JOHN McWilliam may be MP for Blaydon but he certainly wasn't at the races for this week's great Commons Speaker contest. Poor old John fell at the first on Monday night when a mere 29 fellow MPs backed him. And that included just four from the North-East - and one of them was a Tory Hexham's Peter Atkinson.

Helpful colleagues (the kind who didn't vote for him) are still musing on why Mr McWilliam didn't pull out to spare the humiliation.

After all, it was obvious to a passing woodlouse that Labour favourite Glaswegian MP Michael Martin would romp to eventual victory.

There's a row going on down here about a Scottish MP who put a bet on Mr Martin to win and then voted for him. Maybe there'll be a North-East version about Hon Members who backed Mr McWilliam and lost a packet.

MONDAY'S bizarre ballot to step into Betty Boothroyd's stockings, sorry, shoes, revealed the fascinating nugget that Berwick Liberal Democrat MP Alan Beith speaks Welsh.

Can't think why, but it certainly pulled in the Plaid Cymru vote on Monday night. He needed it, what with no Tory backers and only a handful of Labour MPs supporting him.

Still, Mr Beith managed 83 votes overall and unlike the Hon Member for Blaydon, he didn't vote for himself.

BUT the North-East star of the night was undoubtedly David Clark. The South Shields MP and former Cabinet Minister made a fine oration in his bid for the Speaker's chair and only lost by 104 votes reduced on appeal to just 65 after miscounting on Mr Martin's side.

Word has it that Dr Clark, who also voted for himself, has since turned down the consolation offer of being Mr Martin's deputy. Sacked from Tony Blair's Cabinet he might have been, but David is clearly not yet ready to give up frontline politics.

MY, that Stuart Bell moves fast. The Middlesbrough MP was spotted cosying up to Michael Martin hours before the Glaswegian won the Speakership.

But later on Monday afternoon, Mr Bell was also deep in conversation with John Major in the Tearoom over another great question of our time.

Who was the better batsman - Len Hutton or David Gower? Apparently, Mr Major, not known for his political wafts outside the off stump, is a Gower man. But Mr Bell prefers the stick-ability of Sir Len.

THE mighty Graham Robb media machine may bestride the North like a public relations colossus. But this week, the Darlington-based operation was strangely silent.

The Northern Echo approached Mr Robb's Recognition PR for a comment on the news that Tory website experts had redrawn the political map of the region.

As we revealed, the Conservative website map showed a delightfully chaotic map of County Durham constituencies with Durham City where Darlington should be and Easington usurping the normal location of North-West Durham.

But strangely, days after the story broke we're still waiting for that call back from Mr Robb's machine.

JUST what does it take to get Railtrack a real telling-off? Tony Blair yesterday called in Railtrack boss Gerald Corbett for a surprise meeting.

After the Hatfield disaster on the East Coast line, and with broken rails popping up all over the show, you'd have thought Gerald was going to get a right rollicking.

But no, said a Downing Street spokesman, Mr Blair was just getting up to speed on the repair programme.

Maybe the PM had intended to carpet Mr Corbett until the newly-outspoken Railtrack chief executive floored him by saying there was only thing to do about the railways - re-nationalise 'em.