I hate the man who loves carpets, me

Last week the nurse engaged him in clinical conversation about the sort of things which seemed to make his blood boil. Ken mentioned the usual ills - bad beer, politicians, short arms, long pockets and so on.

The nurse had irritations of her own. What really made her blood pressure soar, she told him, was the local radio commercial for Frank's Factory Flooring in Darlington and elsewhere.

Feeling the pulse of the region, these columns have been on about that abominable ad for ages - the asinine android whose breathless balderdash ends with the line: "I love carpets, me."

Eating Owt turned an unsympathetic ear on February 6, 2001. "When this column is invited to be Prime Minister in the next hung parliament, we shall not only proscribe local commercial radio in public places but sanction the slow and symbolic evisceration of the gentleman who every ten minutes announces 'I love carpets, me'."

Other columns have variously described him as an ineffable oaf, a jingle jangler and a besom-brained buffoon. It was one thing, said Eating Owt on February 20, 2001, to have local commercial radio between consenting adults in private, quite another to have such a monstrous intrusion in public.

Even the At Your Service column joined the chorus. "The other advantage of BBC local radio," we said on August 17 last year, "is that someone bellowing 'I love carpets, me' isn't interrupting normal service with every other breath."

Yet still they tread that indescribably irksome path, in the hope of making a pile. It sounds awfully like Mike "the mouth" Elliott, radio presenter and general North-East big noise, though that has apparently been denied.

Mr Billy Connolly's self-destructive commercials for the National Lottery were recently voted the most irritating on television. Can there be any question that radio's most repellent are for Frank's Factory Flooring, the one we love to hate?

STILL advertising, Paul Dobson in Bishop Auckland reports that his local Stationery Box has a poster in the window. It's for "stationary."

YET another commercial break, there's recently been on advertisement on Tyne Tees Television promoting the benefits of advertising on that very medium.

"It has a map with a very large River Tees across the middle, which could be the result of recent flooding," reports Chris Eddowes in Hartlepool.

What really puzzles her, however, is the large island that's appeared in the middle of the Tees estuary.

"It wasn't there when we were down at Seaton the other day. Is it like Brigadoon - or do they know something about tidal shifts which we don't?"

WE all make mistakes, of course. Janet Murrell in Durham, one of our bifocal readers, sends a cutting from the banking correspondent of The Independent. "The move allowed Britain's two million home owners who live on flood planes to breathe a sigh of relief...." They're probably useful in the Australian bush fires, she says.

POT shot and all that, last week's column wondered about the ancient game of marbles, invented by the Pharaohs of Egypt, and about its terminology.

How many imagined, for example, that the phrases "knuckle down" and "playing for keeps" both owe their etymology to marbles?

In Co Durham it was simply marbles or muggles, in Sunderland "alleys" and in Wakefield and similarly southern places "taws".

They had penkers in Durham but iron benkers on Wearside. At the Greyhound Inn in Tinsley Green, Sussex - any further south and you fall off the end of the earth - they claim the world "royal taws" championship.

Several readers have kindly offered memories, others would be welcomed. There'll be more next time.

Last week's column also asked if anyone could recall Lady Docker's misspent time playing marbles: Lynn Briggs in Darlington was too young to remember but has been sedulously surfing, nonetheless.

One website referred to Lady Docker as a "resident bitch" but was talking about a dog show; the Online Dictionary of Playground Slang claims that marbles became world famous "after Lord and Lady Docker gave it social cache during the 1950s."

Not even Lynn's researches, however, can come up with the product which a few years ago claimed to "be as thick as a docker's sandwich. Anyone remember?

SIR Bernard Docker was the chairman of Daimler, Norah Collins, who became his lady wife, had been a dancing girl at the Caf de Paris.

"Throughout the 1950s," records one of Lynn's sites, "the gracelessly gaudy pair entertained the nation with a succession of fancy cars, mink coats, champagne receptions and the magnificent Shemara, an 860 ton yacht with a crew of 35."

It was, adds the website, conspicuous consumption on a massive scale. "Whilst people on the Clapham omnibus shook their heads in disbelief, they were somehow grateful for the chance to wonder at the glamour and unabashed extravagance they had long been denied.

"Lady Docker was the real show stopper, Sir Bernard the complacent supplier of her far from petty cash."

Her Daimlers were gold plated, her chauffeur was called Pratley. She invited miners onto the Shemara - none from the Durham coalfield, were there? - and entertained them with the best bubbly.

As times changed they sold the yacht and retired comparatively quietly to Jersey. Lady Norah might have lost some of her cache, but she never lost her marbles.

WHILST perhaps not unabashed extravagance, there seemed something pretty glamorous about the wedding a couple of weeks ago of polar explorer Robert Swan to the radiant Nicole Gallagher.

The ceremony was at St Mary's church, Wycliffe, near Barnard Castle, the reception at the swish Morritt Arms Hotel, nearby.

But what, asks Tony in the taxi office, was the gold braided uniform which the intrepid groom is wearing?

Number ones, for certain, and a bit like that German officer in the classic Dad's Army episode who demands Pike's name.

Can anyone find their way to identifying the explorer's rig?

...and finally, we are probably grateful to Pete Winstanley, near Chester-le-Street, for asking where Saddam Hussein keeps his CDs.

In a rack