FIGHTING RACISM DOESN'T MEAN WE CAN'T CONFRONT THE CHEATS

I AM disgusted that Glasgow gangs have been targeting asylum seekers. Alcohol and boredom have become the excuses for these thugs in inner city schemes where refugees and asylum seekers have formed an easily identifiable target.

Drinking cheap cider, singing football chants and vomiting in a phone box is no longer a decent pastime for hoodies. Hunting down an immigrant is the latest craze.

There have been incidents where Nazi slogans have been daubed in doorways.

Racism isn't just a symptom of the young. How many of us have heard older people in the street or on a bus muttering, "I never fought a war for these people to live in my street" and "These bloody people need to learn our language."

I cringe when I hear this and I know that this attitude is passed down from generation to generation.

My mammy hated me playing with Catholics and told me the Asian boy across our road was brown because he lived up a chimney!

Thank goodness we grow up to know better.

It can stop and we must all make an effort to stem this pig ignorant attitude that can only embarrass true Scots.

The very thought that people have fled difficult and dangerous situations in their homeland to come to Scotland and suffer discrimination on our own streets horrifies me.

Knowing that young people are daubing swastikas on shop fronts to mark out their territory makes my skin crawl.

Yet I think we all do get a wee bit racist sometimes.

Last week I wrote in my blog about an argument I had with professional Romanian beggars who pestered me in a café in Glasgow.

I saw through the window of the bistro the three women get out of a Mercedes-Benz parked in the Great Western Road. They were chatting excitedly and then pushed open the door and spread out on entry.

One woman approached my table, whipped out a folder, lifted out a card and with a slow smile gave me the look that said, "Hello I am Luka and I am your beggar today, how may you help me?" She then stood there and let me read her specials menu; well it wasn't a menu, of course, it was her begging letter.

The short story of her poverty and hunger was written in broken English and embedded in a laminated card and was constantly pushed into my face as I tried to gulp down my creamy Fair Trade Coffee.

I can't handle guilt and caffeine at the same time.

I shook my head, but she merely stood there and poked my scalp with one pointy finger and indicated her letter with her right hand.

I looked up, glared at her and gave her my best "Shettleston" aggressive look.

Does she know that I come from a part of the city that is famously known as the "unhealthiest and poorest part of Europe?" I have relatives that are poorer than her.

I got really angry and stood up.

I was angry at the women for trying to dupe honest people out of cash, but I didn't feel like chasing after them, whipping out a lipstick and drawing a swastika on their car door.

There are ways of making a statement without having a wee racist moment.

I challenged my Romanian friend on her "poverty" and I also pointed out to the entire café that there was car waiting for her outside.

She is not living in dire poverty, nor does she need to plead for pennies in the streets.

People in the café hated and applauded me in equal numbers; you see not everyone likes confrontation as I do.

The Romanian woman hated it; she gave me the finger, folded up her laminated card and walked out.

THERE GOES MY FIRST LOVE, WITH THE GIRL I USED TO CALL MY FRIEND

SINCE I was 12 years old I have been in love with America's favourite Mormon. I would gaze up to his face on the poster on my bedroom wall and hug it as Donny sang out Puppy Love on my old Dansette record player.

Last week in London my best friend, Monica, met Donny Osmond. She owns a PR company that deals with top restaurants and Donny was being interviewed in one of her London posh nosh places.

I was in Portsmouth doing comedy; she was in Kensington kissing Donny.

She called me and gave me a blow-by-blow account of every word he said to her. She told me how he hugged and kissed her goodbye and I cried into my hotel room tea cup with jealousy. I really love him. I don't care about his creepy lookie-likey wife.

Monica's hero is Noel Gallagher. If anyone can arrange for me to snog him soon, please let me know. I have to get her back; we may be in our 40s but when it comes to teen idols, we never really grow up.

SCARY BUNNY MAKES MY LITTLE TREASURE BLUSH

"MUM, please don't embarrass me in that newspaper," my daughter Ashley, who is going on 21, pleaded when she realised I would be writing my column every week.

"Don't tell everyone I have never had a boyfriend, please. They will think I am a freak."

I told her not to worry.

I won't tell anyone that she is still single, addicted to Puzzle Pirates, has a secret passion for handcrafts and beading, sleeps with a tatty teddy bear called Snooie, still giggles at the word "beaver" and is afraid of sock puppets, butterflies and the Easter bunny.

And after that revealing information, I don't think she will ever be getting a boyfriend.

Mums are meant to embarrass their beautiful daughters.

It's what being middle- aged is meant for. She is young and her skin still fits her; she can cope with anything.

SPOT CHECK

SO THERE I was in my car, rollers of all shapes and colours in my unruly hair and spot cream all encrusted on my top lip, scaring all the drivers on the M8 to Edinburgh.

I managed to get a big rotten plook under my nostril, just in time for the photo for this column.

I got the spot because I decided to wax my bushy moustache off. Except the wax strip wasn't strong enough and it only managed to rip off the top layer of my epidermis and leave me with a rash and a black tash - great!

The hair on my head is going grey and needs to be touched up constantly, yet the hair on my upper lip is raven black. Somewhere along the line, the "toner" in my body has gone as crooked as a counterfeiter's photocopier.

My hair looked like it had been brushed backwards with a wooden fork in the hands of a bipolar badger, and after a quick arm-wrestle with my rollers, I decided I had to give up the fight and go with the big and bushy look.

Life isn't fair and neither is the hair on my face.