RANGERS fans have been debating online the best place to keep their Uefa Cup Final tickets safe from pickpockets in Manchester. Taped to the chest seems the most painful, although "inside pants"

ass of champagne was accidentally spilled over a glamorous young woman's leg.

Being Glasgow, the waitress didn't just apologise but added: "With a bit of luck you'll get someone to lick it off tonight." "Jasper would do that in a moment," said a woman sitting nearby.

"Who's Jasper?" asked the champagne-legged lady, just a little bit intrigued.

"My dog," the woman replied.

Plain sailing
THE cruise business is booming, which means many folk are boarding a ship for the first time. One cruise-ship worker tells us that on one occasion when a fresh bunch of passengers came on board he received a phone call from an angry customer saying that he had paid extra for a cabin with an ocean view, yet all he could see was a car park.

"We haven't sailed yet sir," was all the crew member could tell him.

Capital gains
ONE of the more memorable remarks on the television show The Apprentice last week was when Edinburgh University classics graduate Michael Sophocles did not know what kosher meat was, and Sir Alan Sugar's advisor Margaret Mountford announced sorrowfully: "I think Edinburgh isn't what it used to be."

As internet discussion forums debate whether this is the case or not, one damning viewer wrote: "I'm with Ms Mountford. Edinburgh these days seems to be a playground for a bunch of semi-literate, barely numerate Sloane Rangers who tried, and failed, to get into Oxbridge or St Andrews." Ouch!

Bottled it
WE end our tales of the exciseman with Helen Bell, now in North Carolina, telling us about working in the Black and White bottling hall in Stepps in the seventies.

"I used to wonder why so many women went to work with their hair in curlers, with a scarf tied round their head," she says.

"Turned out, that was normal headgear when working on the miniature line - the hollow hair rollers were just the right size for hiding the wee round miniature bottles. They'd duck below the conveyor at various times during the day, and end up going home with a headful of whisky!"

Nailbiting flight
A READER tells us that she was queuing to go through airport security in America when a pilot on a separate line for aircrew was randomly searched and had a pair of nail clippers taken off him.

She then heard the crew member mutter to his colleague: "Do they not know there is an axe in the cockpit?"

Seasonal disorder
"I'm beginning to think there may be something in this global warming after all," opined a chap in the pub.

"Four months ago you couldn't go out without a coat, and now folk are walking through town with their tops off."