MAN accidentally discovered cheese thousands of years ago, but this week it has matured enough to dominate the European Court of Justice.

In olden days, man transported his milk in vats made out of the stomachs of calves and sheep. If he left the milk long enough, the enzymes in the stomach linings made it go funny. It became a little whiffy, but quite tasty in a cheesy way.

At issue this week in the European Court is whether feta cheese can only be made in Greece - an issue that is being closely watched by the makers of Yorkshire Feta near Thirsk.

The Greeks have been making feta ever since man discovered the whiffy whey in the animal linings. Feta and kaseri, another Greek cheese, are regarded as the two oldest cheeses in the world.

The most famous feta-maker was Polyphemus, the giant, cannibalistic Cyclops whom Odysseus blinded in his one eye with a red hot poker. This assault, understandably, enraged the cheese-maker, but Odysseus and his men escaped from his cave by clinging to the bellies of sheep. The sheep trouped out to pasture, the unseeing Polyphemus stroking their backs as they carried their hidden cargo.

As Polyphemus would testify, feta is made from sheep's milk, sometimes with a little goats' milk added. It is curdled and drained in a cloth bag, cut into slices and then packed into barrels filled with brine to preserve it.

It is from the slicing that feta gets its name - the word 'feta' being Italian for 'slice'.

And this is what makes this court case so interesting. Items like Parma ham, Champagne, Stilton, Roquefort, Bordeaux and even Newcastle Brown Ale have a "protected designation of origin" because their name and characteristics derive from a geographical location.

But feta is just a slice. A slice that is made in Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, France, Denmark and North Yorkshire.

Greece, though, claims it as its own, saying that it is the unique combination of 2,500 plants in its pastures that makes feta so feta-ish. The Greeks are the biggest cheese-eaters in Europe. They each consume 23kgs a year (the French only manage 22kgs).

A result in the court case is expected within weeks, although as Europe has been focussing on feta since 1996, it is not advisable to hold your breath.

LABOUR festooned the halls of Sage at Gateshead for last weekend's spring conference with large banners proclaiming "Forward not back".

Election co-ordinator Alan Milburn suggested during a media briefing session that this would become a recurrent theme during the campaign leading up to May 5.

As we huddled around him on the day that Tony Blair had danced his helicopter up the country unveiling Labour's six promises, Mr Milburn joked: "You will hear a lot of that - forward and not back. And that's another pledge".

But it would appear that this pledge has already rebounded upon him.

The current Private Eye magazine reports that as the Darlington MP attempted to leave Sage, he "became slightly entangled in the revolving doors".

Naturally enough, there were plenty of delegates on hand to offer advice. One North-Eastern voice shouted out: "Forward, not back, Alan."