Suspicious mind

THERE'S been a lot of Billy Connolly on the telly recently. Says reader Brian Higgins: "After watching the excellent Billy Connolly programme on BBC2, it took me back to the time I had Billy in my taxi. He was making a film in Glasgow and was quietly lost in his own thoughts when I noticed a car beside me with a sticker proclaiming, 'I met Elvis in Tesco'. When I groaned at this in dismay, the Big Yin roused, and on reading the sticker, said profoundly, 'Poor Elvis, they'll no let him die'."

Picture this

APOLOGIES for attributing the song Please Release Me to Tom Jones and not Engelbert Humperdinck in the Diary this week – I blame the distractions of the New Year festivities. It does though remind me of a colleague who interviewed Engelbert in Glasgow some years ago. My old chum took him to a bar where Engelbert began handing out autographed photos to other customers. The photo, it must be admitted, had been taken some years earlier, judging by the youthful mien.

One regular accepted the signed picture with a, "Thanks very much, Mr Engelbert", looked at it then added: "That yer boy is it?"

On a roll

IT must have been a slow news day as some media outlets were running a story about food shop Greggs launching a vegan sausage roll. As a reader phones to tells us: "They call it a vegan sausage roll as there is no meat in it. Have you ever tried a normal Greggs sausage roll? Trust me, they could just call the new one a sausage roll."

Food for thought

WELL, any of you trying out a new diet? We simply pass on the comment by female American magazine writer Jamie Kenney who declared: "I'm amazed by people who lose weight without exercise. When I exercise nothing happens because my DNA still thinks I'm a European peasant. So it's like, 'Oh! Are we running from the English again, lass? Dinnae ye worry: we'll keep ye plump as a partridge to outlast the murderous b*******!'"

Wears it well

GROWING old continued. Says a Pollokshields reader: "I've reached the point where my clothes and my children are about the same age."

Clutching at straws

WE mentioned local dialogue that must confuse visitors, and Bill Brown in Dumfries tells us: "Overheard in a Lockerbie ironmongers years ago when a group of English visitors were confused by a local farmer's lad who was looking for something to protect his breathing when working with dust flying around when turning straw in the field. 'Have you ocht in the waey o' anythin' for stoor?' he asked."

Splashing out

ONE for film fans as Graeme Stewart points out: "It's just occurred to me that we are now in 2019, the year that the classic movie, Blade Runner is set. We might not have flying cars, replicants, or off-world colonies, but we've definitely got the p*** weather!"

Rank

A LONDON reader venturing out to his local for the first time this year saw on the pub's telly the news report about tennis star Andy Murray losing in Australia, and a toper further up the bar opined: "Andy Murray really is Scottish now – his ranking has fallen to 240th in the world, the same as the Scottish football team."