When the minister asked the wee boy what his cat's name was, he was told it was Ben Hur. When the minister expressed the view that it seemed an unusual name for a cat, the wee lad said, 'Well, we used to just call him Ben, but then he had kittens.'

A small boy was listening to his grandfather relate stories of his time as a soldier in the Gordon Highlanders. 'I fought in Africa, in Italy and Germany. I fought with Montgomery, I fought with Wavell, and I fought with Alexander.' The wee lad, more than slightly puzzled by what he had heard, said, 'Grandad, could you not get on with anyone?'

When a lady asked the assistant in the bookshop where the self-help books were, the assistant smiled and said, 'Would that not defeat the purpose?'

A mother was waiting at the driving test centre while her son was sitting his test. From his glum expression she knew that he had failed. Inquiring of the examiner what had gone wrong, he said her son had failed to stop at a red light. Being particularly defensive of her son, she asked, 'But just how red was the light?'

Robert Louis Stevenson, who suffered most of his life from poor health, was once asked the secret of his cheerfulness. 'I have a maxim. Make your own inside weather.'