IT was very courteous of Tony Blair to phone this newspaper and ask if its editor could spare a moment or two – so Mr Blair could thank him personally for supporting his North-East based Sports Foundation as a governor. Of course, it was good of Mr Blair to spare some of his own hard-pressed time in the first place.

I’m far less busy than the paper’s editor.

So I’ll certainly be available if Mr Blair has another moment or two to spare. He can use them to confide in me the reason(s) why, during his 13 years as Labour leader, he wasn’t able even once to attend the Durham Miners’ Gala – which he almost could have addressed by loud hailer from his constituency home.

Surely it cannot be true, though reported in this sober and responsible newspaper, that towards the end of his premiership he didn’t even reply to invitations?

And can we believe, as I read elsewhere, that one gala weekend saw Mr Blair and his family at Silverstone, enjoying the grand prix as guests of Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone?

Since Mr Blair, in his goodwill-gathering days as a young MP, hailed the Miners’ Gala as the “salt of the earth of the Labour movement”

(echoes of Tony Benn, eh?), it is impossible not to think that the unfortunate way events prevented him attending the gala as Labour leader and then Prime Minister upset him greatly.

I’m sure his prolonged absence from this totemic celebration of Labour is among his most heartfelt regrets.

If I can be the means of conveying this reassuring message to the North-East public, especially the stricken former mining community, this column will not have been written in vain.

AMID the multi-coloured extravaganza of cricket’s World Cup, the obituaries to that fine Test cricketer Fred Titmus – sadly never quite a household name though he was England’s most successful Ashes offspinner abroad in the last century – put pictures of the old-fashioned white-flannelled game back in the papers.

In the mind’s eye one could picture the game unfolding over a long summer’s day, hopefully under a blue sky. Cricket is at its absolute best when the sun shines.

Uniquely among sports, cricket has an appeal above the subtleties of the game. Regardless of what’s happening, it gives delight simply as a spectacle. The white figures on the green turf present a lovely tableau, part of the pageant of summer.

It is the charm of cricket – its secret, but perhaps quintessential, ingredient – that has been lost in the garish form of the game that now makes up much of first-class cricket, and virtually all that seen on terrestrial TV. By its own hand, cricket has mangled and murdered itself.

BRITAIN is on its uppers. Some of us – no names, no pack drill – are on our uppers.

But not a few people still seem to have lots of cash to splash about.

Queues for the new iPad, launched within two years of the original iPad, formed threedays before the gadget went on sale, at between about £400 and £600 depending on the model. A new Nintendo games console – a £200 touch – also caused near stampedes in the shops. Who were the round-the-blockand- clock queuers? Didn’t they have jobs to go to? And if not, where do they get their money from?