Use your loaf

It has been announced that TV show Life on Mars will return to our screens in the near future. The Diary loved the original series about a time travelling policeman who finds himself in the 1970s. We’ve even tried to emulate the formula by taking a jaunt back in time every Saturday, when we recall various classic tales, gags and comments from our archives. Such as the reader who once asked: what was the greatest thing before sliced bread?

Pontificating over names

IN the past we’ve spotted various professionals who had suspiciously appropriate names. We recall the head of religious education at BBC Wales who was called Mair Pope.

Radio silence

OVERHEARD while filing out after a bowling-club dance. First genteel lady: “Did you see the eclipse of the moon the other night?” Second genteel lady: “I didn’t actually see it but I heard it on the radio.”

Wild west wit

WE recall the slogan spotted on the side of a van belonging to an Asian-owned building company in Bradford. “You’ve used the Cowboys, Now Try the Indians.”

Load of mince

A FEW years back Strathclyde Police informed the media that ‘8000 tons of EC mince’ had been stolen from a Salvation Army warehouse in Cambuslang before it could be distributed to local OAPs. While the collective journalistic mind was attempting to cope with the concept of how anyone could purloin such a large amount of mince, the polis went on to clarify that it was in fact 8000 tins of mince that had been nicked.

Language butchered

WE once ran a series of stories about people who think in Gaelic but communicate in English, and the problems that ensue. For instance, many years ago there was an elderly lady living on the rugged outskirts of Stornoway. She had an arrangement with her butcher to send an order of meat on a weekly basis, as travelling all the way into Stornoway for a leg of lamb or two was a bit too much for her.

One week, however, she decided she didn’t need any meat, as her husband was going to slaughter a sheep for the freezer. Her telegram to the butcher was brief: “Send no meat. Donald is killing himself.”

Till tiff

SUCH was the volume of purchases by a lady at a supermarket that, while she was struggling to arrange them into tidy mountains of comestibles at the checkout, a box of cornflakes landed at her feet. On picking it up, and not knowing from which end of the conveyor belt it had escaped, she asked the girl at the till: “Was this through?” To which the girl replied, in hurt and offended tones: “Naw, it jist fell!”

Dry wit

GREAT pub observation of the past: “I wouldnae say the service is bad in this place, but you could get a drink quicker in the Betty Ford clinic.”

Elderly swinger

AN APOCRYPHAL tale we once heard that we hope is true took place in the Greenock of yesteryear and involved a local businessman of 70 who had married his young secretary. The local newspaper was said to have reported: “The groom’s gift to the bride was an antique pendant.”