MR Alex Kapranos, lead singer of the Glaswegian band Franz Ferdinand, may never have expected to appear in one of these columns nor we, indeed, to have embraced him. Saveloys are to blame.

We've been chewing on them these past few weeks, wondering where in the North-East the real thing may yet be obtained.

A Newcastle reader, asking anonymity, not only reckons South Shields "the spiritual home of the saveloy" but calls young Kapranos for the prosecution.

Dickson's Pork Shop in the town centre sells saveloy dips "with everything on" - which means, says our man in Newcastle, the bun dipped in brine and the saveloy accompanied by pease pudding, stuffing and mustard.

A dip in the Internet also reveals that, the excellence of their saveloys notwithstanding, Dickson's Pork Shop also won the Wearside Combination football league in 198485, probably having handed out one or two stuffings on the way.

Alex Kapranos, raised in Sunderland and South Shields and given the middle name Paul by a mother said to have a crush on Paul McCartney, was all but weaned on Dickson's finest. He eulogised the saveloys last December in his weekly food column in The Guardian.

"A gang of ten women snap 'next' with controlled efficiency, sucking us inside, where we are overwhelmed by steam and the singing murmur of Geordie gossip. I am asked what I want on my dip. 'Everything please'.

It's immediate and reassuring, rich and revitalising."

Newcastle man doesn't finish eating there, however. "Afterwards, " he says, "you can walk round the corner into Ocean Road for an ice cream from Minchella's art deco parlour, to complete a classic South Shields two-course lunch."

A LADY in Darlington - and this week's column is becoming like Anon Anonymous - reckons haslet, a traditional Lincolnshire dish, pronounced hay-slit in those parts and made from "the better parts of offal, wrapped in a pig's veil and baked". No similarities with a saveloy, then. Saveloys are, or were, the brains.

AS well as the usual 20p change from £3 - eight miles, single - the driver on the No 28 bus from Scotch Corner last week handed over a leaflet about the new Arriva day ticket. It's £5 to almost anywhere in the North-East - £4 concessions, £8 family - and with a wide range of discounts at many of the better known visitor attractions.

Small print perusal fails to reveal any cop-outs. This appears to be the ticket which is just that.

Coincidentally, an email arrives suggesting that Mr Bob Davies, chief executive of Sunderland based Arriva - Britain's biggest bus company, 6,000 in the fleet - lives in Middleton Tyas, just down the hill from Scotch Corner. This may not be likely. Would a local lad allow Middleton Tyas (and places like Scorton) to lose their evening and Sunday bus services from the end of this month?

Though not the company's direct responsibility, would he also have allowed the uniquely disgusting bus shelter at Scotch Corner - the Al's best used urinal - to have stood for 40 years until its recent demolition? The resultant open space may be more noisome yet.

STILL on the buses, last week's column mentioned a couple of recent publications on the joys of public transport.

Former Bishop Auckland lad Bill Taylor, now in Canada, recalls an "utterly charming" book called Home With the Heather - published by Ian Allan in the 1980s - in which "for no apparent good reason" Gertrude Leather and John Parke travel from London to John O'Groats entirely by local buses.

"Whenever she met an inspector, she had him sign an affidavit that she wasn't cheating by hopping on a long-distance coach, " says Bill. "It was a real period piece, but a delightful read." Amazon still offer it.

He also wonders if such an epic would be possible today. That £5 ticket would help.

BILL, Sunderland football fan, further noted the passing reference in last week's column to the abandonment of the home match with Fulham because of snow.

"Having a game abandoned counts as a good result these days. It's a bit like Bobby Thompson's classic line about having a better than usual day at the bookies. 'Two non-runners'."

LAST week's column also noted that in the early hours of May 4, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06. It reminded the Stokesley Stockbroker - that most timeless of correspondents - that on July 6, 1989 he announced to the assembled company at the Britannia in Darlington that at tea time it would be 4.5 6/7/89. And everyone thought, he says, that such excitements could never happen again. . .

THE note on the Wilds of Wannie - popularly a term for any bleak location, specifically a range of hills in Northumberland - reminded the reader who prefers to answer to That Bloody Woman of The Wild Hills o' Wannie, an LP made by "Northumbrian piper par excellence" the late Billy Pigg. "I still have the steam version, " she says.

There was also a steam railway called the Wannie Line - "Northumberland's best loved branch line, " says a website - a 21 mile meander through the Wansbeck Valley from Morpeth to Woodburn.

Dear Dr Beeching closed it in 1966.

Wild? They were probably absolutely furious.

. . . and finally, an apology to Mr Christopher Wardell and to other regulars of the Nags Head in Darlington town centre - the pub from which the homeward bus departs.

Following suggestions hereabouts that karaoke night at the Nags makes hanging round for the No 28 even more irksome than usual, Mr Wardell wrote inviting us to the "Nags Factor" contest last weekend.

The "new crop of talented local vocalists" was to be judged by Mr Dingy Dong, by "multiinstrumentalist" Keith I'Anson and by Mr Wardell, a Hear All Sides regular, himself.

Unfortunately the column was unable to take its turn, not even from the relative sanctuary of the bus stop. That apart, it was a very happy Easter.

We return next week. As probably they say in the queue at Dickson's Pork Shop, everything comes to who he waits.