SPECTATOR will have to beg readers' forgiveness for indulging in a little schoolboy smuttiness. We can't resist telling you about a notice we received this week promoting Bare Britain - "a new book featuring the best places to go naked in Britain."

It went on to promise to reveal "the best places in the North-East to bare all."

Unfortunately, the only places listed in the North-East as we know it are Druridge Bay and Ross Back Sands, "north of Banburgh (sic)". The author seems to be under the impression that Spurn Point is in the region but we'll just ignore that as typical of a Southern-based PR person who doesn't know their Yorkshire from their Humber.

There are naturist clubs listed in Harrogate and Newcastle (intriguingly call "Tando") but that's about it. Perhaps our weather doesn't encourage naturism.

Best of all though is the name of the lady who penned the gushing prose. I kid you not but she is Gillian Stark. Snigger, snigger.

Infernal thing

SPECTATOR sometimes wishes he had been selected as one of those Grumpy Old Men in the recent BBC television series. He would have had plenty to say on any number of subjects concerning modern life.

Having installed three young tomato plants in a growbag in the greenhouse for the first time in many years in the hope of enjoying some succulent home-grown produce, he invested in a plastic bottle of liquid feed for use at the appropriate time.

Could he get the thing open? No chance, what with one of those childproof caps from the nanny state run by the Health and Safety Executive and a diagram thereon designed to make the user look illiterate whether he or she be aged five or 58.

A frustrated Spectator, who operates on a short fuse at the best of times, resorted to forcing the wretched cap off with a pair of heavy duty kitchen scissors accompanied by language unsuitable for reproduction in a family newspaper.

United in defiance

LIKE old soldiers, bus companies never die but simply fade away.

Sorting through his tie rack the other day, one of Spectator's colleagues chanced upon a smart but long forgotten piece of neckwear once issued to crews by the Darlington-based United company and presented to him by a driver who has been retired these past 12 years.

Far from offering the tie for sale as a possible collectors' item, Spectator's colleague plans to wear it occasionally if only to cock a good natured snook at United's upstart successor Arriva, which consigned the old firm to the history books in the turbulent days following bus deregulation.

Arriva might have something to sing about if, like United, it had been founded in 1912.