FOR the strategists of Millbank, it was their worst nightmare. Labour had introduced powerful US-style elected mayors to run the country's town halls and energise local elections which were plagued by voter apathy.

But the result was not what they expected. In Middlesbrough, former detective Ray Mallon humiliated the ruling Labour group. In North Tyneside, political backyard of then Transport and Local Government Secretary Stephen Byers, Tory Chris Morgan strolled to victory.

The nadir came in Hartlepool - home of New Labour architect Peter Mandelson - where the voters elected a monkey to be the town's organ grinder.

The shockwaves led to the Government cooling its enthusiasm for elected mayors. After a decent interval, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott announced that local councils would now be free to decide whether to have elected mayors, without Government interference.

Although there are moves to force referenda about mayors in Newcastle and Gateshead, the Government's preferred means of increasing interest in local authorities is now regional government.

So, after three months in which the headlines have disappeared and their jobs have become yesterday's big idea, what difference have the mayors made?

In Middlesbrough, Mr Mallon seemed to hit the ground running. His legendary zero-tolerance police methods were replicated by a crackdown on local councillors' expenses and benefits.

A package of measures included "fairly substantial savings" by ordering the return of councillors' mobile phones and cutting their travel budgets.

After an initial tussle with the ruling Labour group, Mr Mallon appointed a six-member cabinet, which included his political rivals.

In June, he launched a strategic community strategy for the town, which aimed to involve all local organisations and neighbourhoods - including police, health, schools and voluntary organisations - to try to "pull in the same direction".

The move, it would seem, would win favour with Peter Mandelson, who has urged all of the new mayors to tackle crime and social exclusion as a top priority - pressing them to reach beyond their formal powers, acting as figureheads to help regenerate local economies.

In Mr Mandelson's own constituency, Stuart Drummond, otherwise known as H'Angus the Hartlepool United Football Club mascot, made a monkey of the established parties.

Initially dismissing his own candidacy as a joke, Mr Drummond has, it appears, set about his new role with relish and, having ditched the monkey suit, he now dresses much as his predecessors.

His initial election jape of promising free bananas for all schoolchildren has been replaced. He says that, after talks with the education department, he hopes to have "something in place by the new school term - not just bananas, but all fruit."

"The first three months has been a very steep learning curve," he says.

He has saved the Friarage Youth Centre from closure, and says: "Crime is a big problem in the town, and there is a general lack of public confidence in the police because of the goings-on of the last couple of years. We need to get the community more involved."

But if the independents on Teesside have largely reached a working arrangement with the opposition, on Tyneside the new mayor appears at loggerheads with his rivals.

North Tyneside's Chris Morgan says his major task has been to bring back the council "to a stable financial position".

He claims he has inherited a £6m deficit, and has started slashing away. The Window On The World festival has been axed, there has been a purge of senior directorships in the authority and cuts to several old people's centres.

The proposals produced open warfare with the full council earlier this week, blocking mayor Morgan's proposed package of more than £2m cuts as the first stage of an attempt to balance the budget.

This, one senses, is the first of many battles that the mayors will have to fight. Hartlepool, too, is dramatically in debt, and Mr Drummond needs to shave £1.2m off the council's £106m budget. His first proposal is to cut the number of councillors from 47 to 32, but that will only save £70,000-a-year - a drop in the ocean.

So stormy waters may lie ahead in Hartlepool.

In Middlesbrough, Mr Mallon is working alongside the Labour Party - but how long can that last? In a couple of years, Labour will be selecting its own candidate to fight Mr Mallon at the ballot box, so how long can it work hand-in-glove with him. Indeed, how long will the more fractious elements of the local party, which still see Mr Mallon as the real enemy, allow it to?

The first 100 days have passed surprisingly smoothly for the region's three mayors. After their surprise victories, they have found their ways around their huge town halls and got their feet firmly planted under the mayoral desks. But now the hard work and tough choices really begin.