The editor of the Darlington & Stockton Times, who has limited manners, has just interrupted my busy schedule by poking his head round my door and shouting: "Do you wanna judge a sausage competition?"

To be honest, I was trying to get my head round the day's news agenda: the Darlington Football Club crisis; a woman finding a snake in her bathroom in Great Ayton; and the launch of the campaign for the European elections.

"Er, sorry?" I muttered, distractedly.

"Do you want to judge a sausage competition?" he repeated in a slightly superior D&S Times kind of way.

And then, as if it might sway me, he added with a cheeky wink: "It's a big one."

Well, what could I say? There was nothing else in the diary for next Wednesday night, so I agreed to adjudicate at the annual banger contest run by the Northern Council of Butchers' Association.

"I suppose it's nice of them to ask me," I said.

"They didn't," said my fellow editor. "They wanted me - but I can't go."

Has it really come to this? A second choice judge for a sausage competition?