FEW may remember the Ballad of Bethnal Green, nor even Paddy Roberts, the chap memory suggests who many years ago recorded it.

Heaven knows why it should have been Bethnal Green. Why not Tooting Bec, or Shepherds Bush or even the Elephant and Castle, with all its rhyming possibilities?

Paddy's ballad, at any rate, contained the immortal lines:

"In a fit of pique

She married the Greek

and now she's dressed in mink"...

...and shortly before 3pm last Thursday - having consumed nothing more perilously potent than three glasses of Coca-Cola - the column found itself rather loudly singing them in Spiro's restaurant in Redcar.

Spiros Pandis is Greek, his splendid wife Jan was born in Bradford and came to Redcar, where they met, when she was eight. The Bethnal Ballad is a tale of a handsome male and a girl of sweet 16, though why she had a fit of pique and married the Greek it is unfortunately impossible to recall.

A kind reader may know all the words and explain the marital mystery. "I never got the mink, anyway," said Jan.

We lunched with Vera Baird, a Lancashire lass whom we knew when she was an impoverished law student in Newcastle, working behind the bar in The Magpie in order to keep up legal appearances. "It had to be the lounge," she recalls. "I couldn't understand the broad Geordie in the bar."

Now 49, she is a leading London QC, a particular champion of the left and of oppressed womankind, and Labour's candidate to inherit Mo Mowlam's 22,000 majority at the next election.

(To avoid suggestions that this is a party political broadcast, it should be said that Stan Wilson - her Liberal Democrat opponent - is not only another old friend, but has the advantage over Vera in that in the 1950s he played outside left for Shildon. The Conservative's probably a canny lad, too.)

We'd not met for 20 years - then just a mate, now a very learned friend - so there was much news gathering to be essayed, much tittle-tattle to transpose. We were therefore grateful both that the restaurant was quite busy - Redcar council education department like their schools dinners there - and that Jan and Spiros proved charmingly hospitable. "It's our policy," they said afterwards. "We never chase people out of our restaurant."

Vera has been living in fashionable Crouch End, now shares a flat in Redcar with a Bedlington terrier called Zak, hopes shortly to buy a bigger place on the sea front, opposite the penguins.

"Redcar's lovely," she says - as well advisedly she might - and has particularly been taken by the price differences. In Crouch End a haircut might be £25, in Carlin How it was £3. "You've got quite a small head," said the hairdresser.

In Crouch End you wouldn't get a glass of wine for the price of a lunchtime main course in Spiro's.

Officially termed "Mediterranean", the main menu embraces pizza, pasta, steaks and some adventurous chicken dishes. At lunchtime, pasta and salad mainly, it's impossible to pay over £4 for a main course.

The yet greater advantage, however, is that while so many eating places in Redcar are - how may this politically be put? - much of a muchness, Spiro's in different, vibrant and (for want of a better word) fun.

We sat beneath a recipe for stuffed camel. "Feeds 81," it said.

After a mixed salad starter (£2), we proceeded to chicken with gruyere and mushrooms, served with crisp salad and a vast bowl of nicely sauted potatoes. It was the top price, £3.95.

Vera began with a Greek salad, another £2, followed by a vegetarian pasta dish which willingly they concocted. Excellent, she considered.

Unlike almost everything else, puddings aren't home-made. She had a raspberry pavlova, we something gooey called a dime bar. Wasn't there a song about that: Buddy Can You Spare a Dime Bar?

We left about 3.15pm. Three-course lunch, three Cokes, three red wines and two coffees £28 the lot. In Crouch End it would hardly pay for a haircut, nor for the salad of Bethnal Green.

* Spiro's, Coatham Road, Redcar (01642) 472668. Open Tuesday-Saturday, lunchtime and evening. No problems for the disabled.

Darlington CAMRA's "Spring Thing" beer festival was first rate, a splendid tribute to the diversity of real English ale and a gesture towards the pasteurised, half frozen to death other sort.

Delights included Priscilla Pale from the Swaledale Brewery, Harviestoun's Bitter and Twisted (aren't we all?) and Alton Pride from Hampshire, which tasted a bit like Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum used to.

Only the brave sampled Blackout - 11.0 abv - from Big Lamp in Newcastle. None wondered thereafter how it came by its name.

Since Darlington and the North-East also has a rich pork pie heritage, however, someone wondered why CAMRA don't next time run a pork pie festival simultaneously.

And why, incidentally, is a pork pie called a growler?

THE Fighting Cocks at Middleton St George has re-opened after a £150,000 facelift. As readers would expect, we've been through it like a dose of saltpetre. Or an Ofsted inspector, perhaps.

"Rasbery ripple" was on offer, and "befberger" and what on earth was toad in the whole? Perhaps, by and large, they meant toad on the whole?

Otherwise they're off to a good start, and not even the Microsofties have invented a spellcheck for a chalk board.

Middleton St George is between Darlington and Teesside Airport, the Fighting Cocks - origins welcomed - now run by Graham and Linda Clark on a 21-year tenancy from Enterprise Inns. Previously they had an exhaust fitting business in Darlington but lived round the corner from the pub.

"The Fighting Cocks was one of the reasons we moved here five years ago," says Graham, though latterly the pub had seen better days.

It's completely and enthusiastically transformed, hung with old prints of the village, the opulent eating end deliberately distinct from the bar, games area and Middleton St George domino domain.

Daily changing lunch dishes are almost all under a fiver, evening menu more elaborate. They plan a three course pensioners' special, too.

Options last Tuesday afternoon included roast pork, that holistic toad, fish and chips and a pleasantly mild curry (£4.50) that arrived with rice, an enjoyable minty salad and poppadoms which had seen a little too much of the oil.

Real ale's either Magnet or Tetley's, though Graham plans guest appearances; service is attentive and friendly, Linda's the one with chalk on her hands and egg on her face. They're OK between the lines, though. The Fighting Cocks winning back its spurs.

THE Hole in the Wall in Darlington - etymology also mysterious - appears to be getting bigger. "The former landlord has opened a pub of the same name in Tenerife," reports former Darlington mayor and present Conservative candidate Tony Richmond - and even that doesn't properly fill it in.

Whilst Phil James still runs the pub in Darlington Market Place, renowned for its "original" Thai food, his brother Greg opened a Hole in the Wall in Tenerife. "Great place, I was there almost every night," reports Tony after a winter break.

Greg, however, has now sold that Hole in the Wall and opened another, also in Tenerife - a three-holer, as they used to say across the colliery back street. None of it explains the name,. Can anyone get to the bottom of the Hole?

...and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what's green, furry on top, and yellow underneath.

Last week's custard.

Published: Tuesday, March 20, 2001