Watch it

OUR picture of the hairdresser who also sold wine reminds Donald Gillies: "The well-known Mally Arms on Glasgow's Eglinton Street, now pulled down, boasted a stuffed crocodile on the gantry but, even more impressively, served as a watch repairer. Unkind observers thought it might be related to so many of the clientele having done, or about to do, time."

Screamer

THE DIARY tales of Sauchiehall Street remind retired journalist Jim Davis: "The Daily Record news desk received a phone call from the London-based press officer for the wonderfully eccentric Screaming Lord Sutch. He was extending an invite to a drinks party in Glasgow to promote the Screamer's latest bid to become an MP. He named the venue which, hard to believe, I didn't recognise, so I asked for the location. He said, 'Sutchiehall Street! Where else?'

Where else indeed."

What a night

WE mentioned new students heading off to uni. A reader tells us about his son's Freshers Week when he and his new pals in the student flat went out on the town. He tells us: "As they finally surfaced the next day, the girl student in their flat came out her room and asked them what their night had been like. They were a bit puzzled as she had been with them but she was adamant she had had a night in. It was only when someone showed pictures from his phone of her in the bar that she finally accepted she had been out."

Any more tales of starting uni?

Snap

TALKING of education, Robert Knop declares: "People on Facebook are posting throwback photos to their first days of school, and I’m like, 'I was a third child. My parents only have about 10 photos from my entire childhood, maybe 11 tops.”

Wake-up call

THE panto at the Palace Theatre in Kilmarnock this year is Sleeping Beauty. A reader takes issue with the basic premise of the fairy tale and argues: "It's total rubbish. Name me a single woman who is delighted when you wake her up from a nap."

His pitch

WELL done, Scotland, beating Albania with some style at Hamden the other night, despite the many doubters. Before the game Albania trained at the nearby ground of Pollok Juniors where Albania manager Christian Panucci, the former Italian footballer who played for both Milan and Real Madrid, agreed to have his picture taken at the tidy but small Pollok ground holding up a Pollok FC scarf. The junior side put the picture up on social media and declared: "Despite plying his trade at the San Siro and Bernabéu, Albania manager Christian Panucci said that it was a dream come true to finally make it to Newlandsfield today.

"Our Italian isn’t great, right enough..."

Got the message

DIVIDED by a common language, continued. A reader tells us that he knew "going for the messages" was a Scottish phrase so he asked his English-born wife if she was familiar with the term. She said yes, which impressed him, until she added: "My parents' cleaning lady used to say it."

Revved up

WE asked for your embarrassing moments and a reader confides: "A good few years ago our church appointed a new minister, and I guessed that we were not all that different in age. When he called on us we chatted away quite comfortably, and I told him that we were originally from Clydebank. I told him how the Clydebank Blitz had affected me, and I asked if he had been affected by it at all. There was a rather lengthy pause before he said, 'I wasn’t actually born till a bit later than that'. I still remember my mortifying embarrassment."