A book about a former court sketcher evokes memories of a cruel but highly colourful time.

FOR reasons which need not concern today's column - written in its entirety on the 12.02 from Darlington to Kings Cross - Robin Brooks in Richmond wonders about the etymology of the word "plug", when used to mean a free advert, or puff.

It's a very good question. The Oxford English offers 11 different definitions for plug as a noun, and umpteen more as a verb. The nouns range from "tobacco pressed into a flat oblong cake", a "steady plodding course" and "an incompetent or undistinguished person".

One of the more vacuous of the Bash Street Kids, it may be recalled, answers to the name of Plug.

The meaning of free advert is originally American, cited back to 1902, but with no hint of its multiscrew etymology. What follows, at any rate, has more plugs than the bathroom department at Homebase.

A BIT like the Sun (or some such luminary) sending graphic artists to sketch details of the more lurid court cases - photography remaining forbidden - so Joseph Bouet drew on his talents at Durham Assizes in the early 19th century.

Bouet captured villains and judges alike, even went into the debtors' prison where he found Thomas Blackett in the "austere" kitchen. Mr Blackett, it should be said, hardly looked like a man who didn't know where his next meal was coming from.

Thought to be a member of Newcastle's prosperous Blackett family, Thomas spent 27 years in jail.

Today it's called discharging a debt to society. In early Victorian times family of friends could pay for prisoners to "rent" rooms in the prison, though the Blacketts didn't seem keen on paying enough for Thomas's release.

Another drawing shows Jarrow pitman William Jobling, simply described as a "felon", on trial at the Assizes for the murder of a JP during the bitter miners' strike of 1832.

He was sentenced to be hanged outside the court, 50 hussars and 50 infantrymen on duty to prevent a public uprising.

Jobling's body was then gibbeted at Jarrow Slake before a 1,000-strong crowd.

Bouet was French, moved to the North-East before he was 20, taught both art and French in Durham and drew, often in pencil, many of the dear old county's leading churchmen and dignitaries. He died, aged 65, in 1856 and is buried in St Oswald's churchyard.

Coyly titled "A Convivial Evening", one of his more humorous works depicts a late night dinner party at St Agatha's House in Frenchgate, Richmond, which Bouet attended with Durham bookseller George Andrews.

"The nine men," writes art historian and Durham graduate Dr David Cross, "have evidently consumed a large quantity of alcohol."

His richly illustrated book - "Joseph Bouet's Durham Drawings From the Age of Reform" - is among the invaluable records of the county published by the Durham County Local History Society, this time in conjunction with Durham University.

It's £12 plus £1 postage from the History of Education Project, Miners Hall, Red Hill, Durham DH1 4BB.

THE train trip south was to see Alan Comfort, former Middlesbrough footballer and now an energetic and evangelistic vicar in London, out towards the Central Line's Essex extremes. Much more of the Comfort zone in tomorrow's Backtrack column.

It's to an equally well known cleric that the Stokesley Stockbroker, ever vigilant, draws our attention, however. The Rev Dr Peter Mullen has taken to advertising his services (as it were) in The Spectator.

This Sunday, for example, our copious columnist will be preaching on "The Christian faith, the media and communication" at St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City.

Peter, sadly, was unavailable for a couple of two-birds beers on Tuesday evening, the Church Council meeting taking questionable precedence.

Christian faith, the media and communication? "Very shortly," he adds helpfully, "you'll be able to read the entire sermon on our website."

THE East Coast Main Line is now chiefly operated by GNER's refurbished Mallard fleet. When it's good it's very, very good, though a slice of admittedly delicious pork and chicken pie is now £3.50.

Peter Sotheran in Redcar draws attention to another little problem, however: the loo seats are smaller than the loo itself - "perched on top of the pot like the undersized hat on Laurel's (or was it Hardy's) oversized head".

These are not matters with which sensitive readers would normally be troubled. In the circumstances, however, it seemed churlish not further to investigate.

The loos seemed fine. It is paradoxically difficult to see what Mr Sotheran had to go on.

JOHN Gelson, who works in GNER's press office in York, was among those who responded to last week's column on the rural bus service to Keld, at yon end of Swaledale.

John recalls a Dales holiday in the 1980s when he stayed at West Burton, in Wensleydale, travelled by service bus to Hawes and over Buttertubs Pass to Keld, continued down Swaledale to Richmond and on the same bus throughout was home, via Leyburn, for tea.

"Most of the services I used that day have already been withdrawn. It would be very sad if the Swaledale service went the same way," he says.

Both Tom Peacock in Darlington and Edward Allan in Bainbridge, Wensleydale, dispute last week's ageing assertion that the once locally notorious pub in Keld was called the Cat and Fiddle. It wasn't, it was the Cat Hole.

The pub, where closing time seemed to stand still, was bought in the 1950s by local Methodist preacher James Alderson and never again pulled a pint.

"I was in Egypt at the time," says Edward. "I just remember getting the paper sent out and that there was hell on."

Tom Peacock - "it did have a certain reputation, I grant you that" - is unable to recall how the Cat Hole was depicted on the pub sign. Probably it's just as well.

...and finally, a ticket inspection reveals that that valuable document, bought through a travel agent, is called an Elgar. Presumably it has something to do with the composer Edward Elgar who - as pomp, circumstance and local knowledge would have it - had links with Bishop Auckland. Why, though, should a humble train ticket be called an Elgar? Perhaps Mr Gelson will add a further note in next week's column; that's that one unplugged, anyway.