Scottish Humour
- Not So Bright
A notice on a door in the old town of Culross, Fife
There are jokes made, from time to time, about some Scots being a little "slow on the uptake" - though not quite in the same league as the Poles and the Irish, of course. While totally untrue, like many stereotypes, such jokes do not lose anything because of that!
A Lewis man was planning a flight to Glasgow and phoned to find out how long the flight would be. "Just one second, sir" said the girl at the other end. "Thanks very much" he replied and hung up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A high-rise building was going up in central Glasgow, and three steel erectors sat on a girder having their lunch. "Oh, no, not cream cheese and walnut again", said the first, who came from Coatbridge. "If I get the same again tomorrow, I'll jump off the girder."
The second, who came from Airdrie, opened his packet. "Oh, no, not a Caesar salad with salami and lettuce on rye," he said. "If I get the same again tomorrow, I'll jump off too."
The third man, who came from Dufftown, opened his lunch. "Oh, no, not another potato sandwich," he said. "If I get the same again tomorrow, I'll follow you two off the girder."
The next day, the Coatbridge man got cream cheese and walnut. Without delay, he jumped. The Airdrie man saw he had Caesar salad with salami and lettuce on rye. With a wild cry, he leapt into eternity. The Dufftown man then opened his lunchbox. "Oh, no," he said. "Potato sandwiches." And he too jumped.
The foreman, who had overheard their conversation, reported what had happened, and the funerals were held together.
"If only I'd known," sobbed the wife of the Coatbridge man.
"If only he'd said," wailed the wife of the Airdrie man.
"I don't understand it at all," said the wife of the Dufftown man. "He always got his own sandwiches ready."~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wullie was having his appendix out and was driving the doctor mad with questions. "Will Ah be able to play the bagpipes after ma operation?" he asked. "Of course you will!" snapped the doctor. "That's amazing!" marvelled Wullie. "Ah couldna play them before!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A new bus fare system in Aberdeen required passengers to give their destination when paying their fare. One old age pensioner, unfamiliar with the system, asked for a "14p concession, please." The conductor demanded "What's your destination?" The lady looked puzzled and said she didn't understand. The driver insisted he needed to know where she was going. "I'm ga'in to my daughter's for my dinner!" she replied.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ At Insch station, one half of the manually operated level crossing gate was open and the other half closed. When the duty signalman was asked why, he replied "Well, I'm half expecting a train".
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In a London street, two Highlanders stood looking at the imposing front of a large building. The corner-stone bore the date in Roman characters, "MCMIV." "Look at that, Jock," said Sandy proudly, "Ah don't know what clan he came from, but he's got his name on one of the finest buildings in London. You canna keep oor boys doon, can ye ?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ An Englishman who was travelling through the Highlands came to an inn near a village. Seeing nobody around, he knocked on the door, but received no reply. So he opened the door and walked in. He spied a man lying on a bed and asked him: "Are there no Christians in this house?" Whereupon the man replied: "No, sir, none. We are all Camerons."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A Scots lass in Paris who enjoyed a gâteau in the patissière ordered another one "aussi grand que ma derrière".
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Caught for not having a TV licence, Hughie duly purchased one, which is just as well because as he was going down the path from his house he met the inspector again. "I'm in a hurry, but dad's in the house. Tell him the licence is behind the clock on the mantelpiece". The inspector does as was told, to the astonishment of Hugh's dad. "That's some detector van ye've got that knows where the licence is kept!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Notice in a shop in Fort William: We exchange anything - bicycles, washing machines etc. Why not bring your wife along and get a wonderful bargain.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ McTavish was leaving the office late one evening when he saw his boss standing in front of the paper shredder, looking puzzled. "D'you know how this thing works?" asked the boss. "Aye" said McTavish, feeding the paper into the machine and pressing the start button. As the paper disappeared into the machine he then heard his boss say "Good. I need two copies, please."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A lady in Morningside who had been burgled was surprised when an insurance assessor told her that it was not just a question of writing a cheque for her losses. The company would undertake to replace items which had gone. "In that case," said the lady, "I think I'll cancel the insurance policy I took out on my husband."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jessie was out for a walk and came to a river and saw Maggie on the opposite bank. "Hello there," she shouts, "how can I get to the other side?" Maggie looked up the river, then down the river, then shouted back, "You ARE on the other side."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jock's horse came in at 100-1 and everyone wanted to know how he had spotted the winner. "Well, on the way to the race track I took a number 5 bus, it made 5 stops along the way and it cost me 5 pounds to get in. The three 5s seemed to be telling me something so I added them up, three fives are 16 so I backed it and it won by a mile."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When Hamish was at school his report card said "We thought Hamish had reached rock bottom. But now he's started digging."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hector and Hamish were delighted that they had finished a jigsaw puzzle in record time and told Sandy that the hundred pieces had only taken them six months to fit together. Sandy was unimpressed and said that sounded a long time. "Not at all" said Hamish, "It said on the box three to five years."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hamish's mother sent him a woolly cardigan she had knitted and enclosed a wee note. "Dear son, to save weight and postage, I have cut off the buttons. You'll find them in a little bag in the right-hand pocket."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hamish and Hector were on a parachute training course. Hamish jumped first, pulled the rip-cord and started to float down. Hector followed but when he pulled his cord, nothing happened. When he pulled the emergency cord, again nothing happened. As he plummeted past his companion, Hamish called out "So we're in a race are we?" and ripped off his own parachute.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A police constable, based on one of the Outer Isles, phoned the forensic department of Strathclyde Police looking for help. "If I sent you some of yon skelp, can ye test it for me?". The forensic scientist has never heard of "skelp" so asks for more details. "It's that broon powder the kids use" explained the constable. "Don't you mean smack?" said the expert. "Och aye, that'll be right. I kent it had something to dae wi' hittin' folk."
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Callum was intrigued by two men working on a country road. One man would dig a hole two or three feet deep and then move on. The other man came along 25 feet behind and filled in the hole. "Hold it, hold it," Callum said to the men. "Can you tell me what's going on here?"
"Well, we work for the county," one of the men said.
"But one of you is digging a hole and the other fills it up. You're not accomplishing anything. Aren't you wasting the county's money?"
"You don't understand, mister," one of the men said, leaning on his shovel and wiping his brow. "Normally there's three of us: me, Hugh and Willie. I dig the hole, Hugh sticks in the tree and Willie here puts the dirt back. Now just because Hugh's sick, that don't mean that Willie and me can't work."~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It was the boy's first day at school in rural Aberdeenshire and he came home in a foul mood. His mother asked him how he had got on. "I'm no goin' back" he replied firmly. "I canna read, I canna write and the wifie wilnae let me speak".
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