"IT'S a fiver" say the advertisements. "Legal tender and available now."

Quite true. But this £5 coin is also big, heavy, clumsy and almost impossible to get rid of. One tendered in Darlington arts centre last week went back and forth across the bar three times during the evening, until one of the last customers was lumbered with it.

Next day, it was offered as payment in a shop on the outskirts of the town. A very dubious shopkeeper took the customer's telephone number "in case the bank won't accept it".

Indcidentally, it is being called, in the Royal Mint's advertisements, "the NEW Queen Victoria £5 crown". Crown? Wasn't half a crown 2s6d (12p), making a crown five shillings? Ah well, it probably won't be long before it takes a fiver to buy what five bob used to do. A packet of 20 cigarettes is almost there now.

Bye bye, Cellnet

Further to last week's note about the naming of Darlington FC's new stadium, rapidly emerging next to the town's bypass, Spectator read an interesting piece in a Sunday newspaper business section about the ongoing battle of supremacy in the mobile phone market.

Apparently BT is losing out to Orange in the battle for new subsribers and a big re-think is underway about the branding of the BT's mobile services which are currently marketed under the name of BT Cellnet.

The word is that the name Cellnet smacks of the early days of mobile telephony and doesn't have the cachet of Orange. The word is Cellnet will be dumped in favour of something more trendy by the end of the year.

So what happens to Middlesbrough's Cellnet Riverside stadium. The club could shortly have more than a just new manager.