TELEVISION producers beware. There will always be someone ready to pounce on dodgy technical detail in such period pieces as Heartbeat and its companion series The Royal.

One of Spectator's colleagues, who claims to be reasonably well versed in aviation history, raised questioning eyebrows during last Sunday's episode of The Royal, which featured the rescue of a man from choppy seas somewhere off the North Yorkshire coast.

Dramatic stuff it was, too, the only inconsistency concerning the appearance of a Sea King search and rescue helicopter, smartly turned out in high visibility yellow.

If the cars and the pop music tracks are anything to go by, The Royal is supposedly set in an era a few years before this American-designed machine, adapted for RAF requirements by our own Westland company, ever took off from such regional bases as Boulmer and Leconfield.

A yellow card at least, then, for the TV researchers, but perhaps some latitude should be allowed in the cause of dramatic licence. Spectator and his colleague would hate to be accused of boring viewers by peddling pedantic semantics.

Spoilt for choice

SOMETIMES, there is just no explaining life. With the closure of Crown Street car park, an extra 250 vehicles need to find space in Darlington. Spectator had to take a car into town last Friday, and did so with due trepidation - added to by the parking information boards declaring two car parks full and showing few spaces in others.

Not believing in paying to park in a town where you intend to spend money, we headed for the usual just-out-of centre road where, often, another small vehicle can be squeezed in.

There's a space, take it and be grateful. Oh, there's another one further down; and another and another. This is like the nearly empty supermarket car park when there is so much choice you become indecisive. There's even space on the other side of the road.

It was half-term in the borough and we were due for a stroke of luck, but this was almost on the spooky side.

Festive welcome

"WELCOME to Darlington" says the sign high above Bondgate, where the A68 brings visitors into the town centre. Nothing wrong with that, except that the unlit sign is a left-over from the town's Christmas lights.

In Post House Wynd, a similar overhead decoration remains, along with strings of smaller lights.

There have been enough quiet and open spells in the weather since Twelfth Night for the decorations to be removed, as they have elsewhere, so why haven't the goblins been to get the town council yet?