Panda to your Every Desire (4 page)

SOMEONE not winning any gallantry awards was the best man at a wedding who telephoned the office that produced a road safety poster plastered on the rear of Edinburgh buses.

The caller explained that the poster featured a street scene containing the bride’s house. He asked if he could get a copy of the poster, then added: “I want to say in my speech that every time I see the bride she always reminds me of the back of a bus.”

A CHAP in the pub the other night declared: “The wife says we would have less arguments if I wasn’t so pedantic.”

He added: “So I told her that surely she meant ‘fewer’.”

“THE GIRLFRIEND,” said the chap in the pub, “was constantly nagging me about getting married, so to shut her up I said we could have a summer wedding.”

“July?” asked his mate.

“Of course I did,” the chap replied.

WE DON’T know how his relationship is faring, but a chap was overheard by a reader in a Glasgow pub declaring on the first of April: “April Fool’s Day is great.”

He then added: “My girlfriend totally believes I’m on my way to collect her at the airport.”

ON MOTHER’S DAY a chap in Holytown, Lanarkshire, was heard telling his mates: “I gave the wife a real treat for Mother’s Day – I allowed her to use the TV remote for ten minutes.”

TRYING to think of something interesting to tell his mates, the chap in the pub announced: “My new girlfriend once went out with a professional clown.”

“I guess you’ve got some pretty big shoes to fill,” a pal replied.

WE MENTIONED that misogyny was still rife in Scotland. A reader tells us of being in a Motherwell bar the other week when a chap announced: “I complimented my wife on having an hour-glass figure.”

He then added: “I didn’t tell her it was because all the weight is slowly moving to the bottom.”

THE BAD weather brings out the caring side in us. Alistair Magill passed an elderly couple tottering into East Kilbride shopping centre. “I was impressed,” he said, “to see the husband taking his wife’s arm in his, as the ground was slippery with the new snow.

“Only when I got closer did I hear him say nice and clearly, ‘Now if you fall, let go of me, as you’re no taking me wi’ ye.’

“Chivalry and wedded bliss.”

“I’M WORRIED that the wife is losing her mind,” said the chap in the golf club bar the other night.

“She keeps on telling me that she’s talking to a brick wall.”

“THE WIFE and I were talking about making wills,” said the chap in the pub. “I told her I would leave everything to her.”

He added: “She told me, ‘You already do, you lazy so-and-so.”’

MEN: not always the cleverest of people. A reader heard a young chap in a Glasgow pub being told by a female friend that she didn’t think his pal liked her. Seemingly, popularity matters to some women. Anyway, what our reader enjoyed was the chap’s reply: “That’s not true. In fact, he was actually defending you the other day when I was slagging you off.”

MOST folk went back to work in early January after what can be a stressful time at home. Bruce Skivington tells us about having a house full of visitors when the lady of the house ranted about someone using the good towel, which she was trying to keep nice for guests in the bathroom.

When Bruce asked the family what was wrong, he was told that mother had “irritable towel syndrome”.

A HYNDLAND reader tells us his wife announced that, to try to give herself an incentive to lose weight, she would treat herself to a new pair of shoes for every 10lbs she lost.

He now realises that replying: “That’s a lot of new shoes,” wasn’t the encouragement she was looking for.

A HELENSBURGH reader, out for a walk with his wife, drew her attention to a couple holding hands on the promenade and remarked: “They look like a happily married couple.”

He was surprised when she replied: “You can’t be so certain. After all, they might be saying the same about us.”

A READER overhears a group of women in the West End discussing their sex lives. “Does your husband ever send you saucy texts?” asked one.

After thinking, one replied: “He did once text to remind me to get Heinz ketchup on the way home.”

A RENFREWSHIRE reader discovered how complicated courting has become these days when he heard two girls at a multi-screen cinema excitedly discussing the young chap taking the tickets.

“He’s so cute,” declared one. “Ask him furris phone number,” suggested her friend.

“Naw. Ahm too shy,” her pal replied.

“Well how about asking another worker what his name is as you want to report him to the manager for something, then just stalk him on Facebook,” her friend further suggested.

A BAILLIESTON reader visiting her parents mentioned to her mother that her dad seemed to be losing his hearing.

“Things haven’t really changed,” her mum replied. “Before, he didn’t listen. Now he can’t.”

THE BOLD lad in the pub the other night stated: “Just reserved a table for my wife for Valentine’s Day.”

He then added: “I normally buy flowers and chocolates, but Ikea had a sale on.”

THAT inevitably reminds us of the morose chap in the pub who told his mates that he had mixed up his Valentine cards. As he told them: “Now my girlfriend thinks I love her, and my wife thinks I want to sleep with her.”

VALENTINE’S DAY, and, no, we don’t believe the loudmouth in the pub last night who declared: “I got the wife a Valentine’s present that really took her breath away.

“She’s been needing a treadmill for years.”

THAT reminds us of the woman who noticed her husband standing on the bathroom scales and sucking his ample stomach in.

“That’s not going to help,” she said.

“It does if you want to read the numbers,” he replied.

A CHAP whose wife was in hospital bumped into a pal who asked him how his wife was.

“Critical,” he replied.

His shocked pal told him: “But I thought she was in for a simple procedure?”

“She is,” said the chap. “But she’s already complained about the food being cold, the sheets being threadbare, the toilet being dirty, and the staff being unhelpful.”

A RETIRED reader changing at Green’s gym at Giffnock was chatting to a pal when he noticed his friend had a number of bruises on his shin. “You’re not still playing football at your age are you?” he asked.

When his friend said no, our reader pointed at the bruises, and the chap told him: “I play a lot of bridge with the wife as my partner.”

“DID YOU hear that Duncan’s gettin’ married?” asked the loudmouth in a Glasgow pub at the weekend.

“Ah telt him how happy ma marriage had made me,” he continued.

“But he’s still goin’ through wi’ it anyway.”

A YOUNG lad going to work on the bus in Glasgow was heard telling his pal about the wedding he had been a guest at. “Ah don’t think it’s goin’ tae last,” he opined.

When asked why, he explained: “The bride wiz textin’ a’ through the groom’s speech.”

“MY WIFE’S always nagging me for not taking the bins out,” said the loudmouth in the pub. “So I gave in. Mind you I got some very strange looks when I arrived at the cinema.”

“THE WIFE treats me like a god,” said the loudmouth in the pub the other night. “She takes very little notice of my existence until she wants something.”

A READER realised how rocky the path of true love is in Glasgow when he heard a young girl on Byres Road snap at her boyfriend: “You’re always slagging me off.”

“No I’m not,” he replied. “When did I do that?”

“In the pub,” she told him.

“You’re supposed to slag folk off in the pub,” he told her exasperatedly.

We may no longer have the legendary Five Past Eight shows in Glasgow with English comedians being chased off stage, but Scots still love a bit of celebrity. When Brad Pitt wanted to make a zombie film in Glasgow no one objected, with many Glaswegians themselves bragging it was filmed in Glasgow as there were many local extras who wouldn’t need too much make-up.

AMERICAN author Gary Shteyngart was signing copies of his best-selling book
Super Sad True Love Story
at Glasgow’s Aye Write! book festival when a fan put in front of him a book encased in a plastic cover.

Perhaps Gary, who signed the copy with a flourish, thought it was a fan who just took good care of his books, but a member of the Mitchell Library where the event had taken place knew better – only in Glasgow surely would someone ask an author to sign a library book.

REACTING to the latest news about celebrities using the courts to hide their lurid shenanigans, a librarian in Orkney told friends: “I think I’ll spend some time crossing out random lines in celebrity biographies with black marker pen, then tell borrowers it’s due to super-injunctions.”

THE START of the Edinburgh Festival reminds Ninian Fergus of the old tale about the Edinburgh chap, asked about the festival, who replied that he hoped to catch Ibsen.

“
Doll’s House
or
Hedda Gabler
?” he was asked. “No, Ibsen Rangers at Easter Road a week on Sunday.”

READER Frank Eardley walked past a poster advertising a show by Scots comedian Frankie Boyle at Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre that had “Sold Out” printed across it.

Someone had added below: “Sad but inevitable – they all do in the end.”

NEIL ARTHUR on Arran heard the BBC report that “ITV has axed
Taggart
after poor viewing figures south of the Border” and thinks: “Shame that this gives away the murderer, the weapon, the victim and the motive in one sentence. In true
Taggart
tradition could they not have spun it out for an hour?”

THE NEWS reminded us of when the splendid Alex Norton, who played Inspector Matt Burke in
Taggart
, was attending a political rally many moons ago and a wee wummin trying to flog the Communist Party’s newspaper was bellowing: “
Morning Star
!”

Alex couldn’t resist shouting back: “Morning missus!”

AMERICAN country band The Wilders, from Kansas City, told the audience at their Stirling gig that, as it was unseasonably warm at their recent concert at the Shetland Folk Festival, two of the band decided to take a dip in the North Sea.

“I’ll tell you this,” intoned frontman Ike Sheldon, “it was the quickest sex change operation in the history of mankind.”