The admirable Steven Chaytor has written a new book, his third, 16 ruddy-cheeked accounts of watching North-East sport in the raw - for raw, read absolutely perishing - as opposed, snug and smug, to on television.

His may be the only house in Sedgefield without a Sky dish - a black wok, he calls it. Ask him why so down to earth and he's away like the Boxing Day hurdle.

"I've an objection to Rupert Murdoch because his empire is now almost as big as Tesco, it's taking over the world. I've never been comfortable with what he's done and I was even less comfortable when Sky came along and took so much sport from terrestrial television.

"I also object because if I did get Sky, I'd probably become hooked like everyone else and never get to watch real sport at all."

Besides, he says, if they had Sky Television he'd have to learn how to work the video.

There are chapters about golf at Wynyard and ice hockey at Billingham Forum, about cold comfort at Sedgefield races, up and not overly-impressed at Newcastle Falcons and about an afternoon at the Reynolds Arena, as then Darlington's new football ground was called.

It's about that that we feel the need to upbraid him. The stadium sold pies from Taylor's, described as "the noted pie shop". Steve, shamefully, had never heard of them and bought a bag of crisps instead. "Noted by whom," he asks, "and where?"

The answer, of course, is by virtually everyone. Taylor's pies are as much part of the fabric of Darlington as locomotive works and Paton's wool, and have outlasted both of them.

We buy him one - it being nearly Christmas - on the way to the pub. He's mightily impressed, wipes the juice from his chin then licks his fingers, makes a note of the noted.

Steve's a 46-year-old executive with a leisure management company. "Maybe," he says, "my next book will be about pies."

His first offered idiosyncratically and affectionately potted biographies of all post-war Football League players from what is now the Borough of Sedgefield - including his dad, Ken, 77 Oldham appearances in the 1950s.

The second, called Can You Get Bobby Charlton?, was a vividly anecdotal account of Crook Town's improbable tour of India in 1976.

This one's entitled Watching Sport Without TV. He wasn't very happy with the title, but none could improve on it. An omnibus might be called Pie and the Sky.

"I firmly believe that those people who only see sport through a television screen are actually seeing something slightly unreal," he says. "Their judgment is impaired by only seeing the very best of a given sport.

"The best becomes the norm. Anything they perceive as being not as good as the rest is crap. Television sanitises everything."

The idea for the book sprang during a match at Carlisle - the in-laws live in Carlisle - when a big bloke was simultaneously force feeding pies through his beard and hurdling profanities at the referee before collapsing with an epileptic fit.

"Even as the St John Ambulance was taking him away on a stretcher, he was craning his neck to make sure he didn't miss anything on the field.

"You don't see that on television. You don't have the sounds, the smells, the atmosphere, the incidents."

He returned to Crook for the FA Vase quarter-final with Bury Town earlier this year, every one of the 1,946 crowd wrapped up - he supposed - like Ernest Shackleton.

"It was one of those days when, as a kid, you dreaded getting smacked on the thigh by a sturdy clearance as you were sure to come away with a ball-sized red mark surrounded by a blue halo of a bruise which looked like a love bite from a hippopotamus."

Similarly he suffered Sedgefield races in mid-January - closest he'd been to the gallopers since being bitten by a police horse at Roker Park - and a rainy day at Wynyard, to join 4,000 following the Seve Ballesteros golf classic.

Ice hockey at the Forum also left him cold, of course. "The Forum is old, knackered and ready for the Trinny and Sussanah of the architectural world to give it the once over."

It could be interesting. The company for which he works manages the Forum for Stockton Council.

It was altogether sunnier when he turned up at Trimdon Community Association, a couple of miles from home, to watch Trimdon play cricket - Darlington and District League, division B - against Witton-le-Wear.

He'd played briefly for Witton, stayed rather longer with Trimdon in the days when the twelfth man was the cool box. There were familiar faces like fast bowler Alan Lee - "the man with the longest and most curved run-up in history, like watching a chap in a cricket cap running the first bend of the 100m relay" - and the wickey with a passing resemblance to Godfrey Evans.

The return visit lasted 12 overs, and five pages, before he had to hurry homeward. The Wales v England football match was simultaneously live on the telly.

* Watching Sport Without TV is published by Kipper Publications (£9.99) and available from 30 Spring Lane, Sedgefield, Co Durham TS21 2DG. Steve's two other books are remaindered at £4.99 each. "Watching Sport" is also available from Waterstones, Border Books at Teesside Park, Castle Hill bookshop in Richmond and the Guisborough Bookshop.

Plenty of life in the raw at Whitley Bay on Tuesday evening, a cracking Arngrove Northern League match against Billingham Town. Talk among the Newcastle United contingent was of new midfielder Antoine Sibierski, whose name has sparked rivalry among the punsters. The best may have been on one of the websites: Merry Antoine Nets.

The following evening to Shildon, where the Railwaymen were to be presented with the Team of the Round award by virtue of their 4-3 FA Vase win at Nantwich, the holders.

There was a plaque, four cases of Carlsberg and 20 tickets for the Vase final, should they have need of them.

"Get a celebrity to present it," said the PR firm. The club said they'd try, failed, and rang back the PR outfit.

"We can't get anyone to present it, but the league chairman's a Shildon lad, will he do?"

"No he won't," said the Professional Nice Guys, "we want a real celebrity."

The club tried again, failed again, rang back again. "I suppose Mike Amos will have to do," said the PR company.

A swift handshake with club captain Kevin Shoulder and it was over in a photographer's flash. Unfortunately, I was unable to stay for the match. I'm a non-celebrity, get me out of there.

Roope remembered fondly hereabouts

Graham Roope, the former Surrey and England batsman who died - aged 60 - this week, is remembered for all sorts of reasons in the North-East.

He was goalkeeper - emergency goalkeeper, Roope rescue - for Durham County fire brigade, began a shortlived after-dinner speaking career at the Durham County League's do in Crook, even played for Rieuvaulx in the many-splendoured Feversham League in rural North Yorkshire.

Roope, who won 21 England caps - remembered as a decent batsman, occasional bowler and brilliant slip fielder - first ventured north after becoming involved in something equally shortlived called the National Sporting Club, based at Ampleforth College.

It was while there that he played for Rieuvaulx. "He wasn't as good as't local lads and even worse at getting his hand in his pocket," club chairman Frank Flintoft once recalled.

Johnny Wardle, Frank added, were just't same.

Roope later made several appearances for Yorkshire Over 50s, remembered for his still-sharp reflexes by wicket keeper and recently retired Eaglescliffe newsagent Tom Stafford.

"He still took some wonderful catches in the slips," says Tom. "I remember turning round to see where the ball had gone and it was in Graham's hand. I just couldn't believe it, it was like that Colin Cowdrey catch where he'd put the ball in his pocket."

Roope had also kept goal in the 1960s for Corinthian Casuals - "When amateurs were amateurs," he once said, doubtfully - including on the losing side against Bishop Auckland. Much later he became familiar at Bishop cricket club, and stayed at the North Briton in Aycliffe (as had Colin Milburn) as a guest of ebullient former wicketkeeper Allan Edgar.

Word is that he didn't much get his hand in his pocket at the North Brit, either.

Attempting to set up a sports management business on Tyneside, he played briefly for Chester-le-Street in the Durham Senior League, for Kirkley in Northumberland and for the Teesside-based Doghouse, of whom the column remains a vice-president.

His England career had ended unexpectedly, average approaching 31. He'd been at the other end when Geoffrey Boycott hit his 100th hundred at Headingley and had hit the winning runs in his last Test, against New Zealand. Probably it prompted the line at the Durham County League do about the difference between the England cricket selectors and a Safeway supermarket trolley.

A Safeway supermarket trolley has a mind of its own.

Earlier Backtrack references to Graham Roope included something in September 1992, when most of the column was devoted to the loquacious Brent "Bomber" Smith's decision to retire from cricket. "The bairns need me round a bit more," he said. Fourteen years later, Bomber's still talking about retiring - and at 54, still top of the bowling averages for Stafford Place.

AND FINALLY...

the only player to appear in both all-London FA Cup finals in 1967 and 1975 (Backtrack, November 28) was Alan Mullery of Spurs and Fulham.

Brian Shaw in Shildon today seeks the identity of the 39-year-old Englishman who, in the year 2000, became the oldest player to appear in the Champions League.

Old as you feel, the column returns on Tuesday.