Panda to your Every Desire by Ken Smith

was singing ‘Shake Marilyn Monroe’ in his classic hit.
    “I guess the sound quality on 78s wasn’t that great.”

    MISHEARD lyrics continued. Frazer Beggs in Australia says: “In the eighties my grandfather used to hear the words ‘wake me up before yer cocoa’ from the well known Wham! song.”

    ALISTAIR FULTON in Govan says: “When I was in my early twenties, I was sure I heard the Beatles singing, ‘We all live in a yellow soup tureen.’
    “Now I consider myself lucky to hear any words at all.”

10.
Street-Life
    Sometimes you witness the daftest of things, or hear the oddest of conversations out in the street. Fortunately our readers let us know.

    A READER in Partick watched as two young chaps lifted up a sofa that had been left out on the pavement for refuse collection outside a block of flats. He assumed they were going to take it away for their own gaff.
    But instead they turned it upside down and shook it. Two or three coins dropped on to the pavement, and the chaps put the sofa back down, collected the coins and walked on.

    EVEN when celebrating a birthday, Glaswegians can’t pass up the chance of a sly wee dig. A Burnside reader on an 18 bus going through the city’s East End spotted a giant poster strung across a wall which declared: “Dougie Robb is fifty today. He cannae believe it.”
    Underneath was written: “Neither can we. We thought he was sixty.”

    WHAT’S happening in Glasgow these days, an ex-pat asks. Well, we pass on from Alex Robertson: “I was at the People’s Palace on Sunday where a drunken Glaswegian incoherently argued with a door preserved from Duke Street Prison. He shouted aggressively while swaying back and forth, before punching said door. A small crowd of tourists gathered, presumably in the mistaken belief this was all part of the show.”

    A READER on the bus from Balfron into Glasgow heard a young woman from the village describing a weekend party to her pal, and announcing: “I didn’t realise how drunk I was until I went to wipe something off my cheek – and realised it was the floor.”

    DURING Glasgow’s West End Festival, a colleague of STV presenter John MacKay overheard a woman giving her other half a telling off. “We’re here for the weans,” she said, “no for you to get mad wi’ it.”

    THE SUN just occasionally shining during the summer reminded Hugh Nicolson of walking through Govan when a grimfaced local lady in her fifties, wearing a three-quarter-length coat, came out with one of those memorable Glasgow comments.
    She told her two diminutive pals as they passed Hugh: “I don’t care whit embday says, this coat’s cummin’ aff.”

    JOHN LAWSON from West Kilbride was passing the cement works just south of Dunbar on the A1 when he noticed a large road sign reading “Cement Works”. Underneath, someone had added: “If you get the mix right.”

    ONLY in the West End one suspects … Rony Bridges was standing on Byres Road reading a Big Issue he had bought when a woman took it out of his hands and gave him £2. He feels he was perhaps just a tad too casually dressed. Or as a friend cruelly remarked on his dress sense: “You been running through Oxfam again with sticky tape on?”

    A PUB discussion in Edinburgh was about the news that iPhones have a built-in tracking device which monitors everywhere the owner goes. Although some in the discussion expressed their anger at such a thing, one sage pointed out: “What’s the big deal? It’s not as if iPhone users don’t tell you on Facebook where they are every five minutes anyway.”

    A READER who was having a fag outside a Byres Road pub was approached by a mendicant who asked: “Excuse me pal, any chance of a fag?”
    Our reader not unreasonably pointed out: “You’re already smoking one, mate.”
    “Just planning for the future,” the beggar replied.

    WE LIKE to hear about visitors to Glasgow and what they see. John Stewart in Saltcoats recounts: “On a visit to the