View from the top

Until deemed inappropriate - like Dennis's dad's slipper, or Lord Snooty's superciliousness - Les Pretend was sub-titled "He's round the bend". He has been emasculated. Now he is described as "The little boy with the big imagination", which can't have taken much dreaming up at all.

We mention it because the Manor House Hotel in West Auckland - where dinner remains memorable - continues to have complimentary copies of The Beano in the bar.

It was there that the Breakfast Club gathered at 8.30am to discuss this year's winner, the usual early learning - Church Times, Architects' Journal, assorted bus tickets - replaced by D C Thomson's best loved title, a flagship which now has a website on the masthead.

For the Reverend Mr Wardale, it was a reunion with a childhood friend. Where else, he wondered, did they still use the words "Yikes" or "chortle"? Everyone chortled in the Beano when last had he run with the Bash Street kids?

The Manor House, though not the winner, had little need of comic relief. Had full English not been £7.50 - by no means unreasonable for the works but in danger of bringing out the Scrooge in one or two of the judges - it might have been still closer the accolade.

The price includes fruit juice, cereal, a very good grill, toast, coffee and a waiter who definitely got out of bed the right side.

Frequently, it may be recalled, our test of competence in that department is to ask those serving to find out the Arsenal score. Since not even Sky Television have the Gunners playing at half past eight on a Friday morning - not yet, anyway - a different approach was necessary.

The conversation, for reasons forgotten, had turned to It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To. Who sang it?

The waiter tried everything: enquired in the kitchen, phoned a friend, might even have asked the audience had not the other early birds flown upon our arrival.

Who did sing it, anyway?

The Breakfast Club has had a mixed year, ranging from the Safeway supermarket in Darlington to Lewis and Cooper's in Northallerton - just a point behind the winner - from George Bolam's butchery emporium in Sedgefield to Crusty's cafe in Northgate, Darlington, which was third.

We have been to places where the sausages seemed to have been cooked on a flat iron, the eggs done in cod liver oil and the coffee seemed sans caffeine.

We have been told that the vegetarian breakfast was off and in the otherwise-empty Bunters in Darlington that we were sitting at an old chap's table. The winner - the Eating Owt column's Best Breakfast Award - is the Wear View Diner, just past Toft Hill on the A68 in west Durham, of which the only possible criticisms are a) that these dark days it's often hard to see the Wear or anything else for that matter and b) the furniture is of the immoveable sort, not best suited to us big lads.

We'd eaten there in February, the learned Mr MacCourt the recent recipient of a WeightWatchers keyring after his body size dropped from "obese" to simply "very fat".

A splendid breakfast proved irresistible, nonetheless. "We had visions," the February 8 column observed, "of the fate which befell the unfortunate Capt Dreyfus, Mr MacCourt obliged ceremonially to hand back his keyring whilst the drum beat his ignominious retreat."

Long a derelict filling station, the Diner was opened two years ago by Tracey Stelling, a Toft Hill lass who'd worked for 11 years in a bank and whose father Ray played full back for Shildon and for one or two lesser teams. Ray did much of the building work, too. "I just fancied catering," says Tracey. "The staff here have been brilliant."

Full English breakfast is £3.50 with tea and coffee, the restaurant open from 8am weekdays and 9am on Sunday. On a good day the view from the summit is wonderful, too: an early bird beano, if ever.

MR Wardale, it may be recalled, had rashly wagered a Mars Christmas stocking that St Nicholas was the patron saint of thieves - a canard carried since his days at St Nic's in Boldon - and that the larcenous verb "nick" owed everything to that root.

The patron saint of thieves is Dismas, one of those crucified alongside Christ. At the time of writing, the stocking appears to have had a hole in it.

Unsold, Stile restaurant in Willington continues into the new year (or new millennium, as Mike Boustred correctly insists). Regular bistro-style opening nights will now be confined to Friday and Saturday, Jenny offering to cook for dinner parties of six or more, in the restaurant, at any other time. (01388) 746615.

A bad year for Yates's, chastised by the Gadfly column and hammered by Teesside magistrates for failing to meet the advertised claim that meals would be served in 15 minutes, or money refunded.

The literature has now been amended. "We knock ourselves out to serve your food quickly," says the menu, and this inarguably is true since everyone seemed to be in a daze.

We lunched at the Darlington branch with the Stokesley Stockbroker, travelling afar, a good chap but incorrigibly given to overusing the term "fantastic."

The starters - chilli onion rings and "sticky chicken wings" - took 24 minutes to land. The onion rings were almost black; the Stockbroker reckoned the chicken wings an altogether better investment.

He followed with spicey bangers and mash, we with the salmon fishcakes. They arrived 44 minutes after the original order and after a series of pass-the-salt exercises with the next table. The menu also included "slow roasted" lamb shank, but life's probably too short.

The fishcakes were accompanied by lukewarm chips, Bet Lynch salad (that is to say, it was overdressed) and a bowl of something that looked for all the world like a tin of very old paint after the crust has been chiseled from the top. We didn't taste it.

The fishcakes were all right. The sausages? The Stockbroker examined his portfolio. "Fantastic," he said, and he meant every word.

Saturday, December 16. Lunch in the still-admirable Red Lion at North Bitchburn, near Crook, on to Consett where the Albany Northern League side beat Heanor 3-0 to reach the last 32 of the FA Carlsberg Vase and two fireside pints afterwards in the Grey Horse at Consett, the North-East's best pub. So perfect, it must be Christmas.

....and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what you call a mushroom who buys all the drinks.

A fungi to be with.

The column returns in a fortnight; a very happy new year.