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STRANGE how sport doesn't always bring out the sensitive side in everyone. Rugby-mad Irishman Denis MacCann, manager of the Holiday Inn in Glasgow, was at a charity dinner last week where guest speaker Ann Widdecombe, the trenchant Tory MP, asked for questions.
Denis's hand shot up and he asked Ms Widdecombe for her views on the news report that Sinn Fein MP Gerry Adams was to lay a wreath at Croke Park for the 15 Englishmen slaughtered there last Saturday afternoon - a reference, of course, to England's dismal Six Nations game against Ireland.
According to Denis, she eventually saw the funny side and the colour was back in her face within the hour.
Whistle-blower
OUR story about the young lad learning his seven-times table at the Scotland-France rugby match reminds Douglas Hutchison from Kilcreggan of taking his five-year-old daughter to her first rugby match, Glasgow against Leinster.
On the way home she asked how long a rugby match lasted. When dad replied that all rugby games lasted for 80 minutes she replied: "In that case, why is it that when you go to Edinburgh for the rugby, you are away for three days?"
He is still convinced that mummy put her up to it.
Snake charmer
AND talking of children, one father tells us about his eight-year-old son watching television, and when an advertisement for Oil of Olay came on, the lad said to his mum: "You don't need that - you've got lovely skin already."
As his mum purred out of the room the youngster had the cheek to turn to his dad and tell him that the Game Boy he wanted for his birthday was now guaranteed.
Life and sole
THE tale of the old fellas at the bus stop joking about snoring bottoms made Bill Moore recall one of his old uncles in Paisley declaring: "Ach, ma fit's went tae sleep." His other old uncle promptly chipped in: "By the smell o' it, ah thocht it wis deid.
"A Paisley thing, I reckon," says Bill.
Retail king
AN Ayrshire secondary teacher, marking his class's essays on Macbeth, reads in one that "Macbeth was now ruler of all he purveyed".
Well, to be fair, Macbeth is later referred to by Malcolm in the play as a butcher, so maybe that's what the student had in mind.
This is a stick-up
DR Sarah Burnett, in the current edition of the publication Hospital Doctor, makes a cogent case for restrictions on the use of the anti-impotence drug Viagra, because of the side effects it can cause. But even she, like many people when they write about Viagra, can't stop herself from ending her learned treatise with a gag - manufacturers Pfizer
recently had a break-in at a warehouse when £50,000 worth of Viagra was stolen. Yes, Dr Burnett did indeed claim that police were looking for a gang of hardened criminals.
Dead meat
TIM Keenan reads in The Herald that the Lathallan abattoir has gone into administration, with Tom Burton of Ernst and Young appointed as joint administrator, and he wonders: "Who is looking after the other cuts of meat?"
Master stroke
THE news story that Perth and Kinross Council is considering banning outdoor drinking, which could mean golfers at Gleneagles no longer being able to carry hip flasks, reminds us, of course, of the classic yarn of the golfer being involved in a car crash.
He leaps out of his car and pulls out the driver of the other car who, like him, is shaken, but unhurt. The golfer whips out his hip flask, passes it to the other driver and declares: "We should celebrate the miracle that neither of us was killed."
The driver takes a swig and hands it back to the golfer who puts the flask back in his pocket. "Are you not having a drink?" says the other driver.
"No," replies the golfer, "I think I'll wait till after the police have been."
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