WHILST it may be an improbable beginning, even for the At Your Service column, readers are invited to name the offence for which medieval French women were required to run naked through the streets whilst chasing a chicken.

That sentence complete, we may also ponder Mr Freddie Starr's real name, or the nearest football ground to the River Mersey or the identity of the British dramatist who wrote his plays in shorthand.

All were posed at a church quiz last Saturday evening, and will be answered before the last amen. First, however, to the question of Epiphany and of Twelfth Night, with which it should not be confused (but almost always is).

Twelfth Night, the last day of Christmas, falls on January 5 and not the day following, though Britain now seems to take down the decorations the moment the first foot is abed. The Feast of the Epiphany - the manifestation of the infant Jesus to the Three Kings, the Wise Men or Magi - is on January 6 and, like Twelfth Night, has sadly been marginalised.

Since all that is now clear, it can further be revealed that a group of Darlington area churches came together for a hugely enjoyable Epiphany celebration on Twelfth Night, that is to say last Saturday.

Those of us with a passion for two word headlines would simply call it Magi Moments, and be done.

Even Clarissa Dickson Wright, the Fat Lady who curiously supposes the best Little Chef in the land to be at Scotch Corner services, wrote in one of the sturdier Sunday papers that, alone among European Christian nations, Britain no longer celebrates Epiphany ("or as we call it, Twelfth Night").

They did, apparently, in her wanton canton days in Switzerland - "Christmas was a time for church and intimate family gatherings, New Year was just a booze up, the biggest feast was Three Kings Night" - though the latter occasion seems to have been so debauched that had they been on the other side of the Alps, the Swiss maids would have spent the rest of the year chasing chickens.

In England, too, the last day of Christmas was formerly far more festive than the first. Though he considered "Twelfenight" to be January 6, Samuel Pepys wrote of a "glut of mirth" and of "sports" - we all know Sam Pepys' sports - until morning.

"A very good supper and mighty merry and good music playing; and after supper to dancing and singing till about 12 at night, and after that we had a good sack-posset for them and an excellent Cake, cost me near 20 shillings."

Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, incidentally, has nothing to do with January 5 or 6 or (particularly) with lords a-leaping and ladies dancing - which may explain the sub-title Or What You Will. Pepys considered it a "silly play", anyway.

Saturday's celebration was at All Saints and Salutation in Blackwell, joined by Holy Trinity, St Cuthbert's and the village parishes of Piercebridge and High Coniscliffe.

It's a lovely, warm and welcoming church, built mainly from wood in 1937, intended to be temporary but now enhanced by a parish centre in which the social evening followed.

Congregations have doubled since the Rev John Dobson, Epiphany enthusiast, arrived in 1992. "If you see a window of opportunity, you jump through it," he'd said when we first visited two years ago.

Immaculately executed, it was basically a service of lessons and carols, seldom sung numbers like Of The Father's Love Begotton and As With Gladness, augmented with rousing hymns like Brightest and Best and Christ Is the World's True Light.

Naturally we sang We Three Kings as well, perhaps wondered what Halley's Comet was doing above Bethlehem in 6 or 7BC or if the frankincense might have masked the stink of the stable.

We'd not intended to stay for the quiz, led astray by talk of bar and of pies and peas - Taylor's pluperfect pies - and invited to make up a team of head teachers and the like, All Saints academicals joined by a Blackwell ox.

There were teams like Brightest and Best, who proved to be neither, and Edwin's Eggheads, similarly over-confident. Ours didn't even know what to call itself but settled on Mistletoe and Wine, a genuflection to Good King Cliff.

The head teacher carried, for some reason, a copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern. Had we been asked the author of Thine Be the Glory, or Charles Wesley's date of birth, the answers would have been at her fingertips.

With little help from the oftcumden, we did remarkably well, just a point behind the winners and now able to disclose not only that Freddie Starr's real name is Freddie Starr, that the nearest football ground to the Mersey is Stockport County's and that George Bernard Shaw wrote in Shawthand but that the reason the French chicken crossed the road was that Madame had committed adultery.

It was 10.30pm on Twelfth Night before the carousing ceased, though by that time the Holy Trinity clergy had made their excuses and left. The next day was the feast of the Epiphany. They'd to be up early for church