SATURDAY evening at Trimdon Labour Club, social centre of Blair's Britain, and the opinion polls unequivocally underwhelming. The first editions told of a party in unaccustomed second place, a leader perceived to be arrogant and out of touch, a fractious fraternity foregathering in Brighton for the Conference.

Restless natives? It was the best night of the year.

There'd been other ecstatic occasions in the Labour Club, of course, times when Tony had become so irresistibly popular that they'd even considered - considered - cancelling the bingo, the more greatly to extol him. It was a long time, though, since there'd been a standing ovation so spontaneous, so resonant and so rapturous as the one they gave to Lonnie Donegan.

Donegan, otherwise the King of Skiffle, will soon be 70. He has had two heart attacks and a triple coronary by-pass, had broken his toe six days earlier, doesn't smoke or drink and doesn't comment on the other thing, though three wives and seven children - three of his sons under 16 - may possibly speak for itself. He had number one hits like Putting on the Style and Cumberland Gap, has homes in Marbella and in California, owns an elderly estate car with the registration 662 LON, was awarded the MBE in the last birthday honours and only the week previously had collected a piece of Waterford crystal for a lifetime's service to music. "MBE and bowl," he said.

We'd met beforehand at his hotel in Sedgefield, his skiffle group in the bar ("where else, we're a band"), Lonnie contentedly drinking tea. Contrary to musical myth, he always did believe that the best thing to do with a tea chest was to put tea in it and that a washboard was best employed to scrub clothes. "You got me out of bed," he said, cheerfully. It was 6.30pm.

He was born Anthony James Donegan, his Glaswegian father an amateur classical violinist, he himself a jazz banjo man influenced by American singers like Woody Guthrie and John White. His first electric guitar, so the story goes, was converted with the help of a second hand pilot's throat microphone from a crashed Lancaster bomber. In 1956, Rock Island Line sold three million, earned him an appearance - with Ronald Reagan - on the Perry Como show and £3.50 from Decca, began a hit parade success that, surprisingly, lasted just six years.

Uncharted but never lost, he remains vastly popular. "I've been practising a long time," he said. "I've never really changed what I do, it's just the media with whom you're in or out of favour. It's not a question of being rediscovered because I've never been away, and this is my ten minutes' fame in Trimdon."

Latter-day luminaries like Van Morrison, Elton John and Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood have combined not just to sing his praises, but to join his recordings. "All roads lead to Lon," he said, as probably he had a million times before.

He is about 5ft 7in, inarguably plump, entirely accommodating, almost avuncular. The broken big toe, which the night previously had forced the postponement of a booking in Stockton, happened when he fell down some steps in Spain and split the joint against a wall. "I just lay back and thought of England," he said.

In the long sold-out Labour Club they thought of their Cumberland Gap years, of the Big Grand Coolie Dam it and of Lonnie's old man, the legendary dustman whom musically he'd almost disowned. On the door downstairs where it said "Campaign office" it said "Lonnie Donegan" as well.

Tony, of course, couldn't be there. It was Mrs Blair's 46th birthday and while a night in the Labour Club might have been just what she'd always wanted, she'd to be back home with the babby.

John Wrightson, leader of one of the support acts, said he'd supported Tony and Mo as well and hoped that what had happened to them didn't happen to Lonnie. When his band played a Beatles number some of the audience did the hand jive, that's how old Labour they were.

Eddie Walker, the other backing act, picked a guitar so well he could have been picked for England and was applauded accordingly. In Trimdon Labour Club, however, they were chiefly on for Lon.

He appeared at precisely 10pm, helped on stage rather as the Queen Mother might have been, carried towels with which to mop the perspiration. Worried man? Worried song? "Real music," said John Burton, the Prime Minister's constituency agent and himself a locally renowned folk singer.

At first he proceeded with care, broken toe in the water. Nor may it be said that he did them all - No Tom Dooley, no Cumberland Gap, no Michael rowing the boat ashore - since to do them all would have taken until Sunday dinner time and trespassed, once again, upon the bingo.

Soon, however, he was a man zealously transformed - born again, age forgotten, pain barrier traversed. After a triple heart bypass a broken toe may be little more than an Elastoplast operation but had he been 40, not 70, the doctors would still have told him to cool it, and with more than a towel from the bathroom. For fully 15 minutes, no one even moved towards the bar, which may not sound much but in these parts is an all-comers' record. There being no aisles left in which to rock, Trimdon rocked in every other cranny, an Over 50s Club joyously letting its hair down, whether equipped for the purpose or not.

Talent undiminished, Lonnie finished at 11.15 with a Rock Island Line so versatile and so enthusiastic it could probably win one of those government franchises. On Tuesday he was at the Labour Party conference, on October 26 ("as good as it ever gets") he's at the Palace. In Trimdon he towelled away the sweat, leaped from the stage and thanked us all for a night to remember - not putting on the agony, putting on the style.

PATRICK Conway, Durham County Council's director of arts, libraries and museums (though not necessarily in that order) was among those taking the Rock Island line with Lonnie - and impressed by the cup of tea.

When in a similar post with Gateshead council, Patrick had booked celebrated jazzman George Melly - a contractual condition that a dozen bottles of claret (one or two for the band, maybe) be left in the dressing room. Shortly before he was due on stage, however, sounds of considerable consternation could be heard from the great trumpeter's quarters - Mr Melly was seeing red over the claret.

There were many words with which he described it, apparently, best summed up as "municipal". The council sent out for something more greatly to his taste.

STILL among the epicures, Derek Parkin in Northallerton sends us the menu for the centenary dinner of the Stockton and Darlington Railway - modest little dishes like "Tortue Claire a la famille Pease, pere et fils", "Saumon Vicomte Fallodon" and (gloriously) "Gourmandises a la Puffing Billy". Then there were the wines, enough vintage to keep even George Melly happy and Caf Whitelaw (good old Willie) with which to finish.

The dinner was held in Darlington exactly 100 years ago, Viscount Grey of Fallodon in the chair and assorted peers and Peases, bishops and buffers among the white tied company.

"I suspect it is the sort of bar meal that may have appealed to you," writes Derek, retired chief executive of Hambleton District Council. He undoubtedly has a point.

...and a third course. Last week's column noted a clash of invitations between a Roman Catholic book launch in Darlington and the World Euphemism Championships (that is to say, a beer tasting) at the Castle Eden Brewery.

We'd attended the former. One of those who sampled the latter has now written to say that not only was it a wonderful evening but that by skilful exhumation of his O level German, a gaffer from Tyne Tees Television won the "name a lager" competition.

Suggestions included Palatine, Schloss Eden, Edenbier and possibly even Eden Buses. The winner was Edenhof, however, probably best pronounced as in Edelweiss. The Tyne Tees Television party wins...a euphemistic trip around the brewery.