Cell phone
THE Diary is looking forward to this evening’s BBC4 broadcast of the classic Peter McDougall drama, Just a Boys’ Game, a play so gritty it should be sprinkled on icy roads this winter.
Peter is a rather rugged fellow himself. We recall the time the Glasgow writer enjoyed a lengthy drinking session with old chum Billy Connolly, which culminated with Billy inside a phone box unable to figure out where the door was.
The confused comedian eventually phoned his agent to come and release him. Two conclusions can be deduced from this.
1) Boozing with Peter McDougall is a discombobulating experience.
2) Showbiz agents really do earn their 15 per cent cut.
No fretting
AND on a related subject... The residents of Cathcart have been getting excited about a guitar that has magically appeared inside a phone booth on the Clarkston Road. Covetous locals have thought about nabbing the instrument, but, alas, it has no strings.
Though surely it would still make an excellent present this Christmas for any aspiring musician wanting to strum that classic hit, The Sound of Silence.
Sparkling repartee
ATTEMPTING to get served in a pub these days is as foolhardy a quest as searching for a MAGA baseball cap on Joe Biden’s hatstand.
Luckily the doors to the Diary’s virtual hostelry remain enticingly ajar as we continue to share bar room badinage from those satisfyingly sozzled days of yore.
Maggie Craig recalls visiting a watering hole in Coatbridge in the early 1990s and daringly asking the barman for a glass of sparkling mineral water.
The gent in question gave our reader a glare of stern contempt, quickly followed by the words: “No’ in Coatbridge, hen.”
Sluggish
PHILOSOPHICAL musings from reader Neil O’Brien, who says: “Maybe slugs are just divorced snails whose partner got the house.”
Sea change
A CHAP was overheard in a Glasgow cafe boasting about his dramatic career change. Having joined the merchant navy for five years, he had travelled to Bermuda, Australia and Mexico before realising there was something else he should be doing.
Or as he explained it to the young lady he was with: “It was the excitement of accountancy that drew me in.”
Bloke break
ON a bus to Bearsden, reader Jane Ferns heard one young woman say to her friend: “I always think the menopause should be called ‘put men on pause’, which is why I’m actually rather looking forward to it.”
Mind Your language
GRAMMATICALLY grumpy reader Jenny Hillier says: “I have a love-hate relationship with hyphenated phrases.”
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