IT was Dick Emery, was it not, who coined the phrase "Ooooh, you are offal, but I like you." Much the same thought may have occurred to Mrs Doreen Johnston upon reading last week's musings on the tripe of a lifetime.

Particularly we had recalled United Cattle Products' celebrated emporia in Lancashire. "What memories you conjure up," writes 80-year-old Mrs Johnston from Acklam, Middlesbrough.

Grahame Lardner, her father, was manager of the UCP restaurant near Blackpool Tower from 1933-39. "The factories used to empty out for trips there, parties by arrangement," she recalls.

"At the front of each restaurant was a little tripe shop with horrible coloured things like pigs' feet and cow heel."

Her late husband - "a proper Blackpool lad" - cooked tripe at home, which she'd eat with vinegar at supper time. "Quite nice," she says, though family loyalty persuades no greater enthusiasm than that.

Her father then opened his own Blackpool restaurant - the Windsor, named after the Duke. When last she was over there it was the Majestic and still going along royally.

Lese-majesty, however, there were no tripe and onions to be had.

PAUL Dobson, now in Bishop Auckland, recalls lunch at the UCP restaurant in Oldham before a Sunderland match in the 1970s.

"We had a good laugh at the menu, which basically consisted of every part of a cow, sheep or pig cooked in every way imaginable."

Paul had pigs' trotters, served by the same black and white starched waitresses we mentioned last week. "I've had tripe since, boiled in onions and milk at home, and pickled on darts and doms night at the Lonsdale in Jesmond before Jesmond became THE place for a big night out."

He preferred the boiled version. ""Its pickled cousin," adds Paul, "felt like it wasn't quite dead."

THOUGH they can hardly be blamed for the inclement weather, it is feared that Stockton Cricket Club may earlier this month have hosted its last first class cricket match. Perhaps, suggests an eagle eyed correspondent, the Durham County committee found the sign outside the tea hut as hard to swallow as a plate of tripe. "Pies and pea's," it said.

FROM a lot of tripe to Winnie the Pooh - the preferred book, indeed the only book, in adventurer Pen Hadow's Arctic survival kit.

Until he was rescued yesterday, poor Hadow may have more time than he had wished to become reacquainted with the escapades of the Bear of Very Little Brain, and with Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger, Kanga and Roo.

Many will know that the Pooh stories and poems were written by A A Milne for his son Christopher Robin, he who went down with Alice and her band; fewer realise how the bear came by his name.

During World War I, troops from Winnipeg, Manitoba, were travelling to eastern Canada when Lt Henry Colebourn bought for $20 a female black bear cub whose mother had been killed by a hunter.

Colebourne named her Winnipeg, or Winnie for short.

Winnie became the mascot of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade. When they came to England, the bear came, too. When the brigade was posted to France, Colebourn gave Winnie on long term loan to London Zoo.

She stayed until her death in 1934, visited regularly by Milne and his son who often, it is said, spent time in the cage with her.

Christopher Robin's teddy bear, unimaginatively named Edward, became Winnie instead. Milne based most of the other characters on his son's stuffed toys. The 100 Acre Wood was their estate in Sussex; Pooh was among the resident swans.

Four Pooh books, including two of poems, were published in the 1920s. More than 70 million, in countless languages, have since been sold.

Assisted immensely by E H Shepard's acclaimed illustrations, the Russian version, Vinnie Pookh, sold 3.5m copies in 1985; Winnie Ille Pu, a Latin translation, was the first foreign language text in the US best sellers' list.

Pen Hadow, clearly, has been no less captivated. Alone amid the ice, Winnie the Pooh may be his idea, if not his hope, of heaven.

THOUGH unable to recall the author, last week's column retrieved the quotation about heaven being pate de foie gras with trumpets. Many readers knew better.

It was Sydney Smith, a 19th century clergyman and essayist who also (as Martin Snape in Durham recalls) imagined an epicure saying: "God cannot harm me; I have dined today."

Smith further reckoned that no two ideas were more inseparable than beer and Britannia, and would therefore be forever welcomed at the column's esteemed local in Darlington.

Chris Eddowes in Hartlepool proposes two visions of heaven: in Spring, bluebells in an old beech wood with a stream running down to the distant glistening sea and in winter a big arm chair, a compulsive book (Winnie?) and an inexhaustible supply of good chocolate.

Tom Purvis recalls Helen Jane Waddell's view: "Would you think heaven to be so small a thing, As a lit window on the hills at night."

Tom's own thought of heaven is a rather bigger call: "A win of any kind for Sunderland."

BACK down Acronym Avenue, Rob Williams at Tyne Tees Television recalls during his wet eared days on the West Bromwich Midland Chronicle and Free Press (incorporating the Oldbury Gazette) receiving regular reports from the SAS. They were, of course, the Staffordshire Aquatic Society: who dares swims.

...and finally, a Durham reader (who otherwise seeks anonymity) reports that he has received a special offer on lingerie from Jopling's, in Sunderland.

Probably, he supposes, thousands of other upstanding North-East gentlemen have been subject to similarly attempted seduction.

The letter was followed swiftly by an apology from Mr Martin Leathley, a Jopling's executive. They'd used the wrong database, says Mr Leathley.

"Knickers," says our reader (or not, as the case may be.)

l We're now swanning off for a few days with the thought that those who suppose heaven to be inconceivable might like to consider Shildon (as is now the case) without a single Labour councillor at town or district level. Well done, Coun Huntingdon. The column with Very Little Brain returns on June 11.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/news/ gadfly.html

Published: ??/??/2003