Fantastic food and the smiliest of service... all that was missing was the violins.

SINCE last week's column, the region appears to have talked of little else than the name of the Woodentops' dog. Was it simply Spotty, as a docile Dalmatian might reasonably if unimaginatively expect, or did the Biggest Spotty Dog You Ever Did See also have a Sunday name, like Harold, or Herbert or Caius Petronius, perhaps?

The consensus leans simply towards Spotty, whatever the column might stubbornly have supposed, so swiftly we turn to The Dustbinmen instead.

It was an ITV comedy series in 1969-70, much loathed by Mrs Mary Whitehouse but so popular among less sensitive souls that the first six episodes all reached number one in the viewing figures.

Characters included Smellie Ibbotson, Heavy Breathing, Bloody Dalilah - the cleaning department inspector, played in the first series by John Woodvine and in the second and third by Brian Wilde - and Cheese and Egg, the foul mouthed foreman, carried off by Gateshead-born Bryan Pringle, a vicar's son.

Memories of him were stirred, mental dustbins emptied, by a sign outside the Cover Bridge Inn. "Ham and Eggs," it promised. "As seen on TV."

It should at once be said, however, that no matter how telegenic the ham and eggs, how audience friendly the environment, the star of last Wednesday night's show was Jackie Thirsk, barmaid.

The Cover Bridge, a couple of miles outside Middleham in North Yorkshire, would be a very good pub even without her. With her, it is quite wonderful.

Parts date from around 1670 - parts of the pub, not Jackie - and may have changed little. The family friendly, mind-your-head bar is crannied and convivial, wood settled and coal fired, with a newspaper cutting on the wall about Madonna's new found liking for Timothy Taylor's Landlord - the headline writer called her Madge, apparently intimates do - and a poster about the Wensleydale licensees' annual charity bike ride next Wednesday..

Is Mr Clive Wrest still flying around dressed as Superman, or has he at last been grounded?

The lounge may be a smidgeon posher, but no less informally welcoming. Out the back, a serene beer garden and play area overlook the eponymous (and hump backed) bridge beneath which a horse like creature called a kelpie is said to lie in wait of unsuspecting fishermen.

To be by that river on such a summer evening, with a pint of good ale and the promise of supper, may be very heaven. To be running the bar on an unexpectedly busy night may be close to the opposite, though it would have been impossible for a moment to suppose so.

Jackie was brilliant: dextrous, diligent, delightful, at once both friendly and funny, a picture of perpetual motion yet still prepared to wait in order to top up the glass, thus adding to the 100 per cent mark she had already gained.

There was Landlord, aforesaid, Black Sheep, a pub special brewed by Hambleton and something from the Anglo-Dutch brewery called Kletswater which doubtless is an acquired taste.

The John Smith's Smooth font had a cute little model on the top of Brian, the Magic Roundabout snail, but not even that could make it look attractive.

We ate in the agreeable little dining room at the side, backs to a noisy little contraption known as the PDQ and used for sorting credit cards, or something.

"Others get violins," said Jackie. "You get the PDQ,"

The leek and potato soup was outstanding, as far removed from a catering tin as Middleham is from Middlesbrough. The Boss relished the vegetable korma, among five or six vegetarian dishes which also included something called vegetable and cheese crispy crunches.

Foregoing the ham and eggs (as seen on television), we ordered a meaty and manifestly home made chicken, ham and mushroom pie (£6.75) with state of the art chips and good vegetables and salad and potatoes as alternatives. Since Jackie had also proclaimed herself to be an incorrigible chip burglar, we took some through in a paper napkin.

She pronounced them delicious. "You'd think I'd never had any before," she added.

It was proper pub food, expertly executed, the only drawback the practice of flooding the whole lot in gravy before it reaches the table. If it is a Yorkshire habit, as seems likely, the Tykes should reconsider it. Don't the Ridings have a navy? Can't they send in the gravy boats?

Around 1980, memory suggests, locals were so reluctant to leave the Cover Bridge that the licensee - a great dales character called Jim Carter - not only had his licence revoked but was refused permission to sleep on the premises, necessitating much nocturnal ladder climbing.

A quarter of a century later, it is entirely easy to see why anyone would still be reluctant to leave. All right, Jackie? Oh, definitely.

l The Cover Bridge Inn, East Witton, near Middleham (01969 623250.) Accommodation, open all day. Meals seven days, midday-2pm and 6.30-9pm. Almost impossible for wheelchairs.

THE beer festival at the Grand in Bishop Auckland seemed to go very well, owner Simon - a man who clearly cares about his ale - in the fourth year of a mission to proselytise that part of south Durham from its keg consuming ways.

When he was married a few weeks back, Simon even laid on Old Legover, from the Daleside Brewery in Harrogate, to toast the happy occasion.

Some things take a little longer, however, which may explain why half the regulars still seemed to be supping a mixture of lager, cider and blackcurrant known thereabouts as diesel. It's probably best not to wonder why.

THE Complete Bartenders Guide has arrived (Carlton, £14.95) listing everything from Rusty Nail (Scotch and Drambuie) to Scarborough Fair (Plymouth gin and chambery with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, a la Simon and Garfunkel. Diesel, for some reason, doesn't seem to be mentioned at all.

CATHEDRALS in Durham had a beer festival that weekend, too, the highlight of which may again have been the beatific barmaid, and her smile whilst pulling a pint of Wicked Wanda.

There were also cocktails like Sex on the Floor and Fake Screaming Orgasm, but probably no connection.

Cathedrals is a bar, coffee shop and restaurant complex over the wall from the prison, opened a few years ago by Richard Lazenby who made a mint from mustard, and things. It's in new hands.

We went on Sunday lunchtime, the high ceilinged bar so thinly populated and so generally melancholy - save for that smile, the Wanda of the age - that after a single pint we adjourned to the coffee shop instead.

The waitress there was personable, too. Tell them "please", said The Boss, when urging the kitchen to be heavy handed with the anchovies in her chicken Caesar salad.

"Please," wrote the waitress on her little pad. It worked. Manners cost nothing.

It's now coffee shop by day, Caf Venice - pizza, pasta - at night. Upstairs, the "fine dine" restaurant has become Peelers Bistro, suggesting that the "fine" might have been as in £100 and licence endorsed.

The coffee shop menu was pretty broad church: big breakfast, ultimate breakfast, eggs Balmoral, Benedict and possibly Arnold Bennett, salads, hot and cold sandwiches, wraps, pannis - which may be the same as panninis, but no good asking here.

We both had tomato soup (£2.40): hot, substantial, enjoyable and with a slightly roasted flavour. The Caesar salad arrived in a bowl the size of those in which grandma used to make the Christmas cake and we bairns would fight frantically to scrape out.

We had a chicken tortilla (£4.75) with red onion and mango chutney, bits of salad and a pennorth of crisps. It was fine, though the tortilla lacked much flavour. Good coffee, too.

The horse meat baguette might have been worrying, because that's wha t The Boss thought it said, though actually it was "House mega baguette."

"My eyes are going," she said, though hopefully they still have a long way to travel. It really would be the blind leading the blind, would that.

EVERY day's a beer festival at the Victoria, a veritable treasure trove of a pub a couple of hundred yards up the road out of Durham city.

Michael Webster, landlord for 28 years, had just won Durham CAMRA's pub of the year award for the third time and was properly pleased; The Boss, who'd never been before, was utterly enthralled.

We had a couple of pints of Titanic, to which the old joke may be affixed. As previously we have observed, it is the region's best boozer.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew why mummy owl was worried about her son.

Because he no longer seemed to give a hoot.

Published: 03/06/2003