CHARLTON Heston has gone. Surely, then, the time has come to remember the fantastic merchandise available to celebrate his greatest role, Ben-Hur. The best? Towels labelled Ben His and Ben Hers.

Sorry.

Hair today . . .
One last parting shot at Mr Heston. Could he not have done a bit more to support his fellow baldies? The bewigged star - who never publicly acknowledged his wee problem - did once play a nice handsome smoothed-headed gent, Sir Thomas Moore in A Man for All Seasons, an 1980s made-for-TV movie. But only, according to Dustin Hoffman, after he pulled one of those rubber pates over his hair piece. Shame on you, Chuck. You let us all down.

The high life
Billy Connolly, no stranger to the Glasgow one-liner himself, has finally come clean about why he quit booze and hash. "I'd been blessed by the fact that I was born high," the Big Yin told an interviewer as he launched a two-week-long live show in San Francisco.

"I always wondered why dope had such a profound effect on me. It was because I was high when I started."

Smoking idea
ID cards. Who needs 'em? Not youngsters in Dundee. A lad came into Grouchos, the city's legendary record store, to sell some CDs. Could he prove he was 16? Yup, he said, producing a fag packet.

Not all Grouchos customers are so smart. Take the chap who came in for an "ornithology" of Mortal Kombat, the notoriously violent beat-em-up video game. "Is that the one where they go looking for birds?" a member of staff asked. "I think so," said the buyer, presumably twitching.

Thunderbald
Speaking of the follicly-challenged, spare a thought for the poor chap on his way to a posh do at the weekend in his dinner jacket and natty black bow tie. Cue a classic

Glasgow put down.
"The name's Bond," quipped a complete stranger in his wake.

"Baldy Bond."

Que?
Learning a few words of foreign lingo. Never a good idea. Take the Glasgow mum who decided to try out a bit of Spanish when on holiday on one of the costas.

She was showing off to her daughter by ordering them lunch, pointing at one of those glossy pictures of paella and carefully asking for what was written under them. The result? Two delicious plates of the Spanish equivalent of a little-known delicacy called "for display purposes only".

Roll up
Now this was a family that wasn't having much luck communicating with the locals. They had arrived in their holiday apartment to discover the linen for a fold-down bed for their daughter was too small.

They sought to resolve this by informing a maid of their need for "big sheets" while pointing vigorously at each other. That didn't do the trick. They never did get bigger sheets. They did get 10 extra rolls of toilet paper, though.

Into the breech
We promised there would be no more jokes about pants. But news that staff at Scottish Enterprise are complaining about being forced to "go commando" can't go unrecorded.

Apparently, in one of those official drives to achieve the ultimate paperless offices, bosses have decided all the new desks of newly-relocated staff will be "drawerless".

Take it away
The Scottish Government. It knows what it's doing. Right? The ScotGov has just announced it will send some of its west of Scotland staff to a sleek new building adjacent to the HQ of Scottish Enterprise. Only it has published a picture of the wrong office block: employees were shown a building next door to a well-known Glasgow Chinese restaurant, rather than those "drawerless" enterprise types.

I mean, Ho Wong can you get?

Books behind bars
J K Rowling last week launched a scheme to encourage reading in jails. Should we think about some special editions for lags?

How about Buckfast at Tiffany's? The Taming of the Screw? Or, suggests a reader, Cider House Rules - OK! More ideas welcome.