Going A over T into A&E, the column spent part of Saturday morning in casualty at Darlington Memorial.

"Like something out of a Whitehall Farce," we explained to the inquiring doctor, a pleasant young houseman who responded blankly, as if a Whitehall Farce were Question Time in the House of Commons. (It may well be, of course.)

Those more senior - from the age of innocence, that is - will recall the Whitehall Farces as often televised plays starring Brian Rix, now Baron Rix of Westminster and of Hornsea, in which he almost always ended up with his trousers around his ankles.

They thought it fabulous in the fifties.

The accident had happened at 7.30pm on Friday when, in stocking feet, we were carrying a television dinner on a tray from the kitchen. The lady of the house, judging a short story competition, had left one of those transparent plastic book sleeves lying like black ice on the sitting room floor.

The acrobatic aftermath would indeed have graced a Whitehall Farce, new meaning to the phrase about being the author of another's misfortune.

The meal was scattered from here to Coronation Street. The column, having gained no marks whatever for artistic impression, lay still life and sackless on the carpet, like a post-parabolic potato pile.

The morning-after worry was a recurring deep vein thrombosis, though - since already having had one represents a gold card through casualty - the temptation is to wear a DVT like a DFC.

The doctor, reassuring, said we'd sprained the foot's only muscle, a surprising statistic since each ear, memory suggests, has about 300. "I think it's called digitus minimus," he added, as if talking of a public school sibling.

The moral of the story is simple: unless wishing to be caught with your trousers down, always wear something on your feet.

NO offence intended, but until someone rang about them last week, we'd not heard of the Baldy Brothers. They're Century Radio presenters, apparently, and had spent much time on last Wednesday's show discussing the column's suggestion that Bonanza, the hairy-chested 1950s television western, was a favourite among homosexuals.

The guys may also like to know of an advertisement which appeared in the Teesdale Mercury: "Sheep dog for sale: frightened of sheep."

The owners, dog lovers, firmly request no publicity. But if anyone's recently bought a caffey hearted collie, we'd love them to bark up this tree.

STILL in the farmyard, Mrs Dorothy Harris from Borrowby, near Northallerton, has been talking turkey in the Telegraph.

Her husband rescued a bird which had got loose after a crash on the A1, called it Lucky - what else? - and housed it with his sheep.

Unfortunately, the turkey developed romantic inclinations towards her Great North hero. "During the mating season she would be particularly flirtatious," writes Mrs Harris.

"When we tried to introduce her to a handsome male turkey, she wasn't interested at all."

It follows an earlier letter from a lady in Berkshire about the unrequited love of a female ostrich for her son Daniel, who was paid to look after it.

"Finally she became so excited that she dropped a feather and Daniel picked it up and out it in his hat.

"At this, the male ostrich saw what a faithless bird his wife had become..."

You get the plaintive picture. The lady has now been referred to a recent Ig Nobel prize winning treatise called Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain. Perhaps there's something similar for turkeys.

THE Bonanza bonanza came from ITV audience research in the 1950s which also - said last week's column - revealed that BBC viewers in those days used more margarine than those watching the well saturated commercial channel.

Visiting his barber in Sunderland last week, Tom Purvis found confirmation of BBC tastes beneath the Daily Mirror headline "Butter led to Delia axe threat."

Clearly knowing the side upon which their bread was spread, Corporation bosses - said the story based on Delia Smith's new vegetarian cookery book - had threatened to sack her unless she dropped butter from her recipes.

"I confess I bowed to their suggestion and for ten years only ever used margarine," she admits.

A spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association said it seemed "a little extreme" to threaten to sack the lass.

Butter fingered Ms Smith is now urging her readers to return to the real thing - and Tom Purvis is urging his barber to buy The Northern Echo, instead.

A SMALL prize as lure, last week's column invited readers to suggest when Sunderland last scored in an FA Cup final at Wembley. Hundreds fell headlong into the elephant trap.

It wasn't 1973, Monty's match, but 1979 - when Alan Sunderland of Arsenal scored a dramatic last minute winner against Manchester United in what became known as the Five Minute Final.

"That's not fair," protests Brian Dobinson of Darlington, good naturedly, when his e-mail own goal is pointed out.

The winner of Searching for Surnames (Countryside Books, £11.95) is David Moyes, also from Darlington, who wins quite a lot hereabouts but who, on this occasion, was simply first out of the hat.

Tom Purvis also recalls the polliss at the end of the 1979 final who surreptitiously picked up a Wembley divot and concealed it beneath his plant pot helmet.

It became known, says Tom, as Sod's Law.

HAT hung on the surname peg, last week's column also reproduced an advertisement for Richard Daft, sports outfitter - " fine looking fellow, reckoned the best professional batsman of the 1870s." says Ron Hails (aided by their Patch) in Hartlepool. Eddie Airey recalls that during a quiet moment's thumbing the Municipal Directory whilst with the former Shildon Urban District Council he discovered Mr J C Muckart, a cleansing supervisor, and a sanitary inspector called J R Smellie.

...and finally, those who share the column's familiar affection for the Western Highlands - particularly around the small fishing port of Mallaig - may be interested in a story, reported briefly and without embellishment, from the monthly magazine West Word.

It was 4.50 on a stormy September morning when Mallaig's lifeboat crew and fire brigade were simultaneously alerted to a house fire on the island of Rum.

Rum doesn't have a fire brigade, or indeed many fireplaces. Mallaig's fire crew, and their essential equipment, were hurriedly loaded onto the lifeboat for the 75-minute sea crossing.

A fire crew from Fort William, the next nearest mainland station, was meantime sent 45 miles up the tortuous Road to the Isles to provide early morning cover in Mallaig.

When finally Mallaig's firemen reached the land, they discovered that there wasn't a fire at all - merely a smoke alarm activated by a piece of overdone toast.

The cost of this highland fling can only be imagined: as probably they're tired of being reminded, a Rum do, if ever.