SURELY I wasn't the only person who thought, when I read the story about the Scarborough judge in court for being drunk and disorderly, that someone had made a mistake?

"A judge?" I said as I glanced at his picture in the papers. "He can't be a judge." David Messenger just didn't look like a learned M'lud. With his curly, Kevin Keegan-style poodle haircut, and shiny, baggy double-breasted suit, he looked just like the sort of bloke you would meet down the kebab shop on a Friday night.

But I was wrong. Mr Messenger had exposed my prejudices. I have come to expect judges to be old codgers with a shock of white hair, perhaps wearing a pair of pince-nez. And so out of touch they are likely to say: "And who, exactly, are The Beatles?".

They're somehow distant, removed from the general public, throwbacks from another age. But time moves on. Is Mr Messenger, described as a "rock'n'roll judge" because of his love of Seventies music, a glimpse of the future? Will our new generation of learned M'luds, now throwbacks from the Seventies rather than the Forties, spend their evenings listening to their Dire Straits albums or playing their air guitar along to Jimi Hendrix, before arriving in court to ask: "And who, exactly, is this Justin Timberlake?"

On a more serious note, Mr Messenger, who ended up with a bill for more than £7,000 after being convicted of being drunk and disorderly, said earlier of his prosecution: "It is galling. When they have serious crime and people getting away with it where is the public interest in pursuing such a petty matter? The longer it goes on, the more angry I become."

While Mr Messenger is outraged, I feel reassured. He admitted calling two constables "a***holes" and the court heard he was the worst and most obstructive prisoner police station staff could remember. Does he think that because he is well educated, well-paid and holds a good position he shouldn't be held to account? The well off middle classes are not exempt from the rule of law. Mr Messenger should know better. To paraphrase a Seventies hit he may have heard, he fought the law and, thankfully, the law won.

WOMEN'S Institute market organisers in Darlington are planning to bare all for a publicity campaign. Firefighters in Peterlee are also stripping off for a new calendar. But when the original North Yorkshire Calendar Girls got their kit off, it was a bold, daring and witty idea. Seeing the same old thing copied over and over again became boring two years ago. Now it's irritating. Can't anyone come up with a new idea? Why doesn't someone try to raise money by finding people who are willing to keep their clothes on for charity? I'd pay for that.

I HAVE always thought motherhood is one long guilt trip and now here's further proof. After years of forcing porridge, toast and fruit down my boys before sending them off to school, new research shows that, although girls do need a big breakfast, boys perform better when hungry. So, I've been doing it all wrong again. Still, experience tells me that if I change my ways, conflicting research will come out in a few months time, telling me the opposite again. It's probably easier to learn to accept that I'm a terrible mother.