THE self-effacing reader who prefers simply to be known as That Bloody Woman, recalls how a friend, about to enter wedlock almost 40 years ago, was told by an elderly aunt that she wanted to give her some important advice on married life.

The bride-to-be waited with some apprehension. "Always get The Northern Echo so you'll know who's died," counselled the aunt and - bitter-sweet, no doubt - it remains no less true today.

Cognoscenti of such things also recall a classic in the In Memoriam columns:

So soon to go,

So young to die,

We often wonder

But God knows why.

It is, in any case, from the pages of The Daily Telegraph that the BW sends pictures of the Prime Minister and of the heir to the throne.

Their hand signals are identical, right hand tugging at the little finger on the left. Where the finger really points, of course, is to the big issue of who's mimicking whom?

STILL among the Commons people, the column several weeks ago recalled Jimmy Murray, post-war MP for Spennymoor and then for North West Durham, who's reckoned to have made his maiden speech on the shortage of dum-tits at Meadowfield Co-op.

The report has now been spotted on the Internet by Andrew Murray, Jimmy's great nephew in Bedford. "I didn't even know what a dum-tit was, but it's obvious when you think about it," he concedes.

Known to the family as Uncle Jim, rather than Jimmy, the future MP was born at East Howle, near Ferryhill - now almost disappeared - and was said in his obituary in The Times on January 26, 1965 to have been one of 12 children.

Digging round the family tree, Andrew and his wife have so far only been able to find nine, but believe them all still to be in the North-East.

Since the southern branch of the tree appears to have lost touch, they'd love to renew acquaintances. We'll pass on information

THAT Jimmy Murray was in turn the member for Spennymoor and NW Durham was because he was re-organised. It's long been a nationalised industry, employing countless thousands, and may have been active even in Roman times.

A famous re-organisation quotation is attributed, probably apocryphally, to a Roman centurion, but chapter and verse prove elusive.

The latest, at any rate, involves local government - the debate in County Durham whether to have a single authority, effectively a county council, or a restructuring which would amalgamate the seven existing district councils into three unitary authorities.

The Government said last week that the three-council option would be £12m more expensive. Fearing a backlash, Wear Valley District Council chief executive Iain Phillips e-mailed the PR company handling the districts' campaign. Why not deflect attention, he said, by resurrecting the Government rebuke to the county council for using the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister logo on its advertising.

The e-mail was copied to district chief executives and, unfortunately, to County Hall as well.

NEWCASTLE United's home games change the entire Saturday afternoon city, and the trains heading thereafter to the south.

Thus the 6.24 Virgin train to Oxford last Saturday evening was jammed like John West's finest - five in the toilet, two dozen in the vestibule, standing room only if you didn't mind the whiff of Brown Ale.

The fans, entirely good natured, were also extraordinarily noisy. The train rocked, the Mags (like the good times) rolled. The songs of triumph might have been heard within a three mile radius.

It was only after the train had decanted at Chester-le-Street and at Durham that the sign on the door could be observed.

"Welcome to the Quiet Zone," it said.

STILL hanging onto the buffers, Tim Stahl in Darlington wonders if the fabled forecast about its being black over Bill's mother's (Gadfly September 22) might also have travelled by train.

His dad was chief draughtsman at Crewe and used it frequently. Tim has also encountered it in other railway towns, including Shildon - much in the news of late, though the Aged Parent seems not yet to have become a museum piece.

(Tim, incidentally, also reckons that his secretary was once the column's, which would make her quite an old lady. "Apparently," he adds, "it was a close call as to whom she least liked working for.")

John Chandler, born and raised in Shildon but long in east London, well remembers the phrase from his days with Shildon BR cricket club's second team, where his top score was 17 and his number of dropped comfortably exceeded it.

"My recollection is that every team in the Durham County League seemed to be acquainted with a Bill and, how strange, where his mother's home was. I still sensed a little annoyance that others laid claim to the phrase."

John, incidentally, also agreed with last week's thoughts on that ghastly great government building in Bishop Auckland. "I hope it's demolished before it achieves listed building status or, worse still, is renamed Auckland Castle."

STILL in Bishop, Paul Dobson reports a pleasant restaurant and a lovely meal except for the cheesecake with "poring" cream. "I asked the waitress if I could stare at it for a while, but she didn't seem to understand."

From Darlington, in passing, Susan Jaleel notes with sadness the sign in the West Cemetery: "Crematorium: Book of Rememberance."

READERS continue to be fascinated by the phrase about the dog's bollocks, though - even in this column - the learned comment from Bryan Sykes on Teesside is probably best left unprinted.

We are more grateful to Ian Andrew in Lanchester who always thought that the dog's bollocks were the same as the cat's whiskers. Mr Andrew, perhaps fortunately, has never been a vet.

SURVEYING the other man's grass with its usual equanimity, last week's column also reported on the Darlington chap now living in China who, unable to buy a decent lawn mower out there, took apart a B&Q mower and returned with it in his luggage.

John Norman at Electrolux suggests that it was perhaps fortunate that he hadn't bought a particular B&Q own brand or a Power Devil, in which cases he would have been returning the machine whence it came.

Coals to Newcastle, or what?

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/ gadfly.html