Heard the one about the vicar?

"Yes you are, so get yourself up now," insists his mum.

The prodigal son demands one good reason why he should go to church. His mum offers three.

"One, I'm your mother and I say you are. Two, you're 40 years old and should know better and three, you're the minister and the service can't start without you."

No offence? "Not that anyone's mentioned, though they probably wouldn't anyway," admits the Rev Graham Morgan, a man with particular expertise in such laughing matters.

He is not only a Methodist minister himself, but has compiled a sell-out book of "religious" jokes, collected over the years and collated during a working holiday.

"It was one of the most serious aspects of the sabbatical," says Graham, a man who believes not only in born again, not bored again, Christians, but that the thrombosis in the church is often caused by the clot in the dog collar.

As a theologian might suggest, however, he has been hiding his light under a bushel - prompted to get in touch only after the At Your Service column suggested that the entire college of preachers knew just two jokes between them (and one of those pretty mortifying.)

Graham, minister of Harrowgate Hill church in Darlington and chaplain to Deerbolt young offenders' institution near Barnard Castle, has thousands of church jokes up his cassock sleeve, a wake-up call to those inclined towards sleeping in the pews.

Now he has dusted them down, written them up and (unashamedly) purloined a few from the Internet. Particularly he enjoys those from the mouths of babes and sucklings - the bairns who thought that the fifth commandment was to humour thy father and thy mother, that the seventh was thou shalt not admit adultery, that Samson slew the Philistines with the axe of the apostles, Lot's wife was a pillar of salt by day and a ball of fire by night and that David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar.

Old Testament scholars, and particularly the unfortunate Uriah the Hittite, will appreciate the adage about true words being spoken in jest.

The book also offers evangelical jokes, ecumenical jokes, walking on water jokes, Noah's Ark jokes - nothing more risque than the misprinted notice about breaking bread and wind - and the inevitable wattage of light bulb jokes.

How many atheists does it take to change a light bulb? - one, but they're still in darkness. How many Methodists does it take to change a light bulb - five, one to change the bulb and the others to serve the refreshments.

There are Calvinist, Catholic and campfire jokes, and many which enjoy a little Methodism in their madness.

A rabbi goes to the barber and is about to pay when the barber announces that he doesn't charge clergy. Next morning he finds a loaf of Jewish rye bread on his doorstep.

A couple of days later, a Catholic priest receives the same cut price offer. Next morning the barber finds a bottle of wine on his doorstep.

By the end of the week a Methodist minister arrives for a good Wesleyan trim and is in turn informed that clergy aren't charged.

The next morning he finds 15 Methodist ministers on his doorstep.

Graham Morgan believes that laughter is good for the soul. "It is a most precious, God given gift.

"Jesus himself used a lot of humour but much of it was lost in the translation. He was perhaps a bit nearer the knuckle than we are today."

"A Book of Laughs" has been published by the Methodist children's charity NCH and is already, smiles the author, "like gold dust". He plans an encore when another sabbatical allows.

A communications difficulty - the NCH telephone's not working - means we can't yet give details of the book's availability. Details, with luck, next week. The minister for fun is content to end with one of his favourite sayings: "If you take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive."

No joke, but a tall story nonetheless, Christ Church in Lumley - near Chester-le-Street - tonight marks an occasion unique in the Diocese of Durham.

Getting on 140 years after the church was built, the Bishop of Durham leads a service of dedication and thanksgiving for the new clock in the tower.

It's not so much that time has stood still, rather that the Victorians ran out of money.

"It's a gift to the people of Lumley for all the support they've given the parish over the years," says Fr Barry Abbott, the Vicar - and by every account it chimes with them greatly.

Though Christ Church is termed "unpretentious" in the guide to Durham's churches, a clock had always been intended. When they couldn't afford it, the chamber was bricked up - what's known, apparently, as a Blind Billy.

The £6,000 clock and tolling mechanism, silenced during the night, has been made possible by donations in memory of former Christ Church organist Keith Gleghorn and from Joyce Taylor, Jean Rodger and friends in memory of their families.

"A clock had been a long standing wish of many parishioners, but perhaps we couldn't see ourselves paying that sort of money," says Fr Barry.

"We are strapped for cash basically. We are having to survive financially and to grow within that survival. This money arrived almost out of the air."

Though it is another of the occasions from which AYS will be AWOL, the church tonight is expected to be full and vibrant. Rather later than anticipated, a dance to the music of time.

FOR services rendered, we have received a copy of the Alderson Family History Society's Newsletter. Though the phone book lists just ten Aldersons in Swaledale - and great armfuls of them over the hill in Wensleydale - the annual gathering was held, as always, in Muker village hall.

They had a talk by the county archivist, bought specially commissioned Christmas cards by the splendid Alf Alderson, elected Richard Alderson Scott - from Dishforth, Thirsk - as their chairman.

The newsletter also has a picture of Mount Alderson (which is near Lake Alderson), a piece on Master Mariner John Alderson, from Whitby, and a tribute to John Alderson from Horden, which is where we came in.

John was the miner's son who became an Artillery major, was deemed a GI bride when he married an American general's secretary and had to attest that he was no more than five months pregnant and for 50 years has been among the best known support actors in Hollywood.

"The North-East coast of England is not renowned for film stars," observes the Newsletter, indisputably - but as usual, you read it here first.

Despite John Briggs's spirited search through the Good Ghost Guide, nothing more on the Toadpool Ghost in West Auckland (John North, October 11).

West Auckland does boast a terrified horseman galloping towards Hamsterley, however, a spectral hearse pulled by headless horses in Langley Park and at Darlington Civic Theatre, the backstage apparition of Signor Pepi, who built the place in 1907. The Toadpool Ghost, however, appears to have died.

....and finally, back to Methodism, merriment and to Mrs Dulcie Lewis. The Wensleydale author who redefined toilet humour in Down the Yorkshire Pan has now produced a second volume, called Curious Cures of Old Yorkshire.

Courtesy of the Swillington Methodist Ladies' Bright Hour, therefore, we are able to aver that urine is good for anything to do with the feet.

"When they are sweaty and aching, or if you have athlete's foot, blisters or bruises, soak your feet in a bowl of hot urine. Miners would come home with their feet all sweaty, wee in the pot and then put their feet in it until the urine got cold."

Dulcie offers many more curatives, of course. More for the Bright Hour pot next week.