The only trouble with St Patrick's Day, which yesterday jigged and reeled its way round once again, is that no matter how late Easter falls or how close to Christmas they advance Ash Wednesday, March 17 is always in Lent.

Whatever else the Irish give up for lent, it's unlikely to be St Patrick's Day - an occasion borne on a tide of national fervour, piety and Guinness.

It was a complication confronted - and then sidestepped - by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle at a wonderful St Patrick's Day service yesterday morning.

For many years, said the Rt Rev Kevin Dunn, he'd been asked if Lent could be suspended for the happy event. "I'm not going to enter upon the big question," he said jovially, and moved further on the Lenten journey.

Fr Joe Travers had fewer misgivings. "In Ireland we always had St Patrick's Day off, it was a break in the middle of Lent. It stood to all reason," he said.

"Today everyone is Irish. We return to Lent on Monday."

Until the 1970s, Irish law forbade pubs even to open on the patronal festival. Now it's a day of international celebration, the brewers as keen as the bishops. Whatever the observance in the rest of Christianity, in Ireland Lent has 39 days.

It was Fr Joe who, 33 years ago, began the annual March 17 service at St Michael's church in Elswick, Newcastle, where then he was curate - a morning where uncut emerald meets 22 carat Geordie.

At first there were around 30 Irish priests, yesterday there are about ten - "We're getting owld," says Fr Joe. They're joined by Bishop Kevin, who's from the Black Country, by Fr Bill Bellamy - the extraordinary 84-year-old from Sunderland who's still St Michael's parish priest - and by a congregation of 600.

Bishop Kevin processes with his priests, his smile as broad as the Liffey.

The church is a mile west of the city centre, on Westmorland Road, once surrounded by thriving heavy engineering industry and now hedged about by tower blocks of varying heights (and depths) of monstrosity and by the no less egregious Cruddas Park shopping centre.

Down the hill towards the Tyne there's something called an Early Years Centre, known in simpler times as a school, and beyond that the Anglican church of St Stephen, now the focus of a care home - or Later Years Centre, as doubtless it will soon be known.

The service begins at 10.30am, the handsome church filling 45 minutes earlier. Some already wear the shamrock, others are invited to collect one from the front but to be careful that they don't take two.

"You only need one to get through the pearly gates," Fr Joe tells them.

The organ is replaced by fiddle, bodrhan and other instruments of merriment. There's even a little jig before the service, the temptation to dance in the aisles regrettably resisted.

Fr Joe offers the traditional welcome "Cead Mile Failte". The bishop can't get his tongue around it because he's a Brummie, he says. Irish eyes are smiling.