Trash talk

MATT Winning is a Scottish environmental economist and climate change comedian. And, yes, apparently you can be all those things at once. He’s also a friendly chap who has started talking to his bins. The Diary is left to speculate over what those chats consist of. Perhaps Matt says, with a flirtatious twinkle in his eye: “Bin here long?” Or maybe, if a bin is being intransigent and rebuffing his every conversational gambit, Matt bitterly snorts: “Refuse to talk, eh?”

(In)significant discovery

PERUSING an ancient tome, John Murphy from Bathgate stumbled across a word he had never seen or heard before. That word was "dandiprat". After John had spent a significant amount of time and effort researching the word (that’s right, he Googled it) our reader discovered its definition was "a young or insignificant person".

With a certain amount of pride, John says: “I’m relieved to discover I’m not a dandiprat. I may be insignificant, but it’s a long time since I was young.”

Inside joke

IRRATIONAL hatred is terrible. Luckily Joanna Whelan has good reason to despise Russian Babushka dolls. “They’re just so full of themselves,” she says.

Dublin Dabbling

SOME people don’t like reading books. Which is no big deal. (As long as you read a certain prestigious and entertaining broadsheet, you’re okay with us.) However, Jenny Parker from Newton Mearns once belonged to a book club where a member kept dodging her duties. She clearly wasn’t even glancing at the volumes she was meant to read. One week, the book under discussion was James Joyce’s Dubliners. When the roguish non-reader was asked to summarise its contents, she responded: “Well… it’s set in Dublin… and it’s about the people who live there. You know. Dubliners.”

Daze over days

ON social media comedian Limmy channels the thoughts of a befuddled nation when he says: “Please help settle a bet for me. What day is it tomorrow? Saturday or Wednesday?” One fan responds with the perfect answer: “Half past May.”

Woolly tale

HAVING bought a jumper recently Lisa Price was disappointed that it kept picking up static electricity, so she took it back to the store. “They gave me another one,” says Lisa. “Free of charge.”

Top torpor

OVERECOME with ennui, reader Stan Ruddock has arrived at a new definition of boredom. “It’s when you’ve finished filling in the white squares on the crossword puzzle and you start to think it might be worth your while filling in the black squares, too.”

Corsear

DAFT joke time. “How much does an American pirate charge to pierce ears?” asks Mike Sullivan. The answer is: “A buck an ear.”