The Bottom Line

From The Herald today, comes this tail.....

During the Easter Sunday service at an Arran church, Neil Arthur tells us, the minister decided to gain the children's attention by asking a series of simple questions. The idea was that he would take the first letter from each of the answers and display it to the congregation on a board; when these letters were put in order, the result would spell E A S T E R.

Just so it wouldn't be too obvious, the questions were asked in random order. And so the congregation looked on as the letter boards displayed an A, followed by an R, followed by an S. When the next letter went up, it was of course E.

It was all the elder members of the flock could do to bite down hard on smirking lips and banish the thought that the devil had indeed been hard at work.

And then this:

Still on matters ecclesiastical, former Time Lord Sylvester McCoy, currently touring in Little Shop of Horrors, reveals he was once a trainee priest, with dreams of becoming Bishop of the Western Isles.

"My time came to an end, however, when - aged 18 - I realised I'd rather be taking frocks off," he says, giggling. "I'd have been the bishop who runs off with the housekeeper."

Finally, for those intending to tour here this summer, a language lesson....

Dialect dilemmas continued. Iain MacArthur from West Lothian visited Glasgow at the weekend only to overhear one white-tracksuited young man exchange jocular insults with his sartorially similar chum.

"Yermaw'sanasboandyerda'satranny," yelled out the first young man, which was later translated to a confused Iain as "Your mother has obviously crossed the boundaries of acceptable social behaviour while your father is predisposed to favouring women's attire."

Stanley Baxter would be spinning in his grave, were he not very much still with us.

The Bishop of Gambia once commiserated with me when he told me that he understood that English was not my first language. He may be right there come to think of it!