SO, anyway, there I was sitting nervously in the Middlesbrough FC's stadium waiting to go in front of John Pienaar and on air in front of Radio 5 Live's millions of listeners.

John was sitting in the middle of the large but empty Legends Lounge, headphones over his ears, laptop before his eyes, a large clock beside him. Whenever he speaks, his whole body - and there is a fair amount of it - rocks in rhythm with his voice as if he were Keith Moon. His right foot bashes a bass drum pedal; his biro alternate between the high hat and the snare.

One of his technical team offered to go in search of a tea for me and returned from a distant machine bearing a cup of white no sugar. I take black, lots of sugar.

It would have been churlish to reject the kind offering out of hand, so I drank it.

It tasted most unpleasant and then, to my horror, I realised it had given me wind.

The interview lasted about ten minutes, and throughout it I was desperate not to burp. I succeeded, but as soon as I was free to go, set off in search of a drink to take the terrible taste away.

It was 10pm on a warm but dark Middlesbrough Sunday night.

I drove from the Riverside's wastelands towards the town centre where, near the university, I spotted an open corner shop. I stopped, got out of my car and, from out of the dark, a young lady in leggings appeared, sucking on a cigarette.

"Are you looking for business?" she asked.

I was rather - no, very - taken aback. It sounded as if she were offering me the most natural thing in the world - coffee at the end of a fine meal, sex at the end of a long day - so I politely turned her down.

"No, thank-you very much of asking."

She smiled sweetly - ever so sweetly - and disappeared back into the dark.

I went into the shop and was so disorientated by the encounter that I bought the first thing I could see by the till. Fortunately, it proved to be a packet of chewing gum - the first time I have bought it for 20 or more years - rather than a packet of anything else.

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NAME-DROPPING outrageously, I bumped into Nick Brown in Sky TV's Durham studio on Saturday lunchtime. No matter what the poll in this morning's paper shows - and it shows a complete wipe out of Labour in Newcastle due to the Lib Dem surge - he seemed genuinely confident, reporting that he hadn't even seen a Lib Dem campaign going on in his Newcastle East constituency.

The previous day - Friday - I had been with Nick Clegg at Newcastle Airport and I can report that I have never seen a team more confident than that surrounding the Lib Dem candidate Ron Beadle in Newcastle North.

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ON Sunday, David Cameron was tearing around the country. In the afternoon, he materialised at Stockton Sixth Form College for a 50-minute question and answer session: a confident, fluent and impressive performance.

Four local journalists had a little "huddle" with him afterwards - we gaggle round him and compete with each other to ask him awkward questions. He was a little tetchy, in truth, over the "Paxman question" concerning the North-East and spending cuts, and over a perceived disequilibrium (ie: flip-flop) on the future of regional development agencies.

Our time up, with enough for Monday's front page in my notebook, I fell in with the Team Tory on Teesside in the corridor outside the interview room.

After a few minutes chat, Mr Cameron swept by and his way back to his bus. He shook them enthusiastically by the hand, one farewell leading to another until someone suggested that Team Tory should pose for a picture.

Ian Galletley gave me his camera and asked me to take a picture. After one shot, his memory card came up full, and I was the only person in that corridor with a camera to hand.

I have the most up-to-date digital camera in the world, touchscreen, autoface recognition, everything you could possible require. However, it takes an age to turn the flash on and it takes skill to compose the picture properly.

I fear my efforts let them down.

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FINALLY, I was planning on putting up a few notes on my encounter today with Vince Cable in Redcar. Time, though, is defeating me. Perhaps tomorrow. Except to note that the political world at the moment is so topsy-turvey that sober-minded Vince, in a room full of journalists, was the only one having a lunchtime lager.