SPECTATOR salutes Yarm Town Council in its possibly Canute-like attempt to turn back the tide of the dreaded local radio roadshow.

Councillors this week shocked their chairman by rejecting the offer from TFM for a roadshow when the town's Christmas lights are switched on. Members decided they would rather hear carols from Yarm School choir than the inevitable Wizzard, Mud, Slade and more modern festive abominations.

A stunned Coun Gwen Porter announced "You cannot live in the past" but if she thinks the future consists of the sort of ubiquitous claptrap served up by second-rate DJs at virtually every public event going, she has limited imagination.

At every football match these days, you do not just have to listen to music, but to a DJ blathering on. Spectator will go to Darlington's South Park fireworks tomorrow and have to put up with half an hour of drivel before the main attraction.

Someday, the people will rise up and cast the local DJ into the wilderness. In the meantime - well done, Yarm!

The right image

"WHY do we have people on TV wearing tweed jackets, leaning on four-wheel drive vehicles instead of someone the urban person can identify with?" Prof Gareth Edwards-Jones of the University of Wales asked farmers attending the Great North Meet near Bedale last Friday. The agricultural industry must use spokesmen with whom consumers could identify.

As other speakers stressed the increasing importance of organic and naturally-produced foods, it might be relevant to ask if a spokesman or woman in smart, urban togs would have the right effect either. Would the consumer believe such a street-smart character could know anything reliable about farming?

As for the four-wheel drives, surely the well-heeled urban consumer facing all the daily hazards of a two-mile school run could identify with one of those.

Memorable journey

AS IF a timetable disrupted by the weather and Railtrack's best efforts to check the entire network for cracked rails wasn't enough, Northallerton-bound travellers who had sorted out the right queue at King's Cross and eventually begun their journey were in for another surprise at the end of it.

Despite it being a scheduled stop, their train sailed straight through Northallerton station. Spectator's friend in the standard class seat understands that no-one had told the driver to make the stop.

Information, in the form of copious apologies, had been in plentiful supply en route but no ticket collector (or conductor as they call them now) appeared between Peterborough and Doncaster, leaving a passenger to stem the flow of obscenity from a gang ringleader which was upsetting those with small children.