OLD Applejack, they predicted, would always be one of the also rans. Though he didn't look much of a chaser, he was among the first horses that Howard Johnson and his wife bought for their stables above Crook and much cherished as a result.

Subsequently Old Applejack finished sixth in the Grand National, won eight times around Newcastle ("he loved Newcastle") and at several other northern courses.

When Howard's stepdaughter Lucy opened a little caf and sandwich takeaway in Durham last year, the initial pessimism seemed familiar. "People said it would never work, too small, too far from the city centre, all sorts" says the lovely Lucy and if Rocco Forte was right about "location, location and location" it should never have made the frame.

Thus discouraged, she called it Applejacks.

It's almost underneath the towering railway viaduct, wrong side of the inner ring road, opposite the County Hospital and a couple of doors along (memory suggests) from a long gone chip shop called Wainwright's which Harold Wilson insisted upon visiting whenever he came to the Miners' Gala.

When did a Labour prime minister last attend the Miners' Gala?

Lucy, Mrs Forbes since last December, had previously worked in the press and public relations department of Sunderland FC, was there when they were promoted, confesses few tears now that fortunes have changed.

"Like a lot more people who worked for Sunderland, I was a Newcastle supporter," she says, mischievously.

Applejacks was a gamble nonetheless, but starting handsomely to pay off.

Its chief attraction is that it's immensely cheerful, and thus immensely cheering, brightened throughout the year by Lucy's luminous smile - "people ask how I do it all day" - and about now by masses of daffodils, budding crocuses, Easter bunnies and things.

There are just three tables and very many more options - breakfast £2, double breakfast £4. Blackboards offer a vast range of hot and cold sandwiches and baguettes, "naughty bits" - cakes and whatnot - five or six good coffees and not just Earl Grey and peppermint tea but "detox" and "energy" as well.

Energy? We almost got up and went.

Men in luminous jackets and hard-headed hats come in with sandwich shipping orders, the scaffies come for the rubbish and take away free tea, likely lads ask if she's had any winners of late.

"In my dreams," says Lucy, though she managed a few bob on the third in this year's National.

Howard looks in occasionally on his way to Edinburgh races, her mum a more frequent visitor and usually persuaded to put on a pinny. It's open from 7.30am to 3.30pm.

A huge and hearty egg and bacon baguette was £2, an espresso coffee another £1, magazines and morning papers in abundance.

Old Applejack, sadly, fell in the line of duty - "at Newcastle, it was really quite appropriate". Whatever the odds, his namesake thrives - a deservedly popular winner.

THE younger bairn marked his birthday last Monday with lunch at the Black Bull at Moulton, near Scotch Corner, joined in general at that long esteemed establishment by the world and his wife and in particular by a small wedding party in which the groom bore a marked resemblance to Reg Holdsworth, him out of Coronation Street.

In truth it might have been the best man. He wore a carnation, anyway.

The bairn wore his best jeans and, in danger of being crowded out, declared himself "Hank".

(Hank, for the benefit of northerners and Over 21s, is Cockney rhyming slang for "starving" - starvin' as in Hank B Marvin, the still substantial Newcastle-born lead guitarist with The Shadows).

Set lunch at the Bull is now £16.50, and generally they do it very well. Since they go to so much trouble with the food and wine, however, it is many pities - we've made the point before - that they can't run to some decent real ale.

The bairn is worldly-wise nowadays, but puzzled over "smoked pollack and queenie chowder" as if Queenie Chowder were a fat lady running a coconut shy. There are times, even now, when a 19-year-old needs his dad.

A LITTLE present, a little belatedly, The Boss brought home the 2003 Good Beer Guide - lots of old favourites, some welcome newcomers and one or two whose inclusion is astonishing. Among the main entries is the Fox and Hounds at Cotherstone, Teesdale, said to have recovered from "rather a mixed spell" and to be on "a good, quiet route to Scotland". Those who can read a map will understand why.

A HOMEWARD pint in the Quaker Coffee House in Darlington, last week named Darlington CAMRA's pub of the year for the third time. It is, of course, neither Quaker nor Coffee House.

Whilst the Quakers can speak for themselves, or not as is sometimes the case, "Coffee House" is curious. In Skinningrove, east Cleveland, there used also to be a pub called Timms Coffee House, where any coffee drinking was strictly between consenting adults in private.

Steve Metcalfe, manager of the Quaker for four and a half years and leasee since last summer, regularly offers six immaculately kept real ales, mostly from lesser known outlets. Last week they included Bohemia from the admirable Wylan Brewery in the Tyne Valley, Quaker Ghost from Darwin in Sunderland and Black Sheep from Masham.

The pub's snicketed up Mechanics Yard, just off the High Row. Food lunchtime only, live music Wednesday evenings.

KING'S new clothes: two readers have written in agreement after last week's column suggested that the much acclaimed Magpie Cafe in Whitby was good but not great.

Bertha Pallister in Shildon was aghast to have her pie and chips served covered in gravy ("the only other time that happened was in Russia") whilst Colin Jones in Spennymoor prefers Clem's, not least because the wait's usually much shorter.

That same piece supposed that the only North-East eating places to win even more bouquets were the Betty's group, prompting a brickbat about an unnecessary apostrophe from Steve Dale in Leeming Bar, near Northallerton. The tea rooms, he says, are called Bettys - "as in the brown betty tea pots used in those establishments. You can confirm this by checking the signs outside."

Is that really how the group came by its name? Or is it all me eye and Betty Martin?

...and finally, the programme for Norton and Stockton Ancients FC last Tuesday included - with acknowledgements, admittedly - the bairns' favourite joke, about what a Frenchman has for breakfast. (You know, huit heures bix.)

One in the other net, the programme repeats the strictly scientific joke about a conversation between two atoms.

"I think I've lost an electron," says one.

"Are you sure?" asks his mate.

"Yes," he says, "I'm positive."

Published: ??/??/2003