Healthy humour
BODY Coach Joe Wicks has been live-streaming exercise classes to help cooped-up kids keep fit. Like Jumpin’ Joe, the Diary believes in exercise, especially the type involving waddling to the fridge to grab gobbletastic goodies. We also promote mental exercise, and have self-labelled ourselves the ‘Story Coach’ because of our (not quite live) stream of silly tales. Including the following classic yarns, such as the reader who asked why water biscuits are so dry?
Know your onions
IN Dundee there was a famous costermonger who was regularly heard to cry: “Onions! Genuine Spanish onions! Nane o’ yer foreign muck here!”
Cutting comment
A CHIC Murray story, now, to cheer you up. A neighbour once asked if he could use Chic’s lawnmower. “Certainly,” came the reply, “but please don’t take it out of my garden.”
Booby prize
WE heard of one Glasgow infant who appeared to enjoy his holidays in the south of France. His mother was making a belated attempt to wean the toddler off the breast. As we said, the wee lad had a great time. His mother? Not so much. Spending, as she did, much time prising her hungry son off a number of very surprised women on the topless beach.
England’s dreaming
THE obituary in the Daily Telegraph of Lt-Col Richard Broad told of his derring-do when his regiment was surrounded by tanks at St Valery in France in June 1940. Lt-Col Broad and some of his chaps made a break for it. The obituary told how ‘the Englishmen, having chanced upon a timber yard, built a raft’ to cross the River Seine. And how ‘the Englishmen’ were indebted to a French lady who helped them escape. And to which regiment did these Englishmen belong? None other than the Seaforth Highlanders.
Spicy new name
RUGBY has its moments of merriment. We recall when a local restaurant was negotiating to sponsor Irvine RFC. The snag was that the restaurateur wanted the name of his establishment to be incorporated into the name of the club. The Irvine committee had to decline on the grounds that they could not see the SRU being too pleased with such scorelines as: ‘Watsonians 6, The Gulab Tandoori Irvine RFC 11.’
Cere-moany
FROM Cunninghame District Council we heard the story of a councillor who had been deputed to go to London to accept an award from the British Tourist Authority. The gong was to be handed out by a royal personage at a lavish ceremony in a hotel in the Strand. The tribune of the people was duly given his air tickets, hotel voucher and invitation. Reading the words ‘7pm for 7.15pm’ on this last document, the councillor asked a council official: “Are you sure we should be going to this? It seems an awful expense just for 15 minutes.”
Name blame game
ANOTHER tale of footy fans being fiendish. Stuart Slater, Celtic’s goal-shy player from the 1990s became known to fans as Jigsaw. Why? Because he fell apart when he got into the box.
Flight of fancy
WE end with a joke that’s perfect to tell the kids. “Why is Peter Pan always flying?” a reader once asked. The answer being: “Because he Neverlands.”
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