'NO presents, no bonuses, no humbug of any sort." But via a long chain of supermarkets, a famous North-East name is mixed up in the battle to buy Safeway.

Hinton's was founded by Amos Hinton in Middlesbrough in 1871. He was born in Hertfordshire in 1844 and served in shops in Waltham Cross and Batley before arriving in Middlesbrough in 1862. He found work as a journeyman in John Birks' shop in South Street.

In 1865, he went to London for a year to gain experience as a butterman and a provisionhand before returning and entering into partnership with Mr Birks.

In 1871, when the old shopkeeper went to stack shelves in the great supermarket in the sky, Amos bought the business.

The population of Middlesbrough was exploding, and Hinton's exploded with it. By the time of Amos' death in 1919, he owned seven stores on Teesside - all of them opening until 9pm on a Friday and midnight on a Saturday, and none of them offering gimmicks or humbuggery.

Two more generations of Hintons took on the chain, expanding all the time. The store in Bondgate, Darlington, opened in 1922 and became the company's first self-service supermarket in 1954.

Other stores included Saltburn (1924), Blackwell (1955), Bishop Auckland (1959), Northallerton (1960) and Barnard Castle and Richmond (1964).

In 1984, Hinton's 55 stores (plus its 30 Winterschladen off-licences) were sold for £25m to the Argyll Group which consisted of Allied, Presto, Liptons and Galbraith supermarkets. In 1986 all Hinton's became Prestos.

In 1987, Argyll bought Safeway - an American chain which had started in Britain in 1962 in Bedford. All Prestos became Safeways. And today it looks likely that Hinton's which became Presto which became Safeway will soon become Morrison.

LAST week's column wandered into the dangerous territory of the four-letter word and ended up at 'naff', a word famously used by Princess Anne in 1982 to tell reporters where to go.

Last week, it was suggested that it was derived from the American military wartime acronym SNAFU. It may equally, I've since learned, come from US homosexual slang explaining, indelicately, what a heterosexual man is not available for.

A Northern dialect word - a naffhead or a naffin is, apparently, a blockhead or simpleton - which is first recorded in an 1876 glossary of Whitby words where "niffy-naffy" meant "inconsequential or stupid".

Last week's column ended on the word "fucivore". Like a carnivore eats meat, a fucivore eats seaweed. Which prompted Pete Winstanley, a fucivorist from Durham, to explain: "The crispy seaweed served in Chinese restaurants isn't actually seaweed, but deep-fried shredded spring cabbage.

"But laver bread, served for breakfast in Wales, isn't bread, but seaweed; and carrageenan, or Irish Moss, isn't moss, but another seaweed (chondrus crispus). It's used for clearing beer, and as an emulsifier and jelling agent (E407) in desserts, milk-shakes, etc.

"So we're more fucivorous than is generally realised!"

THERE was a fantastic slip of the finger in last week's 7Days: