Tyresome

GOOD to see presenter Stephen Jardine being praised for his calm manner while in charge of BBC Scotland's new Debate Night programme. We saw the man in action years ago when he presented the Scottish Business Awards in Glasgow and there was much cheering when he announced an award for tyre company Kwik-Fit. Waiting for the noise to die down, Stephen merely announced: "So it's correct. You can't get louder than a Kwik-Fit fitter."

Crashed

THE news from Vietnam is that the Donald Trump/ Kim Jong-un summit was cut short after the countries failed to agree. As Kathy Hays explains: "I guess Trump is now going to call himself a war hero because he was shot down in Hanoi."

Deal with it

TODAY'S musing on the tortured Brexit negotiations comes from quiz show host Richard Osman who says: "When we launched Deal Or No Deal in 2005, I remember a really long conversation we had about maybe changing the title, because 'no deal' isn’t an expression anyone has ever used.”

Rings a bell

TALKING of Brexit, Wetherspoons' boss Tim Martin, one of the few members of the business community in favour of leaving the EU, is touring the country explaining his views at specially arranged meetings in his pubs. He can be a smooth talker. A Diary reader once met him in Glasgow's Esquire House, which had been bought by "Spoons" and he jokingly asked Tim why the pub's toilets, through five doors and down a flight of stairs, were so far from the bar. Instead of just shrugging him off, Tim went into an explanation that in the old days Glasgow bus conductors lived longer than drivers because they had to run up and down stairs all day. ''So really,'' he continued, ''I'm doing the punters a favour by keeping them healthy.''

THOSE WERE THE DAYS - 1944: ATS on parade amid encouraging news from the front-line

Such and such

OUR tales of headteachers wanting to be addressed as "Sir" by classes reminded Bob Byiers: "A new teacher meeting his class for the first time announced, 'My name is Mr McLeod and I wish to be known as such'. No prizes for guessing what his pupils called him from then on."

Bossing it

CELTIC fans are of course still animated about the departure of manager Brendan Rodgers and who should take over from him at the end of the season. As Kilmarnock fan David Rennie explains: "Celtic fans, 'We should go for Kilmarnock's Steve Clarke'. Steve Clarke, 'I'm not interested in the Celtic job'. Celtic fans, 'Steve Clarke doesn't have what it takes to manage Celtic'."

He calls it

GROWING old, continued. A rather poignant observation from Alan Barlow in Paisley who observes: "Growing old is when you only use your mobile to call a taxi to take you home from the pub, or to find your wife in the supermarket, or when you are sitting in the house waiting for your landline to ring regretting that you blocked all those nuisance calls"

Flattened

WE asked about strict parents and Margaret Forbes in Kilmalcolm reminisces: "When I was 20 in 1970, I suggested to my mother that I would like to share a flat with my best friend, Linda. My mother went ballistic, shrieking at me, 'Is this the gratitude I get for bringing you up for 20 years?' Needless to say I stayed at home till I got married."

Any other examples?