NEXT month is the 10th anniversary of the death of country singer Johnny Cash, whose appearances always sold out when he came to Scotland.
In fact, he was once presented with a trophy from the Glasgow Apollo to acknowledge record ticket sales. The moment was only slightly dented when the Glasgow hotel Johnny was staying in later phoned the Apollo to say that they had found the trophy when they were cleaning the room after the great man had checked out, and would the Apollo want it back?
Debit debate
TALKING of cash, which we were, sort of, a reader was in a Glasgow bar when a chap was paying his bill for food and drink with a debit card. "Do you do cash back?" he asked. "Yes," said the barmaid.
"Well any chance of getting the fifty quid back I spent here on drink last Friday? The wife went mental when she found out."
First Godfather
OUR mention of Edinburgh's potentially pregnant panda reminds Jackie Kemp of being at the Edinburgh Book Festival when Ruth Wishart introduced First Minister Alex Salmond as godfather to the expected panda cub.
"There does seem to be a bit of a resemblance," says Jackie.
From Bard to verse
WE mentioned the Edinburgh tram operators considering displaying poetry at the tram stops. Russell Smith in Kilbirnie suggests Robert Burns: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley."
However if it is expanded from poetry to music, Russell puts forward Tammy Wynette's country classic - Stand By Your Tram.
Any more?
Dog gone
THE story of Celtic's European opponents Shakhter Karagandy slaughtering a sheep before games reminds Jim Brady of when he worked in Lesotho in Southern Africa, His local football team was nicknamed the dog eaters. It seems the local businessman who owned the side would slaughter a cow to celebrate a victory, but after a string of defeats he threatened to bring them a dog instead.
They were known as the dog eaters, even though they had declined such a repast, ever since.
Simple pleasures
A GLASGOW reader heard a young girl ask her dad what life was like before Facebook and the internet. "In those days," he replied, "you could just forget that someone existed. It was great."
Doctor Wha?
A PIECE of Doctor Who whimsy from Alan McGinley after it was announced that Scots actor Peter Capaldi would be taking over in the police box. Says Alan: "I was winding up my youngest daughter, who is a big Doctor Who fan, by telling her: 'If the new Doctor is Scottish, surely his place of origin would no longer be Gallifrey but Gallimaufry? It was met with a look of disdain."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article