In praise of the old yellow peril

While none has satisfactorily been able to explain the name, or indeed to fulfil a lifetime's journalistic ambition by suggesting a true story to support the headline Brotherlee Love - Brotherlee is a hamlet on the opposite bank of the Wear - the previous day's Times carried a wonderfully coincidental leader in praise of the dandelion. Goodness knows why.

"The dandelion is the king of weeds, fittingly named dentes-de-lion after the king of beasts," thundered the leader. "Dandelions are the epitome of weeds - invasive, brash, hardy, blurring horticulture's moral boundaries, ready to sow confusion in a tidy plantsman's world."

Since Mr Wordsworth never waxed in praise of a host of golden dandelions, the praise may have something to do with the trend towards "natural" gardens. "The dandelion's day," said The Times, "has surely come at last."

Dentes-de-lion it may be to Old French folk and botanists, but to Shildon lads - and to others across the world - it is the pittly-bed.

In modern French it has become the pissen-lit, in Italy the piscialitto, and in Spain moacattas which presumably means the same thing.

Folk names also include priest's crown, clock flower, swine snout, yellow gowan and cankerwort. Pittlybed tells it best, however; it really is a diuretic.

The old yellow peril and all its bits have also been cited as a cure for everything from cancer to eczema, to alleviate poor digestion and diseases of the liver, to eradicate warts and soothe bee stings, to combat rheumatism and arthritis and to increase the production of mother's milk.

The Rolling Stones, it may be remembered, praised the dandelion yet further: Dandelion don't tell no lies Dandelion will make you wise...

Clearly the poor thing has been wrongly abused; dandelions can grow on you.

Crystal coincidence, we bump in the clubhouse at Durham City Golf Club - friendly folk, lovely views - into Mr George Gray, one of the famous pop family and thus (it was to be assumed) an expert on dandelion and burdock.

George is 83, left the Spennymoor- based family firm in the 1970s, lives near Richmond across the road from William Hague, whom he helped select as the local Conservative candidate.

"There were all sorts of important people in for it, but there was just something about William," he recalls. "These days he's so important himself that he lands here by helicopter."

G&A Gray's pop was enjoyed across much of the North-East.

George's father delivered door-to-door in a Foden steam wagon, employing George himself as a 14-year-old wagon lad on Saturday mornings - "I tried all sorts to get out of it," he recalls - before wartime RAF service.

Subsequently they bought other soft drinks firms like Guthrie's of Hartlepool and Garnett's of Middlesbrough before selling to a Lohnro subsidiary.

"Everyone was having a hard time in the soft drinks industry.

"We hung on too long to returnable glass, when the bigger suppliers had abandoned it."

These days you hardly ever see a pop lorry.

Despite the dandelion's cure-all reputation, lemonade was much the most popular, recalls George, who still has a collection of 100 or so bottles - "cod bottles, half-Hamiltons, Hamiltons, all sorts."

"To be honest, I don't know if dandelion and burdock was efficacious or not, because we bought it as essence. I don't even know what was in it.

"I don't know how much good it ever did anyone. I'm just happy to say it never seemed to do them any harm."

Next Saturday's At Your Service column marks the golden jubilee of St Anne's Roman Catholic church in Haughton-le-Skerne, Darlington. Instead of the usual two and a half mile walk back up Haughton Road and into town, we followed the riverside route along the much-maligned Skerne.

It's lovely down there, the Cleveland Industrial Estate sometimes no more than 200 yards but seemingly a million miles away. Most appropriately of all, the walk was abundant with dandelions.

It ends on Albert Road, not far from North Road railway station. Riparian yarns, what a great pity they can't extend it into the town centre.

Harry Watson in Darlington adds to recent notes on French military victories - or the lack of them - with memories of the Fashoda incident, on the upper Nile in 1898.

French troops had marched 3,500 miles from east to west Africa before being told by their government to surrender to Kitchener's British.

"They'd carried a quantity of champagne with them which they shared with the British after the enforced surrender. The incident led directly to the entente cordiale being formed between us, but they have never forgiven us."

More understanding, Harry reckons to have been contributing to these columns for much longer than we'd supposed, back to the 1970s.

"If I remember correctly, the first was a competition for alternative Eurovision-type song titles.

"I won with, among others, Three Bastognes in the Fountain. The prize was supposed to have been cockles and mussels and two pounds five-o. I got the two pounds five-o, but I haven't seen the shellfish yet."

Last week's return to the subject of vehicle registration plates reminded John Hawgood in Durham of a Daily Express competition - back in 1949 - to find the most amusing.

The winner, all the right notes, was PNO 40. "I don't think I've seen a better one since," says John. "Totally legal, too."

Aubrey Adamson in Birdsall, near Thirsk, recalls among a travelling folks' convoy on the A1 seeing the registration ELV 1S.

"It wasn't on a Mercedes but on a bloody old tatty Thames pick-up," says Aubrey. "The pick-up will have been scrapped long ago, but I wonder how much the registration would be worth today."

...and finally, John Briggs in Darlington wonders if we knew what the alien dandelion said to the earth dandelion.

"Take me to your weeder."

Fine and dandelion, the column returns next Wednesday.