OH my goodness, friends can be a bit sarky, can't they? A Glasgow reader was in town at the sales yesterday when she heard a young woman tell her pal: "I'm thinking of buying a treadmill. Do you think they'll let me try it out first?"

"What are you going to do?" replied her pal, "Ask them if you can bring your laundry in and hang damp clothes over it?"

WELL, eaten your fill of chocolates over the past few days? As one reader put it: "Someone gave my mother a box of Celebrations for Christmas. Or a box of Bountys, as I like to call it, if you arrive two hours after it has been opened."

SOMEONE we suspect who is on the left of the political divide phones to tell us after watching the TV news: "How long will it be until David Cameron's answer to the problems is to redefine how floods are measured. After all, it worked for unemployment and child poverty."

SCOTTISH politics, and reader Bruce Skivington comments: "The delegation to Iran seems to have caused a bit of a stir. Having talks with a country that might be an oil provider but has fundamental religious disagreements and is virtually a one-party state where the leadership clamps down on any dissent among its followers.

"What on earth were the Iranians thinking about?"

TALKING of the Scots politicians going to Iran, one of them, Glasgow Anniesland MSP Bill Kidd commented on social media: "Very productive visit to Iran to promote Scottish business." Within minutes broadcaster Muriel Gray replied: "Possibly try Anniesland next Bill when you have a mo? You might notice all the shops are now bookies or charity stores."

She was making a good point perhaps, until someone else replied: "I used to live there before Muriel moved in and brought the area down."

WE check our e-mails and a reader passes on: "I've just applied superglue instead of lip balm, but don't ask me why.

"My lips are sealed."

A HERALD story about the old Odeon cinema on Renfield Street reminds Jim Slavin: "As a pupil at Greenock High School in 1963, I was persuaded, against my better judgement, to attend a concert headlined by Roy Orbison at the Odeon. I had never heard of the supporting group and within 15 minutes of them starting their act which consisted of very loud music and surrounded by hordes of screaming females, I exited the cinema, telling my school mates that they would find me in a nearby palace of refreshment, known as the Red Lion, behind the Odeon in West Nile Street.

"I never got to like The Beatles, but I happily spent the next 52 years in bars."

A COLLEAGUE wanders over to wish us a Merry Christmas and then adds when he thinks he has our attention: "My wife says she is leaving me because of my addiction to playing Fantasy Football, but in my defence...I have Smalling, Kolarov, Bellerin, Alderweireld and Kompany."

ALL sorts of interesting links that your friends send you on social media. As reader Margie Dobson says: "I did one of those Facebook 'What was the No. 1 song on your birthday?' searches. It came up with 'Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby'. Was there a mix-up at the hospital?"