Village's starring role in comedy of manors

Queen Camel, we concluded, had England's most memorable place name. What it's really famous for, points out Peter Sotheran in Redcar - a man who clearly knows the ropes - is that the village church of St Barnabas has the heaviest ring of six church bells in the world.

"Others may have more or bigger, none heavier."

Cricket St Thomas, also nominally embraced, was the setting - says Peter - of the country house and estate used to film To the Manor Born, that splendid sitcom starring Penelope Keith as Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton and Peter Bowles as the newly-rich Richard de Vere.

There was also a gardener called Ned, which leads to a note (it is to be that sort of column) from Marshall Hall.

Marshall edits the Charver Dictionary, mentioned hereabouts a few weeks back. Charvers, he says, are mainly youths on Tyneside and Wearside, though there are associated breeds on Merseyside ("scallies") and in Glasgow, where they're known as neds.

Ned, says Marshall, was originally a probation service term meaning non-educated delinquent - but with this column you learn something every day.

"WEARSIDE", we noted last week, was conspicuously absent from the Oxford English Dictionary, though the banks of Tyne, Clyde and Mersey are all included. Tom Purvis has now sent a "small rebuke" to the Sunderland Echo - "who ran a successful campaign for Makem to be included."

THEN there's Mark 10:25, among scripture's more familiar passages: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God".

It is a curious metaphor. The ubiquitous Ernie Reynolds in Wheatley Hill reckons that in biblical times, cities had high walls and vigilant guards. After dark, however, the main gate was closed and stop-outs were admitted through a small side passage.

"It had bends, and the final entrance was low. Anyone coming in had to bow their heads, which could easily be struck off by a defender."

The entrance, he says, was called a needle. Others claim that there was a street called Needle's Eye; some that the metaphor is best left alone.

It's the rich what gets the gravy,

Ain't it all a bleedin' shame.

NO narrow escape, either, from vigilant Echo readers who use the column as a conduit for their frustration.

Did we really, as Clarice Middleton in Richmond suggests, twice refer to naturism as a "past-time" in a full front page story last week? Yes, all is revealed, we did.

Is it reasonable, asks Don Ferguson in Hurworth, to describe a chap who long since emigrated to New Zealand but who wanted his ashes to be spread back home in Co Durham as an "ex-patriot". We did it in both story and headline earlier this month and, though the crime is habitual, we meant "expatriate".

Don also recalls e-mailing Ian Hislop on the Telegraph about a similar error. A reply from a sub-editor blamed a typographical error. Writers blame the subs.

PERHAPS we should all be issued with copies of First Aid in English, the post-war primary school text book which we fondly recalled a few weeks back.

A lady from Bellerby, near Leyburn, wondered if Sunday Post readers may be able to help her find one, now finds herself with six and wonders if we'd like a copy.

To prevent another deluge, she asks anonymity. "I'm already overwhelmed by the power of the press."

NAVAL gazing: having finally got the union flag the right way up, last week's column suggested that the union jack was properly only flown from the jackstaff at the stern of a Royal Navy ship - and instantly attracted a signal from Peter Longstaff ("your unpaid and under-worked naval correspondent") in Darlington. "I think (know) that you will find that the union jack is flown from the front end of a Royal Naval warship."

LAST week's column wondered why Ayr was known as The Honest Town, and its football team as The Honest Men - and having earlier this year attended an extravagantly kilted Burns Night supper at the Glasgow Hilton, should really have known better.

Thanks, then, to Colin Jones in Spennymoor, Alan Macnab in Sedgefield, Ayr United fan Ian Nelson in Saltburn and to Clarice Middleton for helping avoid further ned lines. The reference is from Robert Burns' great epic Tam o'Shanter:

This truth fand honest Tam o'Shanter

As he frae Ayr ae night did canter;

(Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses,

For honest men and bonnie lasses.")

ALAN Macnab also adds his favourite put-down to our decorative, deprecative pile - one of many attributed to F E Smith, a Conservative politician who became Earl of Birkenhead.

In the Members' lobby, says Alan, Smith was approached by a wet eared Labour MP seeking the way to the lavatory. Smith gazed at his disdainfully but offered directions which ended with the sign saying "Gentlemen" - "and don't," he added, "let that put you off."

To F E Smith, we might add, is also attributed an exchange with a judge who accused him of being offensive.

"As a matter of fact we both are," he replied. "The only difference between us is that I am trying to be and you, M'lud, can't help it."

AT someone else's expense, like the Glasgow trip, we spent the last balmy weekend immured in the Hilton Hotel at the National Exhibition Centre, near Birmingham. A single room (as the Backtrack column has observed) was £245 nightly, a half of orange and lemonade £3.25, a flatulent pint of bitter £2.95.

You pays your money and takes your chance, as they're probably trying to say in the tenth chapter of St Mark, which may explain the great kerfuffle when someone called Jordan was spotted pram-pushing in the foyer.

The column, believing Jordan to be a long retired Leeds United footballer conspicuously missing his two front teeth, found the palaver puzzling.

It transpired, however, that Jordan is also a rather pneumatic young lady who has a love child (another strange expression) by a different footballer entirely.

It is a sign of advancing years, no doubt, but things were never like this when footballers were paid £10 in winter and £8 in summer and went home at teatime to their lemonade and landladies.

As doubtless they try to do at the church of St Barnabas, Queen Camel, we hope to ring a few more bells next time.

Published: ??/??/2002