Shaky excuse

DIPPY, the Natural History Museum's model of a dinosaur skeleton, is on temporary display at Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow, and the gallery had its busiest weekend for over a decade. A Newton Mearns reader told us recently that he was fed up with his teenage daughter leaving half-empty glasses of water and cola around the house and challenged her on it. His daughter, clearly a fan of the film Jurassic Park, told him, rather cleverly it has to be said: "It's to warn us of dinosaurs approaching."

In a fix

MIND you, talking of daughters, a reader heard a young woman on the train into town tell her pal: "Looking back, my life started going downhill when I had to look after my car maintenance instead of my dad doing it."

Gingerly speaking

THE utterly pompous TV presenter Piers Morgan described young Green MSP Ross Greer as a "thick ginger turd" as he took exception to Ross criticising his hero Winston Churchill. Someone who agreed with Piers wrote on social media: "This is the problem with politics, how does somebody like Ross, a 21-year-old with no life experience, who sits at his computer googling Sir Winston Churchill and drinking Irn-Bru become a representative of the people?" Ross merely replied: "Unlike my thoughts on Churchill, this will cost me votes...I don't like Irn-Bru."

And journalist Kieran Andrews pointed out: "I have one fact, and one fact only, to add to the Churchill/Ross Greer debate. Tee-total Edwin Scrymgeour defeated Winston Churchill in Dundee in 1922. Scrymgeour is the only candidate to be elected to the Commons on a prohibitionist ticket. To represent Dundee."

Bit of a change

THE Herald reported that ATMs are disappearing from our High Streets at an alarming rate. I remember our old chum Tom Shields telling readers about a beggar who stood at the ATM outside Alldays in Great Western Road who did not look a well man, ragged, red-eyed, shivering and shaking. He held out his hand to a well-dressed customer with his usual request for ''spare change''. The man replied: ''I don't give money to beggars. Why don't you sell The Big Issue?'' to which the beggar replied: ''I regard this as more of a challenge.'' The bloke gave him a quid.

Ring to it

A MARRIED woman, Darla, tells us: "I wear a wedding ring, but my husband does not. Sometimes I wonder if strangers think I’m having the most miserable affair ever."

Milking it

A SOUTH side reader tells us that the Bungalow Cafe, which has been on Victoria Road in Govanhill for generations, has closed. It seems it's being turned into a pizza place. Anyway, folk who know the cafe will be wondering what has happened to the poster in the window advertising Cadbury's Chocolate, dating back to the war years, which had the warning "Supplies are restricted. Milk, cocoa & sugar are rationed." A political observer explains to us: "The way Brexit is going, the new owners will be able to put the poster back as it might become factual again very soon."

Labouring the point

LABOUR MP Fiona Onasanya has been jailed for lying in court to avoid a speeding ticket. As weary Westminster reporter Tom Peck put it: "Three months jail for Fiona Onasanya. So she will not be coming to the House of Commons until at least the end of April. Purely on a personal note, I'm quite jealous."

Coining it in

TODAY'S piece of whimsy comes from Neil who says: "I've got a hole in my pocket. No change there then."