Keyed In: John Sasso, who temporarily left...

Keyed In: John Sasso, who temporarily left the Michael Dukakis presidential campaign after a flap over his aggressive tactics, pulled a switch on a car rental company. Sasso, renting a car on Nantucket island Aug. 31, said he was given the right keys but offered the wrong car. He found another set of keys behind the closed counter and took off in somebody else’s car. Hertz workers called the police. “It was not a major crime, but it was wrong,” said Hertz’ Dave Murphy, who won’t press charges.

Watch Out: Jokes keep coming about the Indiana-born vice president’s National Guard service during the Vietnam War. Comic Alan King says that if the Indiana National Guard is activated for Persian Gulf duty, “we may yet see Dan Quayle volunteer to go to Vietnam.”

Fearless: Don Rickles says he once mercilessly insulted mob boss Joey Gallo and lived to tell about it. Gallo didn’t. Rickles recalled in an interview that in 1972 the crime figure came to his show at a New York nightclub. Bodyguards told Rickles not to tease their boss, but Rickles skewered the cigar-smoking Gallo sitting in the front row. Gallo couldn’t stop laughing. Afterward, Rickles declined Gallo’s invitation to a clambake, where four men gunned down Gallo. “Frankly, I didn’t go because I was a little nervous. And besides, I didn’t like clams,” Rickles said.

Protest: Brigitte Bardot late last week condemned French farmers who slaughtered hundreds of British sheep in a protest over lower-priced imported lamb. The actress-turned-animal rights activist accused the farmers of illegal cruelty for slaughtering more than 700 animals, burning some alive, she claimed.