A right warmer

OUR tales of pies remind Louie Macari in Motherwell: "At the Glengarnock steelworks in the seventies, computers then filled up a room and data input units were large metal cases which generated a fair amount of heat. An engineer called out to a fault opened the lid to discover a paper bag inside with a pie in it being kept warm. He held up the bag and was about to berate the operators when the owner of the pie turned up for his lunch. Not being a match for the heavily built steelworker he just said to him, 'Your pie's ready' and handed the bag over before proceeding to investigate the fault."

Give us a break

OUR sister paper the Evening Times ran a story about a prisoner who absconded from jail being found in Cumbernauld. Steven McAvoy muses: "What's the point in escaping the jail if yir just going to go to Cumbernauld?"

Bet on it

IT was Royal Ascot over the last few days - yes, didn't The Queen look lovely - and Scott McCarthy tells us: "I'm sorry that that the fine chestnut colt Yabass faded at the finish of the Queen's Vase at Royal Ascot. I'd love to imagine punters in bookies' shops all over Glasgow shouting at the screens, 'Come on Yabass!'. Congratulations to the owners though for sneaking the name under the British Horseracing Authority's radar."

Slipped disc

STV reporter Mike Edwards, who has just published his memoir The Road Home, was invited to Corsehill Primary in Kilwinning to speak to pupils about his career in the media. He told them that while still a schoolboy in Inverness during the 1980s, he was commissioned to cover amateur league football for the local newspaper and was paid handsomely, by the standards of the day, to do so. When he said that this meant he had plenty of cash to buy records, he looked up and saw a sea of blank faces belonging to kids of the download generation. Then one little lad broke the silence with: "Is that because you didn’t like reading The Sun?"

Thought not

TALKING about ageing, a Pollokshields reader tells us: "The computer constantly tells me to protect my password. I find at my age all my passwords are protected by amnesia."

Your funeral

CONGRATULATIONS to David Keat at the Brander Lodge Hotel near Oban who got himself lots of publicity by saying he would serve burgers coated in a midge dressing, It reminds us of the English tourist who was complaining about being bitten by midges at a Scottish tearoom and a customer advising her that she should try midge nets which were sold in the shop next door. "Are they difficult to catch?" she asked.

And the midges surrounding the players at the World Cup remind us of the Ayrshire Junior football trainer who told his players similarly bothered: "Whatever you do, don't kill one - or another 10,000 will arrive for the funeral."

Fly guy

WE asked about airport stresses and arguments, and Russell Smith in Kilbrinie says: "Some years ago a friend, delighted at booking a Ryanair flight to Dublin online for peanuts, turned up at Glasgow airport with his wife and discovered that he had booked only one ticket and had to stump up around £180 for his good lady." So, expensive and an unhappy wife. A nae luck award for him.

Bruising encounter

GOOD win for England yesterday although the Panama players were a bit on the rough side. As Barney Ronay put it: "Wanted to like Panama. But they were playing like the bloke you don't invite back to midweek seven-a-side."