A brewery ban on noisy pubs can be tiresome - especially when, like The Bay Horse at Tunstall, you've plenty to shout about.

QUIET revolution or not, there seems to be an almighty row over the decision by Samuel Smith's Brewery to make its 200 pubs less noisy. Music machines have been summarily silenced, televisions unplugged, even charity race nights disqualified.

"It's Val's birthday soon," said someone in the Bay Horse at Tunstall, near Catterick. "We'll probably have to apply in writing to be allowed to give her three cheers."

The discord is unfortunate, not least because Sam Smith's - particularly in the incredibly low price of its beers - has much to shout about.

The Bay Horse is a lovely little village pub, too, the locals friendly, the Old Brewery Bitter £1.21 a pint - about half the price of some nearby rivals - the steak and vegetable the best pub pie in living memory. Cracking chips, an' all.

Then the power failed, just as the sponge pudding was about to meet cowardy custard and the darts and dommies to start. "Bloody Sam Smith's," Tunstall chorused. "They haven't even paid the electricity bill now."

The Bay Horse, happily coal fired, is just five minutes from the A1 and open at lunchtimes. We knew it 25 years ago when it was run by an amiably bearded chap called Tim Richards who owned a vast collection of bottled beer (which he gave to the Burton Brewery museum) and (it's said) a single woolly cardigan which he wore until it wore out.

Now it's immaculately managed by Val and Dave Rushton, the bitter in exemplary nick, the blackboard above the fireplace offering home made meals mostly for under a fiver.

The pie had been cooked just before lights out, cut substantially from something the radius and thickness of a car wheel and filled to the brim of its delicious short crust pastry. It really was like what mother used to make.

The Boss had liver and onions - jolly good, she thought, and again about half the price of the neighbours. With another pint, the bill reached £10.46 the lot.

Wisely, the Rushtons say nowt, the lads at the bar happy to represent the unsilent majority. "No racing on Saturday afternoon is absolutely crazy," said someone else. "Rob Roy's not been in once since they took away the telly."

The village remained in darkness, the sponge pudding necessarily forewent. Even by candlelight, however, it was possible to discern a top rate local pub, and a remarkable bargain.

WE also had a swift lunch last week at the Swan and Three Cygnets, a two level Sam Smith's house by the river in Durham. It was quiet, too, probably quieter than the brewery would have liked.

You could hear punters ten yards away discussing the two o'clock at Sandown, lads in the other corner comparing crossword clues, lasses discussing (somewhat subjectively) who was the prettiest girl in Durham.

Talk about a change...

At least so far as juke box, piped music and televisual wallpaper are concerned, it's an initiative which the column would wholly applaud, were applause not to be on the prohibited list.

It was like pubs used to be, proper pubs, the atmosphere so relaxed that you wanted to preserve it in a jam jar for future reference.

The beer was £1.30, food from a fairly predictable carte included chicken and bacon wrap for £3.55. It was OK.

Though there's also been an outcry from other pubs about the new policy, the brewery's big noises have declined comment. Nor have they returned the column's calls.

Whether Sam's will play it again, only time and turmoil will tell.

REPORTS of Paul and Rose Conroy's departure from the Grey Horse at Consett may be premature, but not by much.

Last minute contract hitches should shortly be overcome. The pre-match visit two Saturdays ago may still have been a last farewell.

Buoyed by the brewery out the back, the ever-welcoming Conroys showed what could be made of an old town pub by doing basic things brilliantly. Beer and conversation were always of the finest, the fire bright burning in winter, food largely restricted to lunchtime sandwiches and what the Good Beer Guide calls "legendary" toasties at night.

In any case, folk might have eaten while wearing baseball caps. "It really vexes me, that," said Rose.

Outside, a bike was fastened to the can't-be-too-careful wall with the sort of chain which might have shackled half the cons in Alcatraz. Inside, the column held forth on sundry Saturday subjects of a valedictory nature.

A little brass plate with the inscription "Bullshit corner" sat on the wall above. It was coincidence, that's all.

WHEN last we had Sunday lunch at the Manor House in Ferryhill, one or two eyebrows were raised about the soup - the principal grumble that it was lukewarm.

The Manor House responded that it had been perfectly hot on arrival, but had cooled inversely to the column's passion for the Arsenal - a compelling counter attraction on big screen television in the bar.

This time there was no such problem. The Sunday lunchtime match was Oldham v Bolton, for one thing, and for another we didn't want a starter.

The Vicar and his lady wife, also in attendance, urged attention to the pudding, instead.

The most noticeable thing about the Manor is that it knows its market - and its market, traditional County Durham Sabbatarians, doesn't do light lunches.

Four or five roasts are all £5.50, or £4.50 for something labelled "small adult". Not many small adults in Ferryhill, either.

Accompanied by a couple of pints of Old Slapper - an Old Slapper from Bolton, as it happened - five of us dined both agreeably and immensely. The Yorkshire puddings were the approximate shape and size of the dish of Joddrell Bank telescope, great cauldrons of vegetables sitting breathless alongside.

Most of us piled high, the meat so helplessly buried beneath the extravagant accretion that the fire brigade might have been called in with heat seeking equipment in order to locate it.

The pudding - pancake, raspberries, ice cream - had been a favourite at the church Burns Night at the Manor a few days earlier. The Scots probably have a name for it.

A brisk walk to Chilton followed in order to work some of it off. Evensong must have been quite merry, an' all.

ONE of the old Bags, that is to say Bishop Auckland Grammar School girls, Elizabeth Armstrong has been in touch about last week's column on the Old Farmhouse, at Morton Palms near Darlington - listed in the phone book under "The".

Elizabeth, a music teacher with her own band, hoped 20-odd years ago to borrow some music from the colliery band in which her children played.

The librarian - "real character, lovely old man" - willingly agreed, handed over the catalogue and announced that everything was in alphabetical order. So it was.

"Most letters of the alphabet had blank pages but A and T were overflowing," recalls Elizabeth. Nor could he understand that A Bridge Too Far might be under B, or The Entertainer under E."

Needless to say, she adds, he could find music for the band at a stroke.

HIS e-mail headed "The best fish and chip shop", John Winterburn - who knows his ale, as well - writes about Cockerton Fisheries in Darlington.

"The quality and size of the fish is unbelievable. I thought I'd been given a whale and a bucket of chips."

There's a little five table caf out the back where fish, chips, bread and butter and tea - or Coke in the column's incorrigible case - are £3.60.

Up front, the kids queue for chip butties, in the back we sneakily construct a couple. There can be few greater delights. One of the best, for certain.

....and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew the definition of an archaeologist.

A man whose career is in ruins.