GEORGE W Bush, it is widely but not unanimously reported, didn't pour tomato ketchup onto his chips at the Dun Cow in Sedgefield but "dunked" one in t'other.

John Burton, Tony Blair's estimable agent, insists - the sauce! - that the president didn't use ketchup at all.

We'd always assumed "dunked" to be immersed in Geordie, a consensual if slightly risque relationship between a ginger biscuit and a cup of tea and with undertones of coitus interruptus.

Both the Oxford and Chambers dictionaries decree otherwise. Chambers supposes the origin to be German - "tunken"; to dip - the Oxford that it is American: "to dip (bread, cake etc) into a beverage or other liquid".

The Oxford even quotes a perhaps slim 1919 volume called Some Notes on Dunking: "It should be remembered that the really fastidious dunker never burns his thumb."

The late Scott Dobson, that great pickler of the Geordie tongue, was unable to lend his support, though his English/Geordie glossary does offer "dunsh him" - a sporting term meaning to tackle one's opponent.

Some may also recall the once familiar car sticker "Divvent dunsh us, we're Geordies," reflected in the Oxford's definition: "To strike or push hard with a short, rapid blow".

Debunked or bedunked? As the President himself would probably aver, it is one of life's great semi-submersibles.

DUNKIN' Donuts is an American fast food franchise. The first was opened in 1950 by Bill Rosenberg, described on the company's website as a man of "limited education".

Now there are 4,000 Dunkin' Donuts in America and another 1,300 around the world, offering 52 types of doughnut, 12 different coffees and serving two million customers a day.

There appear to be none in England, though Allied-Domecq - which bought the company in 1990 - hopes to promote something called Baskin-Robbins.

Whether George Bush dunks doughnuts we have no idea, but the late William Rosenberg tried it and is now revered as the Father of Franchising. What might be called a lucky dip.

ON major occasions like the Bush visit, newspapers make use of what's called a "pool", which should not be confused with a lick of tomato ketchup.

A pooled report is one made available by a selected correspondent to all other newsdesks. The Dun Cow digest insisted that Bush had "dunked" his chips.

The Mirror changed the quote to "dipped" - not only rather curious for one of the more populist papers but reminiscent of something that happened about 15 years ago.

At Newcastle Crown Court, a defendant accused of an early hours burglary at a North Shields pub pleaded in mitigation that he'd inadvertently stumbled into what drinking folk call a lock-in.

"Ah walked into the bar and it was heavin'. They gave us a right howkin'," explained the unfortunate accused.

Though the Tyneside papers reported him faithfully, the Echo considered that the more genteel folk in the south of the region would benefit from a translation. "They gave me a good hiding," we said.

HEAD stuck over a worldwide parapet, the Dun Cow took a most fearful howking on Saturday from the Telegraph's combative restaurant critic.

The Observer wasn't too fussed, either. "It's a nice enough little place if you like your pubs to feature wax festooned bottles, aberrant apostrophes and a sartorial fondness for what can only be called slacks," wrote their man on the chips and gravy train. Normally we would defend the place - did so, indeed, in yesterday's Eating Owt. But aberrant apostrophes? What possessed Bush and Blair to be seen there?

AGAIN down Apostrophe Avenue, last week's column pointed out - via John Constable in Butterknowle, County Durham - that broadcaster John Humphrys had been enraged to receive from the vice chancellor of one of our better universities a letter addressed to "John Humphreys".

We missed the point, or rather the apostrophe.

What really annoyed him - as Susan Kennedy in Spennymoor and John Constable himself point out - was that the letter was addressed to John Humphry's.

"That," says Susan, "is why he was so appalled."

Chris Eddowes in Hartlepool not only draws attention to a website called SPAM - Society for the Prevention of Apostrophe Misuse - but reports that at least one other person in Hartlepool shares her concern.

"You used to be an English teacher," said the doctor's receptionist - who might possibly have been a doctors' receptionist - "What's the rule on apostrophes?"

What confused the GPs and queues, as well it might, was what to do with surnames which end with a single 's'. Though the Echo style for Newcastle United's home ground is St James' Park, for example, at least one of us feels it should be St James's.

It's very perplexing; one of those little things which gives the apostrophe a bad name.

BACK in Sedgefield, to which the world and his first lady beats a path, we were approached at a dinner by Mrs June Chaytor, originally from Oldham.

Ken, her husband, is a Trimdon lad. They met when he played football for Oldham Athletic around 1960.

June had seen recent references hereabouts to Oldham Mumps, the mill town's main railway station, and wished to point out that on the approach to Mumps Bridge is a sign proclaiming: "Welcome to Oldham, home of the Tubular Bandage."

Peter Sixsmith, in Shildon, insists that at the portals of Chapel-en-le-Frith, another sign extols the Derbyshire town as home of the brake lining.

Signs and wonders, are there any other improbable claims to fame?

...and finally, John Plowman in Richmond, North Yorkshire, sends a glossy booklet called Scenic Days Out, published by Renault and delivered with his Radio Times.

For some reason, there's an acute accent over the 'e' in scenic, but it's pages 25-26 - a graphic invitation to visit the site of the Battle of Culloden, near Inverness - to which he calls particular attention.

Over 1,000 men died in under an hour, Bonnie Prince Charlie fled and tartan and bagpipes were subsequently banned.

The magazine also carries a rather splendid colour photograph, looking over the rooftops towards a tower and what might well have been a battlefield.

One problem, however - the pretty picture isn't of Culloden at all, it's of Richmond where local MP John Yorke erected the "Culloden" tower to mark the victory of Hanoverian over Jacobite. "I believe it practically highlights the pitfalls of doing an Internet search on a subject with which you are unfamiliar," says John. Whatever the reason, heads should again roll over Culloden.

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