'HOW many acres does Tony Blair have?" asked the Assistant Chief of Staff of the White House.

According to various sightings, this chap, with up to 27 advisors, has been swanning around Sedgefield and South Durham for several weeks, eyeing up all angles of all acres in readiness for his boss's visit next week.

At one point, he was apparently spotted musing about whether you could land a helicopter on Palace Green in the centre of Durham City. He decided, though, that because this "ain't no ordinary helicopter", that it would probably blow all the windows in, and all the tiles off, the quaint bit of heritage that faces onto the Green.

Instead, he turned his attention to Mr Blair's residence as somewhere which might be able to accommodate a presidential entourage which will probably number about 600 people.

"So how many acres does Tony Blair have?" he asked Mr Blair's people in Trimdon.

To the Assistant Chief of Staff, it must have seemed an entirely reasonable question. Last year, his boss took Mr Blair to his private Prairie Chapel Ranch which covers 1,600 acres of Texas. It is so large that Mr Bush drives around it in a pickup truck and allows a neighbour to run several hundred head of cattle across it.

Mr Blair can, of course, counter this in acreage terms, as Chequers, the official Prime Ministerial residence in Buckinghamshire, sits in a 1,000-acre estate.

But when the Assistant Chief of Staff asked about the size of Mr Blair's Myrobella estate in Trimdon, he was met with bemused expressions.

Eventually came the reply: "Well, he's got a small back garden with a shrubbery in it."

It would be appropriate if Mr Bush liked shrubs.

At Myrobella, there's a little lawn with just enough room for a child's football net. And then there's the shrubbery, and it is here in the shrubbery that Myrobella earned its distinctive and unusual name - a name whose mysterious lack of meaning has long troubled me.

But next week, The Northern Echo publishes the biography of John Burton - footballer, folk musician and Tony Blair's influential agent - and it contains the answer.

In the book, John says of the house Mr Blair bought in 1984: "Contrary to popular belief, Myrobella was never a colliery manager's house but always a family home built in 1898 for the Carters. Its name comes from the Myrobella plum trees which still grow in the garden."

The Myrobella plum (Prunus cerasifera) bears small fruit that look like cherries, although the Carter family may also have planted them for their showy, purple leaves. The name derives from the Greek myrobalan which means an ointment (myro) made from the plum-like acorns of the palm tree (balan).

Plums have been known in Asia since forever, but probably arrived on these shores from Damascus in Syria when the 12th century crusaders returned home.

However, should Mr Bush drop into Myrobella for tea, it will be inadvisable to say to him that there are Middle Eastern invaders lurking in the shrubbery.