ON October 23 we wrote of a company called Sweet and Tasty, and specifically about its improbable offer of 500g - about 1lb - of beef dripping in a German beer mug.

It was also the outfit, it may be recalled, which for £50 offered four bottles of wine in an "exclusive wooden crate".

Sweet and Tasty's seductively colourful brochure kindled childhood bread and dripping memories for 67-year-old Brian Hunter in Sedgefield who - no stein unturned - ordered some forthwith.

Since then, however, the fat has hit the fire - not least on BBC Television's Watchdog programme last Wednesday.

(We are grateful for this update to Mrs Margaret Hunter, her old feller having falling asleep in front of the early evening telly.)

Sweet and Tasty sends unsolicited mail - junk mail - the accompanying leaflet principallly promoting continental chocolates. The company, with a PO box number in Potters Bar, also offers what appear to be fantastic "lucky number" prizes.

Dripping with milk and honey, as the Good Book would perhaps have put it.

Harry Day in Darlington contacted Watchdog after believing that he'd won £20,000. "I read it and read it again and again and couldn't find any fault in it. It was a dream come true for me."

Harry became so carried away, in fact, that he put money on a new car, paid for a holiday in Egypt - "I'd served there during the 1950s" - bought a camcorder and a microwave and put a deposit on a caravan.

He'd also been invited to buy some mail order chocolates. "I didn't dare stop ordering in case I lost the £20,000. Right up to date, I still getting confirmations through for the £20,000 but I never get the money."

He is not alone. Many other Watchdog viewers - and Brian Hunter, who was asleep in the armchair - were convinced they'd landed top prizes.

After receiving his beer mug, Brian believed his lucky number had won a bone china dinner service worth £1,490. Six weeks later, neither that nor his follow up order has arrived.

Hertfordshire trading standards department is actively on the case. "On first reading this letter it looks like someone has won £20,000," said spokesman Guy Pratt. "In reality they have been allocated a number, one of possibly many millions that have been entered into a draw.

"Its wording is very clever, to make it appear that the number - your number - has won £20,000.

"We have had an excessive number of complaints and inquiries for a company of this size."

Brian Hunter awaits his dinner service without optimism. "It looks like I should have read it even more carefully than I did," he concedes.

Though the brochure didn't contain a telephone contact point, a Potters Bar number was on the bill. Gadfly has tried it repeatedly. When not engaged - perhaps being dialled by concerned customers - it went unanswered. Watchdog, however, discovered that Sweet and Tasty, perhaps better named Bittersweet and Tasty - is the marketing arm of Swiss based GMS Trading.

For Brian Hunter there is some small consolation, however - though it cost £12.95, he did get his pound of fat. "It was," he insists, "delicious."

WE all make mistakes, of course, even the sign writers for the Great Daily of the North. This one was spotted by Brian Jefferson outside the village shop in Pierecebridge, near Darlington. "They mustn't read your column," he says.

THE Church of England has been debating whether clergy should be allowed to wear mufti - scruffti, some would say - when conducting services.

Perhaps unfortunately for the Rev Paul Allinson, no one seems to have mentioned ear rings.

Paul, once described in the At Your Service column as resembling a cross between Tony Blair and Rowan Atkinson, is the much admired priest-in-charge of Byers Green near Spennymoor and the Diocese of Durham's children's adviser. His left ear bears a very visible ring.

"Whatever the effect upon his ear," added AYS, "in Byers Green it hardly raises an eyebrow."

The General Synod's plain clothes debate happened two weeks ago. For the discussion which followed, on clergy stipends, Paul decided not to wear his dog collar.

The entire front page of that week's Church Times was occupied with a photograph of assembled Synod members, clergy air brushed or faded from the picture in an attempt to portray the growing influence of the laity.

Like Moses in the bullrushes, only Paul - open necked if not quite open mouthed - escaped annihilation. It caused him, he says in a letter to this week's Church Times, great delight.

"It just goes to show that, even in liturgical wear, you can't judge a book by its cover." In Byers Green, they've been saying that for years.

EAR rings might be viewed rather differently, of course, were the Vicar a woman - the pierce de resistance, perhaps.

Last Saturday's AYS column chronicled a service of celebration in Ripon Cathedral to mark the tenth anniversary of the vote to allow women priests: it prompted an e-mail from a male priest in the Middlesbrough area.

The area from the Tees to the Humber and approximately east of the A1 is in the diocese of York - parts of which, says our correspondent, appear "virtual no go areas" for female clergy.

It may not necessarily be so. Though the Bishop of Whitby, the Rt Rev Robert Ladds, declines personally to ordain women priests - it is because of "crossed swords" with Bishop Ladds that our correspondent requests anonymity - two women in his immediate patch were ordained in July by the Bishop of Hull.

Rachel Harrison serves in Skelton, east Cleveland, and Liz Kitching in Northallerton - two of approximately 55 women among York's 290 licensed clergy. Nineteen have "incumbent" status.

Intriguingly, however, the Archbishop of York - Dr David Hope, the Church of England's second most senior cleric - ordains deacons but no longer ordains priests.

Whilst it appears a way of side-stepping controversy, Dr Hope's spokesman, the Rev Rob Marshall, has not returned the column's call.

Mr Marshall runs a public relations company called 33rpm - a reference, apparently, to his initials and to his age when he started the firm. Some things may still take a little longer.

...and finally, the closing thought in last week's column - "a friend is someone who knows all about you but who likes you, anyway" - reminded Allan Smart in Sedgefield of one of Oscar Wilde's less well known aphorisms: "Your friends are God's apology for your relatives."

It was Wilde, of course, who wrote about being able to resist everything except temptation and who immortally defined a cynic as a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

On that note, to bed.

Published: 27/11/2002