How our Tracy was fooled

WHAT really made Tan Hill Inn landlady Tracy Daly think that the solicitors for KFC couldn't be serious about seeking to proscribe the term "Family feast" was that the letter was signed by Giles Pratt.

Though acquaintances of that name accept it with resigned good humour - the same applied when once I wrote a column about Nutters - the slight is recent, and may even be the fault of Mr Melvyn Bragg.

The noun "prat" or "prats" has long meant "backside" - as in pratfall, or cowp the creels, as they say in North-Eastern parts. Mrs Lynn Briggs even points out that in Kent there's a place called Pratts Bottom, a possible example of what the grammarians call tautology.

Perhaps with the same roots, the verb has come to mean to fool about, or practise trickery.

From literature, however, the Oxford English Dictionary first ascribes the pejorative meaning to Mr Bragg in Without a City Wall, published in 1968.

There are also a couple of later references to books by J Wainwright - "Harris was a bit of a pompous prat" - which may well be the same John Wainwright who wrote an acerbic Northern Echo column in the 1970s, the Peter Mullen of his day.

The Oxford, however, most succinctly defines "prat" as "A person of no account, a dolt, a fool."

Perhaps they had seen coming the solicitor for KFC.

Why did the rubber chicken cross the road?

She wanted to stretch her legs.

MORE from our legal correspondent: a letter from Mr N Crawford, who gives no address, draws attention to a piece by Simon Calder in The Independent on one of the column's favourite absurdities - the train service to Teesside Airport.

Billed as "The man who pays his way", Mr Calder has at last discovered the truth about integrated transport, Teesside Airport-style.

"As with the Gatwick, Heathrow and Stansted Expresses, airport trains run at regular intervals. The length of that interval, though, is rather different.

"Miss the 10.28 to Middlesbrough from Teesside Airport (on a Saturday morning) and you face a week's wait for the next. This ludicrous state of affairs has prevailed for a decade."

It prevails, as these columns have noted, because it's cheaper to offer a derisory, once-a-week service than to go through the legalities of closing a station.

From this Sunday, incidentally, the new summer timetable applies. Just as before, there's the 10.28 to Middlesbrough and the 13.41 back to Darlington, and the plane truth is that it's barmy.

Why did the skeleton cross the road?

Because it hadn't any guts.

ROB Williams at Tyne Tees Television draws attention to a "previously unknown example of cricketing derring-do" chronicled in last Wednesday's Echo.

Reporting the planned erection in South Shields of a statue to the late Captain Richard Annand VC, a true hero of the DLI, we observed that he had "rescued his batsman under enemy fire".

Rob supposes it to be the true spirit of cricket. "That's why Hitler lost the war, no appreciation that the game must be played out, even if Jerry started lobbing shells onto the wicket.

"He probably didn't understand the LBW law, either."

Why did the dinosaur cross the road?

Because chicken weren't invented.

BACK from a sun-blessed week in west Wales, last Wednesday's column wondered if the oft-grey North-East coast - especially around Redcar - had England's worst weather.

It reminded retired Redcar businessman Peter Sotheran, once a printer and stationer, of the days when his company produced the tourism brochure for the borough council.

"Recognising that Redcar was on the northern tip of the Yorkshire coastline, a town hall bright spark suggested headlining the cover 'Redcar: the last resort in Yorkshire'.

"When it was pointed out that on a wet Wednesday - or any other day for that matter - it certainly was the last resort, the idea was quietly dropped."

Peter also recalls a town hall meeting at which it was proposed to erect 14 signs to the public toilets and just one to the racecourse. Some wondered which was the greater tourist attraction, prompting an elderly councillor to rise unsteadily to his feet.

"It depends," he said, "upon your priorities."

Why did the chicken cross just half way across the road?

She wanted to lay it on the line.

DURHAM may be trying to buck up its tourism ideas, too, because Janet Murrell has sent a document called Durham City Vision - "extensive ideas for the regeneration of the public realm throughout the city centre", all that sort of stuff.

There's also a section on the Market Place - "the most important space in the city centre, bar none."

At the moment, says the document, it's mainly used as a "service yard" and is "cluttered with objects and poor surfaces that frustrate its exploitation".

Helpfully, there's also an illustration of "the Market Place today", which we reproduce. There are those who may find it unfamiliar.

Why did the chicken cross the Market Place?

Probably in search of the statue of third Marquess of Londonderry on his horse.

JUST the passing aroma of fish and chips in last week's column reminded Brian Sykes of his younger days in Harrogate, where a request for cod and chips was always phrased as "one of each".

Having moved to Cleveland in the early 1960s, he stopped at a Middlesbrough chip shop on the way home one night and asked for much the same.

"Imagine my shock when I was asked for sixteen shillings and eightpence and discovered how many things you could buy in a Middlesbrough fish shop."

Happily, they unwrapped the package and for 3/9d sent him, contented, on his way

Why did the Roman chicken cross the road?

It didn't want to be in a Caesar salad.

...and finally, our attention is drawn to Durham County Council's "Investing in Children" newsletter, and to a DVD made last summer among youngsters at the St Philip's travellers' site at Coundon Grange, near Bishop Auckland.

"It was basically to challenge stereotypes. They get a bit of gyp at school because of who they are," says Ashleigh Greathead, who worked with IIC on the project.

It involved talking to young travellers about what was important in their lives. They called it Wayne Rooney or the Queen? because that's what the bairns decided they wanted to ask one another.

Her Majesty, alas, received just one vote. "It was a lovely little girl called Pearl-Annie who thought she was pretty and had nice jewellery," says Ashleigh.

Though Mr Rooney has far more courtiers (and probably far more money) than the Queen, a copy was sent to Buckingham Palace as well as Manchester United.

The kids have now had a reply from the Palace - "extra thick, posh cream paper" - thanking them for the DVD and sending the Queen's best wishes. There's not been a squeak from Mr Rooney.

"We've given every one of them a copy of the Queen's letter and they're chuffed to bits," says Ashleigh. "If they did the poll again, I think you'd get a rather different result."