HOLLYWOOD is said to be planning a remake of All Creatures Great and Small. The revised version is apparently going to be “sexier and glossier.”

Perish the thought. Does that mean romps in Dales’ hay-lofts? – watch out for goosebumps and scratchy bits. Or Jilly Cooper style encounters with the MFH? Or a new take on Fifty Shades of Grey Days in the Dales – using some of that stuff that vets carry around in the back of their 4x4s?

But not, we hope, Siegfried like Lord Sewel in an orange bra. Rumours also include suggestions of possible casting – Hugh Laurie as grumpy Siegfried, Dominic West as the nervous young James Herriott (Can the supremely smooth and confident Dominic West actually do nervous and uncertain? ) And – best of all – Sarah Jessica Parker as James’s wife Helen. Ha!

You can just imagine her in her six-inch heels, tottering across a mucky farmyard with a tray of scones – sorry, make that cupcakes.

The joy of All Creatures Great and Small – as well as stunning scenery and a boost to the tourist trade – was its ordinariness, its niceness and its Sunday evening decency. A bit of nostalgic escapism you could watch with Granny and the kids and not choke on your cold beef sandwich.

There’s still a place for programmes like that, especially now that so many dramas and even soap operas are getting darker and nastier. Sexy and glossy is all very well, but sometimes in a dark and chaotic world, a little light and wholesome relief is a welcome relaxation.

Watching Tristram put his hand up a cow’s bum is quite enough excitement, thank you.

A FOURTEEN-year-old girl has been plucked from the slums of Tel Aviv to become a model for Dior. Cue outrage.

Sofia Mechetner is 5ft 11in and stick thin, with the gawky charm of any young creature still growing into her body. Now she’s sashaying down the world’s catwalks in ridiculously expensive see-though creations. And your problem is…?

True, Sofia is vulnerable in the way all 14-year-olds are vulnerable. Plus when her body starts growing she’s going to be under terrific pressure to stay stick-thin at any price. Fashion is a cruel and chaotic world and no place for a child.

On the other hand, her life back in Tel Aviv didn’t sound like much fun either. When her single mother went out to work, Sofia did all the housework and looked after her young brothers and sisters. And didn’t even have a bed to sleep in. Not much of a childhood to lose. £170,000 for two years work? Sounds like a miracle.

There is, of course, the influence of waif-like models on vulnerable teenagers. A stick-insect Dior model is just a tiny part of a much wider world of air-brushed perfection that provides the wallpaper to our lives. But most of us, even impressionable young girls, know that fashion is a total fantasy world of smoke and mirrors, air-brushing and impossible expectations.

What possible link can there be between 6ft tall, size 6 models wearing outfits that start at around £6,000 – and the average size 14 woman buying a £50 dress in the High Street? It makes little difference if the model is 14 or 24 – it’s just as far from our reality.

It’s a game with nothing to do with us except as something to gawp at in the hairdressers’ magazines.

And there are probably worse places a skinny underprivileged 14 year old could be.

The Northern Echo:

MEANWHILE, if you want a glimpse into the fairytale world of high fashion then you should go to the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition at the Bowes Museum, which is amazing – and almost bound to make you wish that you too were stick thin and ridiculously rich.

The Bowes is incredibly busy at the moment – best book for the YSL unless you have a six-month pass which enables you to go breezing past the queues – but the staff are, as always, kind and helpful. I have a soft spot for the dead-pan chaps – who are also wonderfully knowledgeable about the posh frocks.

The Northern Echo:
Roadworks on the A1(M)

RESEARCH from the Highways Agency says that it’s 2 hours 23 minutes when children start asking “Are we nearly there yet?” Two hours 23 minutes?

When ours were small, we were lucky if we got to Scotch Corner before the dreaded question started. As for the picnic – designed to be enjoyed as soon as we got inside the Welsh border – I was generally dismantling and dishing bits out somewhere around Boroughbridge.

Yet once, when the boys were four and two, we drove all the way to the tip of Cornwall, about 430 miles, on a bank holiday with no problem at all. The boys sang and slept and chattered and did a brilliant presentation of an edition of Playschool that lasted the length of the M5. Magical. I still don’t quite know what made that trip so easy.

But if I did, I’d bottle the idea and sell it for thousands.

SO you’re going from Sedgefield one evening to go down the A1. All seems well and normal as you get to Bradbury and join the motorway. Fifteen miles later there’s a sign warning that the A1 is closed at Scotch Corner, two miles away.

And which way do they tell you to go? – Yes, back up the A1 to Bradbury… That’s 30 miles for nothing – just for the sake of a warning on the sign before the motorway – before you even start on the mammoth diversion down the A19.

The region is a mass of roadworks at the moment. Impossible to get anywhere without road closures, lane closures, diversions, delays and traffic lights. It’s a monumental job and I’m full of admiration over the way it’s done.

But could those in charge PLEASE introduce some thought into their signs? There are so many diversion signs it’s hard to work out which applies to what.

And who can blame hacked off wagon drivers who ignore the signs at the top of our village and come trundling through the narrow roads and get stuck, noisily, as they try and negotiate the tricky corner beneath my bedroom window ? Lots of them, every night. And I have the bags under my eyes to prove it...

ONLY teenage boys could have thought of it...

Lads in Whitby have invented a new summer sport – “gull running”. With boxes of chips held above their heads they try and run the length of the pier before a seagull nabs their chips. It’s daft, it’s dangerous, it’ll doubtless end in tears. But at least it gets them away from their screens and gives them fresh air and exercise….