Father's Day: When we pretend that dads are just as important as mums

The Herald Scotland

14-06-2025

Then on Monday it's back to factory settings, with mum on the throne and dad most likely on his way to the pub, mobile phone switched off so that none of the kids can nag him while he's knocking back whiskies and chomping salted peanuts.
As our readers know, the Diary is commanded by a paternalistic figure grandly referred to as The Editor, or sometimes (behind his back) Ol' Big Ed.
He's definitely a fatherly kind of chap, though admittedly the sort of entrepreneurial Victorian father who only raises sprogs so he can make a few extra pounds stuffing them up chimneys and down mines.
It's true that Ol' Big Ed can be harsh, cruel and unforgiving, and that he forces his reporters to regularly polish his shoes (usually with their tongues).
On the other hand, he provides essential training in the skills of bowing and scraping.
Our reporters also become much fitter under his tutelage, and improve their reaction times, as they learn to dodge the many missiles launched from the Editor's desk. (The stationary that lurks on the Editor's desk never stays stationary for very long.)
Best of all, working in the fatherly atmosphere of Diary Towers, our minions learn to identify great stories, as you'll now discover, when you read the following classic tales from our archives…
Sign of the times
Spotted in the sightseeing heart of Rome: a café with a definite Scottish influence.
The windows boasted two hand-written signs.
The first read: 'Tea is served here', and the other, much more prominent suggested, 'Skip the Trevi, have a bevvy.'
Mind your language
A return to the murky waters of the malapropism.
A Diary reader recalled a colleague at a staff meeting who urged that everyone should be 'singing from the same spreadsheet'.
This same fellow also admitted that on one issue he was 'a bit of a doubting Joseph'.
Fractionally flawed
A Glaswegian was overheard dispensing a pearl of wisdom to a friend: 'Och, it's aw much ae a muchness, hen. Six o' wan and two-thirds o' the other…'
Read more: Finding yourself in one of Glasgow's less than salubrious watering holes
Price is right?
The scene was the Glasgow to Aberdeen train, where a traveller was feeling peckish and was tempted by a banana muffin.
But wary of the high prices of items on rail buffet trolleys, he asked the girl: 'Are these muffins exorbitant?'
'I don't know,' she replied. 'I've never tasted them.'
Colour-coded cock-up
A contestant on TV quiz show Family Fortunes was asked to name something in the garden that is green.
The genius promptly answered: 'My shed.'
Food for thought
A curious reader once asked: 'If bacon and smoking are both considered bad for the health, how does smoking cure bacon?'