TONY Blair put his foot in it during a whistle-stop tour of his North-East constituency today.

The Prime Minister was being shown round a new factory which manufactures lighting columns when he stood in some paint - red paint, as the Labour Party leader was quick to point out.

But that was the only mishap on a whirlwind morning trip around County Durham, which also took in two schools and a telephone exchange.

Mr Blair's paint accident happened when he officially opened the new Balmer Lindley factory in Newton Aycliffe.

The company, which provides both street lighting and motorway lighting columns, has created more than 160 jobs at the former Sanyo microwave oven factory, which closed in 2001.

Balmer Lindley has taken on workers made redundant from other North-East factories, notably Samsung and Black and Decker, providing a ray of light in an otherwise bleak outlook for manufacturing in the region.

Opening the factory, Mr Blair said: "It's a fantastic job you're doing here, particularly with some of the other companies having suffered problems or laying people off.

"We need other employers coming in and making use of the skills that we have."

Earlier, Mr Blair had faced a grilling from youngsters at Ferryhill Business and Enterprise College over his controversial plans for student top-up fees.

But the Prime Minister remained unruffled throughout, even when the school's fire alarm went off as he was chatting to pupils.

Mr Blair, who also visited the new sports hall, was at Ferryhill to officially recognise the school's specialist status as the first business and enterprise college in the region.

There were no hostile questions during Mr Blair's visit to Trimdon Grange Nursery and Infants School where he opened a new early years learning unit.

After being shown round by new headteacher Catherine Whorton, he cut a cake to mark the occasion.

Mr Blair's first official duty of the day had been at his local telephone exchange in Trimdon Colliery to see it being upgraded for high speed broadband Internet services.

A pioneering £10m scheme, delivered by One NorthEast and BT, will see every community within the North-East hooked up to broadband by next spring.