OTHER than a journalist, what do you call someone who collects insults? There's a chap in Stanhope who does, and he's just called Jamie Tucknutt.

Jamie got in touch after last week's column on classic put-downs. One of his favourites, he says, concerned an invitation to Winston Churchill to attend one of George Bernard Shaw's plays.

"Bring a friend - if you've got one," wrote Shaw on an accompanying note.

Winnie regretted a prior engagement but sent a note of his own asking for tickets for the second performance - "if there is one".

Theatre critic Walter Kerr once said of an actor that he had delusions of adequacy; Groucho Marx observed: "I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception."

Bishop Auckland lad Bill Taylor, long a journalist on the Toronto Star in Canada, probably regretted that his travel column was tagged "the peripatetic Bill Taylor".

Probably thinking that the poor lad should have stopped at home, an aggrieved reader observed that he wasn't peripatetic but peripathetic. "I've never forgotten," says Bill.

WHAT of the childhood riposte: "The same to you with knobs on"?

We mention it because last Saturday's At Your Service column, from the Norman church at Husthwaite, between Thirsk and Easingwold, observed that the 17th century box pews also had knobs on. They were little wooden protuberances, apparently to deter the feckless from falling asleep during the sermon.

If this is the origin of the familiar bat back, neither the splendid Nigel Rees nor even Mr John Briggs - who surfs the Internet as lightly as others skim stones - can fathom it.

At risk of further abuse, can anyone put a handle on "The same to you with knobs on"?

QUOTING the Rev Tjarda Murray, Darlington's Dutch born United Reformed Church minister, last week's column also claimed that the Dutch knew a hammer as an "English screwdriver".

When he lived down south, says Peter Winstanley - now near Durham - it was a Birmingham screwdriver. "I suppose from our myopic perspective, Birmingham was in the industrial north."

It was also Pete who three years ago, sent in the philosophical conundrum that if you hit the nail on the head you're going to miss the point - an aphorism, we said at the time, worthy of Sam Spudikins.

It puzzled him then, and does yet. Sam Spudikins was a potato caricature whose weekly wise words appeared in The Young Soldier, bought from the rattling Salvation Army man in the Red Lion.

Young Soldier ceased publication in 1996, something called Kids Alice taking its place. The only Internet reference to poor, forgotten Sam Spudikins is that from the Gadfly column three years ago.

Whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap.

ABOUT the time that Sam Spudikins was deracinated, mission statements sprouted up.

Not to be confused with the missionary position, which is something altogether different, a mission statement is a summary of what an organisation is all about, meant to be pertinent and pithy but usually patronising and pompous. A gentleman in Redcar has sent the statement from the Independent Examiner's Office of the Child Support Agency.

"Judging the issues by not taking sides," it says, and we're still trying to work out how on earth it's possible.

WHAT are on the Internet are sherbet fountains - £2.77 for ten, reports Paul Dobson in Bishop Auckland, though he fears a degree of "burstage" in the post.

We almost mentioned sherbet fountains last week, when discussing liquorice - or Spanish, as sometimes it was known hereabouts - and Mike Heaviside also recalled their coruscating delights from his 1950s childhood around Cockfield.

Sometimes known as a sherbet dab, he says, the container was yellow and about five inches long by an inch wide at the opening.

"By either name, I remember the spitting and spluttering when you sucked a bit too much into your mouth."

Paul Dobson, who still tops up the fountain head at the corner shop, reckons the quality of the liquorice isn't what it was - "especially as you have to bite the top off to get started and that tends to reseal the hole you've just made."

Usually he gives up and pours the sherbet straight into his mouth. "I used to tip it into my hand and lick it off," admits Paul, "but that's probably a bit childish."

Other sweet toothed adults can find sherbet fountains, boiled sweets, bubble gum and much more on www.AQuarterOf.co.uk

AMONG the column's success stories in 2004 has been the attempt to rekindle interest in Doggart's, the department store which began life in Bishop Auckland and had 14 branches throughout the North-East.

Folk still talk fondly of the shops and of Doggarts' clubs, recall the old firm family philosophy that if there were a counter, there should be someone behind it.

Actions speaking as they do, the shop talk has now been taken up by Bishop Auckland town centre manager Derek Toon.

"When I first took this job, my wife said how wonderful it would be if we could bring back Doggart's," he says.

In partnership with Groundwork West Durham, they've employed a researcher, hope to fund a professional interviewer - not this one - to mount a Doggart's exhibition in the town's Discovery Centre and to recreate Doggart's window.

Many former Doggart's staff have already been traced. Most, says Mr Toon, remark how much they loved working there.

The recreated window, containing the sort of things which the stores used to sell and not the sort of thing which many a bibulous braggart has threatened to bare there, will at first be in the Discovery Centre but eventually, they hope, on the original Market Place site.

Sandy Doggart, grandson of the founder, has agreed to open - as it were - the window. Derek Toon, (01388) 606764, would much welcome further memories.

...and finally, life's demands meant that we failed to make the switch-on on Saturday of Willington's first public Christmas tree for 25 years.

It was prompted, they reckon, by a note in a Gadfly past that the only Christmas decoration in Willington was the blue star outside the Market Tavern (and even that's gone now).

The three and attendant festive finery have been promoted by the Willington Community Partnership, also responsible for the £420,000 Town Green and £650,000 Jubilee Meadows developments.

"Already the same cynics who for years have bemoaned that Willington has no festive cheer are now lambasting the council for wasting money," says Partnership chairman Brian Myers - but it hasn't cost the ratepayer or council taxpayer a penny.

Joy to the world.

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