Footy fatality

THE rain was doing its wet-stuff-falling-from-the-sky thing this week, and the wily citizens of Glasgow were taking counter measures by holding aloft a multitude of umbrellas. Though not everybody was playing the game.

Reader George Ward spotted one young chap swaggering along in the downpour with his hands in his pockets, while his girlfriend held an umbrella over both of them.

“I see that chivalry is dead,” said George to the chap.

The chap immediately replied: “Who’s Chivalry? Did he used to play for the Gers?”

Brought to book

DEPRESSED Diary correspondent Harvey Smith has a well-stocked library in his house. His bookcases bulge with more than two thousand volumes.

Unfortunately it isn’t just books in the bookcases. He recently discovered that an infestation of ravenous mites are munching their way through his collection. Now a hefty percentage of his tomes are in the bookworms’ tums.

“What’s really annoying,” says Harvey, “is that the bugs are clearly philistines who don’t appreciate great literature. They’ve never touched Madame Bovary, yet they gobble up everything by Jeffrey Archer.”

No Spare change

LITERARY matters, continued. Despite bookshops opening at midnight and early in the morning, there haven’t been many queues to buy Prince Harry’s moany magnum opus, Spare, where he reveals a great deal about his private life, including the illegal drugs he’s imbibed.

Says reader Julia Walker: “Clearly discerning readers still prefer Harry Potter to Harry Pothead.”

Royal remaindered?

ON the same subject… Reader Paul Murray says: “Isn’t it ironic that bookshops have so many spare copies of Spare?”

Picture this

YET again we return to the parlous state of the UK economy. (For those who don’t have a dictionary or thesaurus at hand, the definition of parlous is: we’re all skint.)

More brassic than most is reader Billy Wilson. Luckily he has a cunning plan…

“They say the camera adds ten pounds,” he says. “So I’ve started taking photos of my wallet.”

Poor politicos

WATCHING the TV news, reader Jeff Robinson turned to his wife and said: “There isn’t a politician I believe in, any more.”

His wife nodded vigorously, then said: “I know what you mean. If my oven-gloves were made of lace, I’d still trust them more than I trust this lot.”


Read more from the Diary: Did someone knock the living daylights out of Bond judges?


Rubbery ramparts

A ROMANTIC tale gone awry. Reader Philip Masterson decided to make his partner’s dream come true and arranged for them to marry in a castle. “But she wasn’t particularly impressed,” he sighs, “when we exchanged vows while bouncing around with the vicar.”