Panda to your Every Desire (8 page)

“When I asked if he had a problem, he said that he didn’t understand why a radio needed a fish.”

READER Nick Austwick was in one of the more challenging pubs in Cambuslang and asked his companion if they would be safe there. “Just don’t show them your teeth,” he replied. “They hate folk with teeth.”

DOUGIE McNICOL in Bridge of Weir heard two chaps in the pub discussing a football-loving friend who was in hospital. “So, it looks like he’s gonny miss a’ the European gemmes,” opined one.

“He’ll be able tae see them on Sky,” replied his pal.

But the first chap disagreed. “It’s the hospital he’s in – no’ the jail.”

NOT THE best chat-up line, we reckon, from the chap a reader over-heard in a Glasgow city-centre pub at the weekend. He approached a girl, out with her pals, who was wearing a tiara which said “Birthday Girl”. “How old are you?” he asked.

“Pushing thirty,” the woman giggled.

“From which direction?” he replied.

A READER overhears a group of lads in a large Glasgow pub working out what they are going to drink. “It’s three pounds a pint, or a pitcher for a tenner,” said one.

“Why would I want my photo taken drinking lager?” asked his pal.

Nostalgia, as someone once observed, is a thing of the past. Here are some of our readers’ favourite memories.

IT WAS forty years ago that decimalisation was introduced, with many programmes on telly explaining the changeover, and shops sneakily putting up their prices hoping we wouldn’t notice. As one auld biddy declared in a butcher’s shop at the time: “I can’t understand why the Government didn’t just wait until all the old folk had died before bringing in this new-fangled money.”

MIKE ELLIOTT in Glasgow was an eighteen-year-old working in a Leeds pub then. He recalls: “I remember being sorely tempted to help myself to generous tips when inebriated or frustrated customers would empty their pockets of change on to the counter and say, ‘I can’t work out this toy money son, just you take the correct amount.’

“Happy days.”

WE ASKED for your “auld money” stories to mark the anniversary of decimalisation, and Jim Scott in Singapore recalls: “When I was about six, we lived on the top floor of a tenement in Tobago Street, and my gran lived in London Road near Glasgow Cross.

“One day I fell out with my dad, and decided I was going to stay with my gran. So I packed my bag, went all the way down four flights of stairs, out onto the street, when my dad shouted on me from the top floor to come back.

“I thought he was going to give in to whatever it was I was after, so I went all the way back up the stairs only to meet my dad at the door, who handed me half-a-crown and said, ‘Give that to your gran for your keep.”’

AULD money continued. A reader tells us about a shop in Kirkintilloch, days after decimalisation, where a sympathetic shop assistant asked an old customer: “How are you managing with this new money?” The auld fella replied: “Aw it’ll no catch oan in Kirkintilloch.”

AND COMEDIAN Stu Who reminds us that changing the currency has meant many popular phrases were no longer in use. He adds: “Who can forget the legendary, ‘He’s getting right oan ma thruppennies!”’ If you don’t understand that one, ask an auld yin.

REMINISCING about boozy business lunches reminds Gordon Kerr in Stroud: “Back in the 1970s a friend took a rough-and-ready, but extremely rich, builder to lunch at the old Malmaison. When the wine waiter arrived the guest said, ‘A pint of heavy son,’ but was told they did not serve beer.

“Spying The Toby Jug pub across the road, the builder pulled out a fiver and said, ‘They do – just keep bringing them.’ The waiter didn’t bat an eyelid and, bearing in mind it was about 32p a pint then, the tailed waiter crossed with a pint of McEwans on a silver tray every thirty minutes or so.”

WE ASKED for your memories of the boozy business lunches, and John Crawford tell us: “Many years ago my mate sold refuse collection vehicles, and had to entertain a leftwing council leader to lunch after receiving a good order. On being offered the wine list, the councillor chose a bottle each of the most expensive red and white wines, poured himself half a glass of each, then shouted, ‘Corks.’

“The waiters, obviously used to this, brought him the corks, which he forced into the bottles, stuck one in each jacket pocket then ordered two pints of lager.”

WE REMINISCED about the boozy business lunches, and John Gilligan tells us of Big John who covered the south side of Glasgow for Dryburghs the brewers in the late 1960s. He recalls: “One day John was accompanied by a senior manager from England who, after his eighth call to licensed premises, and the eighth alcoholic beverage, asked John, ‘Do you always drink this much during the day?’

“Big John replied, ‘Naw, some days we go fur a bevy.”’

OUR REMINISCING reminds an Ayrshire reader of when his late father, a transport manager with the National Coal Board, was invited with colleagues to the Scottish Motor Show at the Kelvin Hall in the 1960s.

Company reps took them for lunch, then various hospitality events.

Says our reader: “Later that evening, I turned up to collect the old man from the St Enoch Hotel, where an engine manufacturing company had been hosting a reception.

“I arrived to find the Coal Board gang being escorted out, and the old man assuring the commissionaire, ‘We have been asked to leave better hotels than this my good man. Last month in London we were invited to leave the Savoy.”’

WE ASKED for your memories of the Glasgow Garden Festival and Pat Davis recalls: “As a musician in the 1980s, I had the privilege of knowing some of the most skilled work dodgers on the planet. One guy, who busked on the violin outside bingo halls, was already in his mid-thirties and had never had a ‘proper’ job.

“As Thatcherism bit, he was called to the dole office regularly, where he insisted that the only suitable position would be as first violinist in a concert orchestra. Then one day the weary dole officer simply smiled and handed him a card with an address where he was told to report.

“I didn’t see him for some months before visiting the Garden Festival. On entering the catering hall, I was amazed to see our man for the first time ever in a suit and black tie, sitting in the front row of the band and sawing his fiddle in a completely scunnered manner, having to cope with six months of gainful employment.”

GLASGOW Garden Festival continued. Airdrie lawyer Frank Nicol recalls that his then student son had a temporary job on the trams running at the festival.

At the same time Frank received an invitation to a pretentious Glasgow West End party where a posh lady asked Frank what his son did for a living. “He’s a conductor,” replied Frank.

“Has he ever met Andre Previn?” she gushed.

OUR STORIES about airplane seating arrangements remind Wendy Hunter in San Francisco: “I worked for the now defunct Highland Express Airlines at Prestwick. After seating was completed in a full economy class, my colleague noticed a poor wee man doing his best to get comfortable while being squashed and unable to use his armrest due to a hugely overweight woman in the seat next to him.

“My well-meaning colleague discreetly told him there was a spare seat in first class and would he like to move to it. The passenger replied that, no, he would just stay next to his wife.”

TALKING of anniversaries, sadly it is fifty years since England beat Scotland 9–3 at Wembley. Years later player Bobby Shearer of Rangers was able to joke: “England cheated. They used an orange ball which goalie Frank Haffey of Celtic refused to go near, and which neither Eric Caldow nor I would kick.”

GLASGOW Garden Festival continued. The festival introduced Glaswegians to foreign influences. David Green recalls: “I was with a few friends in the pub on the festival site. My mate George sees a sign stating ‘Frankfurters £1’. So he then goes up to the bar and asks for a pint of Frankfurters.”

TIME to end our Garden Festival tales with reader Ian Clark reminding us of the time of the festival closing, and the city looking forward to the next big thing, the European City of Culture. On the wall of the now disused Garden Festival site, someone had spray-painted: “F*** the Garden Festival. I’m off to the theatre.”

WE ASKED for your Scottish wedding stories, and Stuart Miller tells us of a wedding in one of Scotland’s more magnificent churches where the staff announced that there had been a mix-up, the organist had been double booked and couldn’t come, but there was a piano if anyone could play it.

Eventually the couple went up the aisle to an older woman amongst the guests who could play the only religious song she knew, “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus”, with two fingers.

“The magnificence was muted,” says Stuart.

SCOTTISH weddings, and Richard Gault tells us: “When I had a July wedding in Airdrie, we walked the short distance to the hotel from the church just as the Orange March was coming up the street.

“My brother-in-law told my granny from Lossiemouth, where they don’t have such things, that because I was so popular, the town band came out for my wedding. I never did find out if she ever learned the truth.”

TALKING of Airdrie, local chap Patrick Rolink, doing a stand-up turn at a fundraiser for George Galloway’s Coalition Against the Cuts in Glasgow, said his grandfather had been a lifelong Airdrie supporter, and when he died, the family scattered his ashes over the pitch’s centre circle.

“The ground was later sold and Safeways built a supermarket on it,” added Patrick. “We do get some funny looks when we go back every year and leave flowers beside the fish counter.”

INCIDENTALLY, Patrick is one of the fuller-figure comedians on the circuit. He says that when he goes to an airport and they ask if he is carrying anything he shouldn’t, he tells them: “Seven-and-a-half stones, but why remind me?”

WE ASKED for your Scottish wedding tales, and Gavin Paterson recounts: “Playing in a wedding band for over twenty-five years, I remember being on stage in an East End of Glasgow hall when a huge fight broke out on the dance floor.

“Word had spread that the best man had been caught in an intimate moment with the newly-married bride.

“The father of the bride came to the microphone to quell the fight by announcing, ‘Right, stop the fighting. The best man has apologised.’ It worked too.”

AULD money continued. John MacDonald in Dubai returned to Scotland a couple of years after decimalisation and was shocked, after puffing on duty free, to see the price of a packet of fags in the pub’s cigarette machine was a new-fangled 50p piece.

Says John: “I protested indignantly to the barman that I’d been ripped off – ten bob for a packet of fags. Half-a-crown was the going rate, maybe four shillings allowing for the time I’d been away, moan moan.

“The barman listened patiently to my rant, raised an eyebrow, and asked, ‘Ten bob, half-a-crown, shillings … hiv ye jist got oot o’jile, son?”’

TIME flies … a reader points out that anyone who did National Service in Britain will be at least seventy years old this year. We remember one chap telling us he sat his motorbike test at Catterick Camp while doing his National Service. He reported to a sergeant who sent him on the motorbike to the shop for two ounces of Golden Virginia tobacco. Noting his safe return, the sarge threw two dustbin lids on the ground and told him to ride a figure of eight around them. When he managed that, he was told he had passed.

AN OBSERVATION for those who remember old Glasgow biscuit companies. Rangers’ ageing defender Davie Weir struggling in Sunday’s Old Firm game reminds Gary Johnston: “When another Rangers centre-half, Colin Jackson, became, according to some, a tad beyond his sell-by date, he became known as the Caramel Wafer on account of the fact that he was Grey and Done.”

OUR TALES of former Glasgow football club Third Lanark remind John Bannerman of when he was a linesman there in the sixties at a reserve match and was expecting to be paid his £2.50 fee in cash.

Says John: “We went to the treasurer’s office only to be told that the attendance was insufficient to cover our fees. A committee member came up with a solution: empty the one-armed bandits, and we came away loaded down with sixpences.”