The full Monty

AS well as containing numerous examples of morbid humour, our Journal of the Plague Year is a very useful tomb, sorry, tome. For instance, it includes instructions on how to behave during a lockdown. In this particular chapter, written by David Donaldson, people are advised to sing from their tenement windows, much like our Italian friends are now doing.

But what to sing? You Can’t Always Get What You Want by the Rolling Stones would be grimly accurate, points out David, who must have taken a stroll round a supermarket recently. He also suggests: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by the Monty Python gang.

Though, of course, we’d have to figure out what the "bright side actually is. Being trapped indoors allows us to spend more quality time with our hand sanitiser and toilet roll collection, perhaps?

Deep question

LIMMY was a recent guest on Ireland’s popular Blindboy Podcast. Before the interview, fans were asked if they had any questions for the Glasgow comedy writer and performer. One erudite fellow had this to say: “German playwright Bertolt Brecht had the idea that breaking the fourth wall alienates the audience. Does Limmy feel the same way?”

A second chap, going by the name of Big Stevie, intimated that he wasn’t quite so concerned about developments in modern theatrical theory. Getting in touch with the podcast, he said: “Can you ask Limmy if he knows a good plasterer and decorator in Glasgow or Clydebank? Cheers.”

Balls up

REMEMBER football? That sport they used to play on Saturday afternoons? We do, too. For a while we’ve also been recalling memorable comments made by fans. One reader, attending a typical Premiership match, heard a bloke yell: “For f***sake ref, yer ruining a bad game.”

Drying up

BEING a Hollywood performer usually means everyone on the planet is jealous of you, especially all those non-Hollywood types who don’t have their own palm tree, pool and free pass to the pizazz party lifestyle.

But in these strange times La La Land has become Nah, Nah… Banned. At least where the public imbibing of booze is concerned. And that doesn’t sit well with Glasgow actress Elle Newlands, who’s based in Hollywood.

“As a Scottish person, the closing of all bars in California is basically traumatic,” she whimpers, adding in a heartfelt (though slightly overacted) way: “I ask that you pray for me and my kind at this difficult time.”

Bum deal

“I was considering whether to join in the panic-buying of toilet rolls, ” says Hugh Steele from Cumbernauld, “but in the end decided not to bother my a**e.”

Stuckism

DAFT joke time. Don Miller says he’s sure his wife has been smearing glue on his weapons collection. “She denies it,” says Don, “but I’m sticking to my guns.”

Read more: Jimmy Logan’s Metropole Theatre, 1971 and 1981