LOVERS of Carry On movies will perhaps have mixed feelings about developments within the hospitals of South Durham.

The local health trust, which runs Darlington Memorial and Bishop Auckland General, is fully signed up to the government's new idea of re-introducing old-fashioned matrons to hospital wards.

Except, of course, they won't be old fashioned in the sense of the commanding and overwhelming figures immortalised by the late and great Hattie Jacques' portrayal of matron in the Carry On Doctor film. Just a look from the redoubtable Ms Jacques would be enough to turn the most junior doctor, and patient, to stone.

The new matrons will be, to paraphrase the words of the trust's director of nursing, thoroughly modern care managers, setting high standards of clinical judgment and taking a great pride in the NHS.

But hang on, isn't that what the old-style matrons used to be? As is so often the case in presentation-obsessed Britain, we will just have to wait and see what the reality will be.

Remember that floor

THOSE veterans of the wicked parody and brilliant cover version, the Barron Knights, asked the audience in Darlington Civic theatre last Friday if anyone had seen them more than 30 years ago, when they appeared at La Bamba.

From the chorus of "Yes!" there were many who remembered when night clubs were not just for the young and semi-naked; when they had restaurants, casinos and major names in cabaret. La Bamba in Grange Road, Darlington, was just such a one, but some in the audience, including Spectator's much older colleague, could remember when the same premises held the palais de danse.

Whenever the palais is mentioned, someone remembers that the beautifully-sprung dance floor was said to rest on thousand of tennis balls. Was it true and, if so, were they ever removed in any of the building's subsequent uses?

Pretty poor

THOSE who go "aah" at the reprieve of the Devon calf Pheonix, by No 10 Downing Street no less, should remember the hundreds of farmers who will shed another bitter tear for the healthy stock they have lost as a result of the "unrefined" slaughter policy.

Farmers have been saying for weeks that the policy of contiguous slaughter was a blunt instrument and should be modified. It is typical that what gets policy changed is a picture of a pretty calf on the front pages of the national newspapers.