GEORGE Orwell wrote 1984 in 1949. Room 101, where a prisoner was subjected to his own worst nightmares, is said to have been named after a conference room at Broadcasting House in London where Orwell sat through interminable BBC meetings during the war. The Football Association have similar chambers today.

"You asked me once what was in Room 101," said torturer O'Brien in the novel 1984. "I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world."

For the wretched Winston Smith, it was rats.

Perhaps in self-parody, the BBC has since 1994 had a radio and television series called Room 101, in which celebrities are invited to discuss their pet hates.

In a Big Brother series last year - Big Brother and Room 101 may hereabouts by synonymous - a contestant was required to enter a room 101 to complete gruesome tasks, like sorting different breeds of maggot.

Then there was the very real murder of John Welch, still unsolved, in Room 101 of the Swallow Hotel in Newcastle.

It was November 1980. Mr Welch, a Ladbrokes executive and regular visitor to Newcastle was found bludgeoned to death on his bedroom floor. Nothing had been taken, no weapon ever found. Half a cup of tea and a half-eaten sandwich lay next to his body. Two men charged ten years later with his murder were released after four months because of lack of evidence.

We mention all this because at the Devonport Hotel in Middleton-one-Row we were seated last Wednesday evening at table 101. It wasn't that there were 100 others, or that it seemed at all unpleasant, but 101 it undoubtedly was.

To report that it was a night of 101 damnations would probably make a very nice headline, but would in no way be accurate.

Middleton-one-Row is above the Tees, east of Darlington. The airport is nearby. The Boss noted that the bar had been much spruced up since our last visit.

We'd wanted a simple, unfussy, informal pub meal and so it proved. There were three real ales, two friendly barmaids, quite a lot of customers for a Wednesday evening.

(One of the barmaids had something written prominently on her T-shirt. I couldn't read it and The Boss declined to. "I don't go around reading ladies' chests," she said, sniffily.)

She began with queen scallops and mash, pleasant but a bit gooey, followed by fish and chunky chips which, well battered, she thought very good.

A large bowl of enjoyably home made tomato soup was just £2.50, a succulently home made burger came with bacon, cheese, more chunky chips and plenty of salad for just £6.50.

The Devonport, with 16 en suite bedrooms, is now owned by Julia Ellwood - 19 years in various catering jobs with Darlington council - and Chris Mills, her partner. "Table 101" is all to do with the all-singing, all-dancing, state-of-the-art till, said Chris. "Anything beginning with one is the lounge bar, with two it's the restaurant and with three it's the rooms."

It was all very good value in a pleasant atmosphere, not the stuff of nightmares at all.

A spokesman for Northumbria Police tells the Eating Owt column that unsolved murder cases are never closed and regularly reviewed. "Any new information is acted upon. It would be the case with Room101."

LAST week's column reported, not kindly, on the Talpore, a pub next to the Tees Barrage in Stockton. We said it had been named after a steamer which paddled around those parts.

Bob Harbron in Norton-on-Tees reports that the Talpore was originally commissioned by the India Office in Victorian times, intended to carry 400 horses and 2,000 men.

Unfortunately, the draught was too shallow. The boat had to be taken to bits again and shipped to the sub-continent for reconstruction. They got it for a song - "not an Indian takeaway, an indian giveaway," says Bob.

LAST time I'd been in the Newcastle Arms was with Paul Gascoigne, in the days when you didn't need six months notice and a million media minders to talk to a kid about his passion.

He was 19, drank orange juice and chewed on a cheese and onion toastie. Memory suggests he had two cheese and onion toasties. He was a very pleasant, slightly scatty, young man.

The pub's barely 100 yards from St James' Park, close to the Ineffable Arch which marks the gate to Chinatown. Once it was run by Tom and Edie Darby, legendary in the North-East licensed trade, not least for Tommy's bankroll generosity.

Last week I looked in again, three days after the Newcy had received its award as CAMRA's Tyneside and Northumberland pub of the year and had toasted the occasion with Amos Ale. It seemed hardly to have changed.

The beer had all gone within 24 hours - tempting, of course, not just to suppose that Amos is a very handsome beer but that the bespectacled pump clip made it irresistible.

That the landlord is Neil Amos, until last April at the Duke of Wellington on High Bridge, may - alas - have had something to do with it, too. The wretched man had even pasted a picture of his two appealing infants over the more mature face of the original.

Amos appropriately exhausted, they offered half a dozen well kept alternatives like Sooty Stout, Bitter and Twisted, Milk of Amnesia and others I can't remember. A pint and a chicken and sweetcorn roll, imported from Gateshead, was a hugely reasonable £2.70.

Had it not begged the answer "No, but I can ask around if you like," it would have been tempting to inquire - like Mr Mike McCartney in that morning's paper - if they didn't know who I was.

After some consideration, however, Jim the manager came over to ask if it really was the face that launched half a dozen pump clips. Poor Gazza had been in a month earlier, he said, though probably no longer on cheese and onion toasties.

"I'm afraid," said Jim, "that I didn't recognise him at all."

DAVID Munday, exiled from Darlington to Dunfermline, invites us to enter "Amos ale" into a search engine and examine the 473 results.

Many acknowledge the Wear Valley Brewery in Bishop Auckland which makes the splendid stuff, others embrace Tori Amos - who appears to be a singer of some sort - another's about first time owner loans.

The first, however, refers to an "Amos Ale" brewed in 1905 - "a new flavoured seltzer to win over America's taste buds."

It proves a whimsical concoction, to do with intellectual property rights, or some such. "Yesterday it was sarsaparilla, today it's computer technology." There's still only one Amos Ale, anyway.

A QUICK one on Friday evening at the Surtees in Crook market place, perchance a year to the day since landlord Trevor Hudspeth introduced real ale to that Co Durham desert. They've had 130 different brews, ranging from Top Totty to Butcombe Blonde and from Bearskinful to Rhatas. The Surtees's position as the only real ale outlet in the town is about to end however: Trevor also runs the White Swan, a couple of hundred yards away. The real thing's available there from this weekend.

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what exams horses take.

Hay-levels, of course.

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