The Bell who's good at ringing the changes

He was most impressive, the insistence that he and ITN colleague Sandy Gall had countenances like a relief map of the countries from which they reported giving new meaning to the term selfeffacing.

Then they go and stick the column's mug shot atop Monday's front page, rekindling a thousand jokes about keeping the bairns away from the fire.

Now 67, Bell also revealed that in the 1930s Adrian Bell, his father, compiled the first Times crossword - his reason, probably, for knowing that Britney Spears is an anagram of Presbyterian. Presbyterian, come to that, is also an anagram of "best in prayer". The Morse code is an anagram of "Here come dots", slot machines of "Cash lost in me", mother-in-law of "Woman Hitler" and election results of "Lies - let's recount."

Especially the last, Mr Bell could probably unravel those, too.

SATURDAY'S presentations complete, the conversation turned to matters of suitable journalistic gravity.

Between the Echo's ecstatic editor and his humble columnist, it concerned who was to make the tea on Monday morning. Between columnist and one of the judges it revolved around putting the term "pubic affairs" - that well known misprint - into the Google search engine.

"I did it when I meant public affairs, " the learned judge insisted.

"There were about four million hits, it was hilarious."

In truth there are 15,700 hits, the error having been perpetrated by everyone from HM government to the Christian Broadcasting Council.

There are heads of pubic affairs and colleges of health and pubic affairs, pubic affairs consultants and NASA's pubic affairs department offering all kinds of jobs.

Fortune's middles, as the Prince of Denmark once observed, we move on horripilantly.

ENTERING "pubic affairs" into an Internet search engine may by no means be as tricky as logging the words "Titty", "Swallows" and "Amazons", which is why we left it to Mr John Briggs, engine driver extraordinary.

"I kept on getting details of six foot tall Brazilian ladies, " he reports, so further explanation is perhaps advisable.

Last week's column noted that the BBC3 television programme Tittybangbang was listed in the Echo as T***ybangbang, a series of low-risk asterisks which on High Authority will now be desanitized.

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, as the psalmist supposed, we also recalled titty bottles, dumbtits and sundry municipal pleasure domes which answered to Titty Bottle Park.

It prompted both David Walsh in Redcar and Richard Eddowes in Hartlepool to recall that Arthur Ransome's classic 1930s children's book Swallows and Amazons had a prominent character called Titty.

"Has Titty become more risible over the years, " asks Richard, "or did Arthur Ransome lead a sheltered life?"

The book was based on the Altounyan children, whom Ransome met while on a Lake District holiday in 1928. Mavis Altounyan preferred to be known as Titty, apparently because of a fascination with Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse, a Victorian tale for children.

Titty dies early on, scalded to death when the pudding pan falls on her. Tatty survives until the end, finally perishing amid a sequence of unnatural disasters when the house tumbles down on top of her.

It was described as a fairy story - and they thought our kids read some funny stuff today.

AMONG the Titty Bottle Parks we listed were Bishop Auckland, Redcar and Eston, where the editor (aforesaid) got his infant pipe. Meryl Graham points out that Eston's park was actually in the "sleepy backwater" of Normanby, nearby - "the only possible connection to Eston would have been the bright orange water in the beck, percolating from Eston ironstone mines."

Meryl was a regular visitor. "I can confirm the idyllic location between a former isolation hospital and what was to become the sixth form college I once attended."

David Walsh reckons there were also Titty Bottle Parks in Guisborough ("down the bottom of Westgate") and Loftus. "Al fresco baby feeding, " he concludes, "is obviously a big thing on Teesside."

LAST week's column also wondered how the word "bottle", if not necessarily titty bottle, had come to mean "courage."

Retired Darlington headmaster John Lovell - 50 years a member of Skeeby parish council, near Richmond - insists that it wasn't always so.

His father, dead these past 40 years, hailed, like Del Boy, from Peckham.

"When he said someone had no bottle, it was rhyming slang for bottle and glass, " says John.

"There's no doubt about it, when my father reckoned someone had no bottle he didn't mean courage, he meant they had no class."

BACK to the Press awards, where a happy bonus of taking the sports writing title was a copy of That's England Alright, the alternative World Cup CD.

Generally available from May 22, it's sung by Joe Fagin - who in 1984 had a No. 3 hit with the Auf Wiedersehen Pet theme tune on which the new song is based.

It's been recorded, they say, because the FA's official World Cup song is such a dirge - and as a celebration of what makes England so special and so different.

The promotional literature suggests that essential Englishness embraces chips, rain, regional accents and saying sorry to people when they bump into you. Real ale must surely be added to those qualities which ensure there'll always be an England.

Readers may care to suggest others.

. . . and finally, the column two weeks ago acknowledged - as well it might - an eternal debt to St Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists and writers and the man who observed that more flies were attracted by a spoonful of honey than by a barrel full of vinegar.

It reminded Frank Swales, now chair of the Hexham and Newcastle diocesan branch of the St Francis de Sales (Catholic) Writers' Guild, of his first meeting with Cardinal John Heenan, then Archbishop of Westminster.

Cardinal Heenan was elderly and very important; Frank was young and innocent. It probably explains why he introduced himself to the archbishop as Francis de Swales and why his face was subsequently the colour of the great man's cassock.

"The cardinal fixed me with that 'I'm not in any way amused' weapon, as he left me frozen with my afterthoughts and moved on."

More cardinal sins, no doubt, when