SWEET toothed for some reason, last week's column wondered what had happened to the Milky Bar Kid - or at least to one of the many who have filled those famous cowboy boots.

The North-East's star attraction was Gareth Watchman, then a fun faced five-year-old from Trimdon who appeared in the famous commercials in 1994.

Now he's 15, lives on the family farm near Sedgefield, loves horses and show jumping and on spare Saturday mornings is whipper-in for the South Durham Hunt.

"He's not a Tony Blair fan and cannot understand why he wants to ban hunting," says Debra, Gareth's mum.

The reward from those prodigious days is banked and awaiting its turn, though Gareth is unlikely again to seek such commercial breaks.

"He was offered a part in a Catherine Cookson film but we wanted him to concentrate on his school work," says Gary, his dad. "Now he eats and sleeps horses and will probably end up working with them."

The other reward was an almost limitless supply of the Nestle product - as a result of which, he hasn't eaten one since. "He can't even stand the smell when someone takes the wrapper off," says Gary.

Milky Bar? Kid's stuff no longer.

QUIETLY contemplating the raucous radio ads for Frank's Factory Flooring - to which 93 per cent of listeners would apply everything from the volume control to a pick axe handle - last week's column also suggested that the Big Noise might be carpet firm boss Frank McKenna himself.

"It's not," insists a radio station mole, "it's Middlesbrough-born actor Bill Fellows."

An e-mail from Dave Walker in Darlington, incidentally, insists that the "screaming banshee" who voices ads for Kenwood Paint Supplies registers just as highly on the Richter.

Bill Fellows, who thought he'd never make drama school because they wanted six O levels and he had six fewer, has become a familiar face on television.

Previously he'd done bits at Middlesbrough Little Theatre, worked at Grangetown Boys Club, finally got his drama school break in 1978 and was recently back on Teesside in something called Dead Fish at the Stockton Arc Centre.

Hail Fellows, we have been unable to track him down to put the big question. Hell Fellows, can it really be you?

YET another hot topic, we had been wondering about Durham Mustard, once among the city's staples, and wondering if it were still produced.

Philip Steele in Crook and Martin Snape in Durham both send details of "Sedgewick's Durham Mustard" - "superb" says Phil - made outside the city, near Croxdale.

The label - "I can't vouch for it," says Martin - claims succession from a Mrs Clements of Durham who is credited with inventing the original "English" mustard in 1720, much tickled George I's fancy and travelled the country selling the stuff.

Mrs Clements worked off Sadler Street, followed along the mustard mile by J Balmborough in Silver Street and Simpson and Willan in Station Lane, Gilesgate. Colman's didn't start cutting it until 1814.

Ray Price in Chester-le-Street so despaired of modern, mass produced mustard that he now makes it for his own consumption. "I lost faith in the commercial product 20 years ago," he says.

"French Dijon from France with no English on the label isn't bad but like most things French, can be improved upon."

Ray produces "Regular", with honey and basil, "Devil's own" with chilli and "Oriental - with ginger and other things". A sample is on the way with his compliments - cheap, as they say, at half the Price.

FOLK living near the scenic road from Stokesley to Helmsley in North Yorkshire are so fed up of ton up motor cyclists that they have enlisted a top London PR firm in an attempt to curb the menace. They mightn't be doing wheelies in Weardale, either.

We went walking up there on Sunday, peace periodically punctured by the approaching roar of a madness of motor cyclists, serenity riding shotgun to the first of the summer whine.

Whilst generally of a live and let live disposition, the column feels obliged to wonder whether, in an age of far greater miracles and wonders, it isn't possible to invent a quieter motor bike.

Or is the racket the most essential part of the fun?

A MADNESS may not be the most appropriate term for motor cyclists. A leather, perhaps? Or a rage, or a cacophony? Tomorrow night, perchance, we shall be addressing Stanhope Women's Institute where - instead of the usual competition for embroidered egg cup cover, or whatever - we shall invite an appropriate collective noun and offer a singular prize. Wheels within wheels, there may be more of this next week.

THIMBLE Hill Farm stands off the road from Stanhope across Bollihope Common. From May 28-31 it hosts a motor bike rally and from June 18-20 the third Thimbleberry Music Festival.

A roughly painted roadside sign offers further details on www.weird.co.uk - though it may be a pun on Weardale rather than anything sensationally surreal.

We plodged the Internet, anyway. The bikers' meet, officially the Empty the Barrel Again Rally, offers "live bands, bike show, mad games and loads of beer." There's something called a Yippee Tent, too.

The Thimbleberry Music Festival - the thimbleberry, rubus occidentalis, is the American black raspberry - has tents for dances like trance, underground garage and dub.

The farmer probably calls it diversification. What Stanhope calls it, we may hear tomorrow evening.

A MORE gentle mode of transport altogether, steam trains return to Weardale on July 17 when the five mile stretch of track between Wolsingham and Stanhope permanently re-opens. Eventually they hope to run the entire line from Bishop Auckland to Eastgate, and with links to the new railway museum at Shildon. There are some of us, it should be said, who thought that Scotsmen might fly before the railway returned to Weardale. Well done to them all.

...and finally, another of these columns reported last week that Peter Kemp, leaving after 18 years as Durham County Council's social services director, has compiled a little book of aphorisms for friends and colleagues.

The most frequent theme is the need to innovate, as in Proverbs XXIX 18: "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

Charles Darwin, also cited, similarly observed that it wasn't the strongest or most intelligent of the species which survived, but those who responded to change.

Mixture the same as before, the column returns next Wednesday.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk

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Published: ??/??/2004