Before I moved to Birmingham, I used to travel regularly between London and Glasgow, often taking the overnight train back to the capital on a Sunday to extend the time in Scotland and arrive straight at my desk on Monday morning. I couldn't do it now but I used to sit up all night to save money on a sleeper ticket. On one trip I got into a conversation with the man opposite me, who told me he was on his way to London after an absence of a decade or so. Having spent all night talking to him, as I left the train I asked him what had kept him away from the city he so clearly loved: "I've been in the Bar-L" came the reply. For non-Weegies reading this, the Bar-L is better known as Barlinnie, the then-notorious prison in Glasgow. I don't know what the chap had done, but there's a fair chance it wasn't a speeding offence.

Another favourite, some years ago now, was the man who just checked himself out of a private clinic where he'd been having an operation on his haemorrhoids. This was in the days when mobile phones were nearly as rare as hen's teeth, and he clearly had not yet perfected the technique of talking in hushed tones, so the whole carriage could share his pain. I swear we didn't know whether to wince as one or laugh when he left his seat and waddled up the aisle to the buffet car.

But the point of telling you all this is that I'm sitting on a train right now, and have just heard something that practically made me spray my coffee across the carriage with laughter. Two middle-aged Scouse ladies, quite possibly slight the worse for wear, have just had a long conversation about clairvoyants. "I can sometimes predict the future you know," said one. "The only problem is that I don't know when it's going to happen".

People say the funniest things.