, the madcap magician placed his hand in the driver's shirt pocket and told him to get a drink later.
As the cabbie drove off, a rather irate Sykes said: "What on earth did you give him for a drink?" Cooper guffawed, then replied with a familiar shimmy of the shoulders.
"A teabag," he said.
Kid’s stuff
THE Prime Minister is a busy man. Perhaps even too busy to name the child he’s expecting with girlfriend Carrie Symonds. Luckily John King has given the matter some thought. “Boris has fathered many children, with various women,” says our reader. “So it must be hard to keep track. But if he calls the new addition to his family Hey You, there shouldn’t be any confusion.”
Weather, or not
THINKING about all the storms we’ve had to endure, Daniel McColgan suddenly realised they’re generally forecast for the weekend. “My question is this,” says our bamboozled correspondent. “How do storms know when it’s the weekend?”
Woolly tale
NEWS just in of the Fido variety. Roderick Archibald Young says the world's most expensive sheep dog just sold for £18,900. “That’s nineteen thousand, if you round it up,” he adds.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel