OLYMPIC champion Jessica Ennis-Hill will miss the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow because she is pregnant.
John Park in Motherwell is disappointed. As he tells us: "She pulled out despite organisers' assurances that she'd look right at home in Glasgow as a pregnant woman in a tracksuit."
If the shoe fits …
FOLK were posting their strange stories about Glasgow on the social media site Reddit with one local reminiscing: "Saw a guy get punched unconscious in the middle of the road outside a nightclub. Everyone piled around him, wondering what to do, when some lassie breaks through the crowd, saying, 'Let us through, ah know furst aid, let us through'. She kneels down next to him, unloosening his laces saying, 'Ye awright pal, ye awright, aye just stay still', and then runs off with his shoes."
Suspect the Glasgow City Marketing Bureau won't borrow this tale.
Dream on
ENJOYING the Burns Suppers? Giffnock and Newlands Synagogue in East Renfrewshire held a Burns Supper for the first time in its 75-year history. As one of the speakers put it: "I said to my wife, 'Did you ever in your wildest fantasies imagine I would speak at a Burns Supper at the Synagogue?' 'Trust me,' replied my wife, 'you're never in my wildest fantasies'."
Lighten up
IT'S good that Burns Suppers have spread around the world, but unfortunately they sometimes result in poor-taste gags about Scots. A reader was at one such gathering in England at the weekend where a speaker asked the age-old question: "How many Scotsmen does it take to change a light bulb?"
The answer he gave being: "Och! It's no that dark!" And he couldn't even pronounce 'Och" properly.
That's the spirit
WE mused about combining Burns Night with this week's Chinese New Year to make it a Chinese Burns Night. Jackie Kemp imagined someone attending a Chinese Burns Night and being asked if they wanted a whisky. "Ok, twist my arm," he would reply.
Jail bait
THE provocative signs "Pure Dead Brilliant" are being removed from Prestwick Airport as the Scottish argot was disliked and confusing. An Ayrshire reader tells us: "The marketing agency that came up with 'Pure Dead Brilliant' was also asked to come up with a slogan for Kilmarnock Jail when it opened. It's suggestion 'Gonnae No Dae That' was turned down."
Suit you to a T
DAFT independence arguments, continued. We mentioned the shopping bag with the three boxes to tick, "Aye", "Naw", and "Whit's a Referendum?" On a similar vein, a Glasgow reader saw a T-shirt with a saltire on it and "Referendum 2014" below it. There were also three boxes that could be ticked - "Yes", "No", and "Either Way We're Screwed".
Block buster
"TWELFTH wedding anniversary", said the chap in the Glasgow pub at the weekend. "Told the wife I'd take her to the cinema. Then blew it by suggesting we see Twelve Years A Slave."
Taking a shine
DEAR, oh dear. A colleague wanders over to tell us: "My mate said I was as thick as a coat of gloss. I was damned with paint phrase."
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