We were so poor; the ultimate luxury in our house at the time was ashtrays without advertisements.

So there I was lying in the gutter. A man stopped and asked '"What's the matter? Did you fall over?" So I said "No. I've a bar of toffee in my back pocket and I was just trying to break it."

I went to the butchers to buy a leg of lamb. "Is it Scotch?", I asked. "Why?" the butcher said in reply. "Are you going to talk to it or eat it?". "In that case, have you got any wild duck?". "No", he responded, "but I've got one I could aggravate for you."

My mother was so house proud that when my father got up to sleepwalk she had the bed made by the time he got back.

A neighbour put his budgerigar in the mincing machine and invented shredded tweet.

It was a pretty posh place. They were so used to fur coats that two bears strolled in and ordered lunch and nobody even noticed.

My father was from Aberdeen, and a more generous man you couldn't wish to meet. I have a gold watch that belonged to him. He sold it to me on his deathbed. I wrote him a cheque for it, post dated of course.