Just what he didn't need: to be insulted by passing traffic
Rhona tells the Diary: 'My best friend was suitably impressed when I told her I was going… until she discovered that I would be one of 800 guests.'
'Oh,' said the chum, struggling to hide her disappointment. 'I thought it would just be you and the King, plus a slice of sponge cake.'
Fake Frenchman
Well-travelled Aberdonian Tony Marshall has lived in many of the great cities of the world, and is currently based in London, which isn't too far from Scotia.
Even so, he finds that the locals of that great city don't know much about his home country.
'You're from Scotland?' one of his work colleagues said, 'so you must be well knowledgeable in everything garlic.'
'Garlic?' said Tony, who could only imagine that the colleague mistook him for a sophisticated Parisian, for the French nation is famous for using garlic to season their flavoursome scoff.
'Yes, yes,' continued the colleague. 'Garlic. Do you speak garlic?'
The chap was talking about Gaelic, which is a language, of course, and one that is seldom used in the preparation of frogs legs.
Flight of fancy
Confused Martin Simpson asks: 'Why are so many new TV shows about pilots?'
No can do
Nostalgic reader Linda Mumford was telling her seven-year-old grandson about the games she played with her pals as a young child.
At one point she mentioned how much she loved a popular pastime of the era called Kick the Can.
'Kick the can?' repeated her outraged grandson, before adding: 'What did the can ever do to you?'
Cutting comment
Deciding to smarten up his appearance, reader Dan Buckley took himself to the local barbers.
On returning home his wife scrutinised him, then suspiciously said: 'You had a haircut?'
Dan conceded that this was, indeed, the case, leading his wife to say: 'Very… um… very n… very neat.'
This was not the response Dan was looking for.
'When she got to the letter 'n',' he tells us, 'I was sort of hoping it would be followed by '…ice', as in 'nice'. Alas, this was not to be.'
Brought to book
Bibliophile Doreen Williams told a Waterstone's assistant she wanted Hugh Laurie's autobiography.
"Certainly,' he replied. 'Would you like Fry's with that?'
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