FRIENDS travelling with the North-East publican who told staff at Teesside Airport's check-in desk this week that he had a bomb in his luggage must have been relieved when police finally turned up and led him away.

Because, apart from terrifying airport staff, he is clearly guilty of a lesser, but nevertheless serious, crime - being totally unfunny, while convinced he is absolutely hilarious.

We've all been on holiday or worked or lived with such a tiresome joker. He's determined to keep the gags coming thick and fast and never gives straight answers because he cannot resist using a pun or catchphrase which might get a laugh.

They're always the most obvious jokes we've all heard hundreds of times before but if you're not laughing uproariously alongside him, he'll accuse you of being a misery-guts. "Who's dead?" he'll ask, or "Cheer up, it'll never happen."

"What's that on your shoes?" he'll say, and when you look down, he'll flick your nose with his hand. Hilarious.

He, of course, is in stitches, laughing and guffawing loudly at his own jokes, while everyone around him looks on blankly. But he won't give in until, eventually, some groan and others, clearly embarrassed, force a pretend chuckle.

Police were probably relieved to release the North-East publican, who has not been named, after questioning. I just hope that, when the officer cautioning him warned: "Anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence..." he managed to resist blurting out: "Knickers."

THE Princess Royal did look fabulous in official photographs to mark her 50th birthday. Commentators say she looks younger. Perhaps this is because, as the photo spreads revealed, she has changed so little over the years. She dressed and wore her hair like a 50-year-old when she was 21. But now it suits her.

NORTHALLERTON'S Friarage Hospital is spending thousands on a team of spin doctors, brought in after its former head of maternity was found guilty of botching operations. Spokesman Steve Spoerry says it is to help cope with media attention: "We thought we needed expert advice and had to get a bit more professional about how we handled that." What a shame managers didn't seek advice years ago. Only they wouldn't have needed to pay experts. Anyone with a bit of common sense could have told them it probably wasn't a good idea to let a surgeon operate on women here when he had been struck off elsewhere for incompetence and that giving him an untruthful, glowing reference would only cause more problems.

DO the makers of the sleek silver car television adverts realise the soundtrack "I got a silver machine", by Hawkwind, is about taking heroin, the silver machine being the addict's needle?

WHY has the Government recruited Harry Enfield's stroppy teenager Kevin in a campaign to encourage youngsters to stay at school? Just think of all those grumpy, awkward teenagers from hell - and that's most of them - who are constantly being referred to as Kevin by their doting parents (and I bed Euan Blair is one of them). They hate the character, mainly because so many sad old adults think he's hilarious. And now Kevin wants them to stay on a school. Victor Meddrew might have more chance.

THE anti-paedophile vigilante whose three-year-old son was found wandering the streets of Portsmouth naked and alone said he had sneaked out through a broken garden gate which she asked the council to fix ages ago. This is a woman who will take the law into her own hands to protect her children from sex offenders, yet mending her own gate to keep them safe from a busy road is clearly too much to expect.