LIKE the good folk of the North Riding of Yorkshire, we have been flooded out. Last week's column struck more chords, and elicited greater response, than any in the 17 years before it. Unlike North Yorkshire folk, however, we are most grateful for the deluge.

Much of the correspondence has been about the North/South divide and about the directly related matter of Gregg's stotty cakes, though it is a topic - as we shall learn - in which Gregg's come to a sticky end.

We have also been plodging through a high tide of collective nouns - Mrs M Burlison in Darlington kindly points out that the collective for ladies of the night is an anthology* - and through a veritable alma mater of school songs.

Save for a nostalgic snatch, the songs may have to wait until next week. We have also been supplied with the full words of the Desert Rats' ditty which explains the smile on the face of the camel which, subject to space and to censoriousness, will appear in tomorrow's John North.

Firstly, however a much more sombre note.

IN the days before 1994, when the Gadfly column had a rather more political purpose, its agenda was chiefly set at the Liquid Luncheon Club, in the Red Lion across the road.

Though there were occasional guest appearances - principally by the late lamented Newton Aycliffe councillor Tony Moore - those present each Monday were usually Gadfly, Peter Jones and Jimmy Whelan.

Peter was leader of the Conservative minority on Darlington Council, a municipal Don Quixote who delighted in the adage that they didn't like it up 'em.

Jimmy was a former mayor of the town, who wore the chain with both pride and dignity but was subsequently expelled from the Labour group for the cardinal offence of having a mind of his own.

He died suddenly last week, aged 73 - a marvellous, mischievous, maverick who had worked diligently for both the town and the people in his ward and deserved better than to be a political outcast.

Once a thoughtful Hear All Sides regular, too, he had been quiet for several years. In an age of kowtowing conformity, those who made him a pariah may even now care to consider the consequences of their cowardice.

l Jimmy Whelan's funeral will be on Friday, August 9, at Darlington Crematorium Chapel at 10.15am.

LAST week's column pinpointed the North/South dividing line to Richmond Market Place, the last redoubt of Gregg's stotty cakes. As a result, we now learn, the stotty has become much treasured in the nether regions.

"My son's car boot overflows with them, enough to fill his freezer, every time he goes back to Weymouth," says Priscilla Burdess from Hartlepool, though Cathie Jackson - offspring in Scunthorpe, Cambridge and Hampshire - has the problem in triplicate.

"It's up to me to tackle the withdrawal symptoms and the stotty famine," says Cathie, from Darlington.

"I have to go down laden with stotty cakes and Taylor's pies and they're just as popular with their friends who'd never heard of stotty cakes until the Darlingtonians landed.

"I sometimes wonder if it's me or the stotties and pies that they most look forward to seeing."

Another Darlington reader pleads, on her exiled daughter's behalf, for a Gregg's in Oxford. "The city has umpteen fancy sandwich shops and a very posh patisserie but nothing like a bakery that we know in the North."

A Gregg's spokeswoman says that they're always looking at new outlets - already there are almost 1,200 nationwide - but that they don't sell stotties in the south because there's no demand.

Ever tried it?

"Er, no."

There is hope, however. A website is being developed which will offer stotty cakes, or anything else Gregg's sells, on-line, worldwide.

Wouldn't it be a bit doughy on the postage?

"It depends," says the spokeswoman, "on how much you want your stotty."

IT works both ways, of course. Darlington councillor Nick Wallis's family are from Bristol, where Gregg's sell both lardy cake and bread pudding. Up here they're scarcer than a southern fried stotty.

A lardy cake, about which there may be nothing remotely lah-di-dah, is made from liberal amounts of lard, sugar and spices - "as unhealthy as it sounds," concedes Nick. Bread pudding is spiced and ("from memory") made from left-over wholemeal bread, dried fruit and eggs.

"Both are wonderful. I'm getting twinges of homesickness just sitting here thinking about them.

"Dare I say that lardy cake and bread pudding would make more of an addition to the northern diet than stotties, which are after all just big bread buns, could ever do for the south?"

Gregg's northern division knows nothing of such west country delicacies. "I expect," says the spokeswoman, "that there'll be lardy cake on the Internet as well."

RICKY Tedham looked into Gregg's in Darlington last week, in the expectation of buying three iced buns.

The young assistant said they were on "special offer", four for £1. OK, said Ricky, he'd have four.

Whilst the assistant was putting them into a bag, however, he noticed that iced buns - iced fingers, Gregg's prefers to call them - were in any case 25p each.

He patiently explained the mathematics, suggested that there was nothing very special about four five-bob buns for a quid.

"We're having a promotion to sell four," said the assistant. Ricky left, icily, with three.

The company, extraordinarily, admits it is the case. "They are what we call a signature product. We are giving them a promotional push in order to sell more. It is a real special offer."

What, four for £1 instead of three for 75p?

"Four for £1 sounds better, doesn't it?" insists the spokeswoman.

No, we said, it didn't. It's time Gregg's got their sticky finger out.

PERHAPS inevitably - split peas and the North/South divide - pease pudding has featured, too. "All Methodist chapel teas, especially for funerals, had to have pease pudding, usually with cooked ham and beetroot in dishes on the tables," recalls Arthur Kay, from Murton.

His family were butchers, though he now often gets his pease pudding from Tesco in Durham - which raises the question, says Arthur, of whether there's also a North/South divide on pease pudding. We may find the proof of that one next week.

THAT there is nothing new under the sun (or the rain clouds, if North of the Humber) is evidenced by Aubrey Adamson from Birdsall, near Malton.

Almost 50 years ago, he recalls, the Echo's letters columns overflowed with another debate about where the North began.

"Take the A1 at Potters Bar and head upwards," wrote a Hear All Sides correspondent. "The first time that someone tips his cap to you, then you're in the North."

NO matter that they appeared to have been involved in a class riot, dozens of readers wanted a battered copy of First Aid in English, Angus MacIver's primary school fix-all in the 50s.

He's best remembered for his collective nouns. What, last week's column wondered, were the terms for cats, ducks, bears and jellyfish?

Cats, by common consent, clawed in clowders. It was a sloth of bears - though more energetic investigators preferred a sleuth - a paddling of ducks ("when in water") and a smuck of jellyfish.

Ducks, it was suggested, also swam in teams, rafts, braces and bunches and jellyfish, by popular vote, came all of a fluther. Though the Oxford English Dictionary disowns almost all of them, the Reader's Digest may have offered collective assistance.

A First Aid course, at any rate, to Terence Shannon in Billingham and to Mrs Valerie Garwood in Hurworth Place, Darlington.

WHILST cats may come in clowders, what of Black Cats? Thi s football season, at any rate, Tom Purvis in Sunderland suggests the collective noun may be a relegation. And that asterix up the top? You know, an anthology of pro's.

...and finally, Peter Crawforth in Chilton, Ferryhill, reports that clubbers in Yorkshire have taken to injecting Ecstasy directly into their mouths.

This dangerous practice, he adds, is known as "E by gum."