Ted Moult? Who's he?

IT IS to be something of a dales diary, to be honest, and firstly to the top of Arkengarthdale and to the Tan Hill Inn, England's highest pub.

Doubtless it was because of its high and mighty location that Everest, the double glazing company, filmed one of television's best remembered commercials in the bar.

Made in the 1970s, it featured Ted Moult, a Derbyshire farmer who became improbably famous after winning Brain of Britain, who appeared on the first episode of Countdown - Channel 4's opening programme - and is credited with the notion of pick-your-own strawberries.

Moult, who was 60 when he shot himself in 1986, watched a feather fall gently to the ground behind the Tan Hill's new windows. The catchline's still memorable: "You only fit double glazing once, so fit the best, fit Everest."

Last year, however, new pub owners Tracey Daly and Mike Peace decided that the windows needed minor repairs. Believing that part of the television deal was that the work had a lifetime guarantee, they contacted Everest.

A young "engineer" duly arrived, said he'd never heard of Ted Moult, knew nothing about a lifetime guarantee and demanded that they pay up front.

You could have knocked Mike and Tracey down with a feather.

"We were told that we weren't a priority call-out," says Mike. "It appeared that we weren't important to them at all."

The people who live on Tan Hill hadn't given up hope of conquering Everest, however. A few weeks later BBC's Watchdog started sniffing around - "I don't know how they heard about it," says Tracey - and things began to happen.

"Negotiations are still continuing, but it looks like they're going to fit us new sash windows and do a remake of the commercial," says Tracey.

In England's highest and most isolated pub, could it be that someone got the wind up?

NO sign of the forecast big freeze, but the Tan Hill is also awaiting delivery of an amphibious tracked vehicle called a Hagglund which can "float" on snow. "It's because I'm a southern wuss," says Tracey, who's from Middlesex. "There's no way I was going to get snowed up in such an isolated place as this.

"The Met Office said it was going to be the worst winter since 1963 and we believed them. It might still happen, and we'll be ready for it."

The ex-Army vehicle cost £8,000 from a surplus store and is capable of 14mpg. It's now being painted in Tan Hill livery.

Mike and Tracey took over last July, after plans to buy a place in Scotland fell through. "We just put 'large properties' into the website and the Tan Hill came up. I immediately said 'Let's buy it' and ten minutes later we'd made an appointment."

The pub now has a satellite broadband connection, monthly jam sessions - little to do with Robertson's raspberry - and a civil marriage licence. The first ceremony, to be filmed for another BBC programme, is on March 25.

"We're immensely happy here," says Tracey. "The locals have been fantastically friendly, the atmosphere is so calming and the night sky is wonderful."

And the double glazing? "I'm sure we'll be happy with that, too."

HETTON-le-Hole may not strictly speaking be in the dales - or by any other manner of speaking, either - but since we've been tracking old army equipment it should be recorded that while mooching round that former coal mining community on Sunday we came across a military surplus store called Pongo, Jack and Crabfat. No guns to the head, but anyone care to explain?

A COUPLE of miles down dale from the Tan Hill stood - distinctly past tense - the Cat Hole Inn at Keld. Recent columns have recalled it.

It was the pub where time stood still, or at least where it never seemed to be called, and which in the 1950s a local Methodist preacher bought and immediately and abstemiously closed down.

Glynis Waddell in Newbiggin, Teesdale, recalls a parental remonstration when they were children: "Be quiet, or you won't get the cheese from the Cat Hole at Keld."

Her mother, raised in Swaledale, probably heard the same warning, Glynis supposes. Keld by kindness, can anyone explain why?

LISA Hockham in Barningham, near Barnard Castle, sends a postcard of the "notorious" pub with the inscription: "Cat Hole Inn, 1090ft above sea level" - part of a collection owned by her father, John Hutchinson in Cotherstone.

Though the sign cannot be read, the words Cat Hole are painted on the white window sill above the front door. Is anyone old enough to recall what went on behind that picture postcard exterior? The Cat Hole may yet be excavated further.

SHAMBLING through the old home town last week, we noticed from the foundation stone that the Friends' Meeting House in Shildon will be 100 years old next year.

It served other purposes, too - what are Friends for? It was where we had TB injections, without so much as a spoonful of sugar, and where - pumped up like a Dunlop 27-inch - we represented the town in a schools' road safety quiz. Pomposity punctured promptly.

Days later, we learn that the Friends' Meeting House is 99 and out. The Quakers have upped and offed to Bishop Auckland, where the first meeting was held on Sunday at St Anne's church centre in the Market Place.

"It was a very courageous decision. They realised that they were in the wrong place, struggling with over-large and outdated Victorian (!) premises," says Chris Gwilliam, the former Church of England vicar and local radio presenter who is clerk of the Friends' Darlington Monthly Meeting.

Bishop Auckland meetings will take place at 10.45am on the first Sunday of the month - "the replanting of a sapling," adds Chris, "with great potential for growth."

COINCIDENCE, no doubt, a book arrives written by Dr Glen Reynolds, Darlington councillor and arguably the North-East's best known Quaker.

A title that may not be described as knicker gripping, it's called "Was George Fox a Gnostic? An Examination of Foxian Theology From a Valentinian Gnostic Perspective."

Characteristically undaunted, Glen reports that it's selling out in America - "largely on the back of the da Vinci Code" - and that he's planning a book signing over here.

Reluctantly, however, he has had to abandon the idea of promoting Valentinian gnostic perspective as the perfect gift for Valentine's Day.

It is, says the old romantic, a very great shame.