That'll do nicely

Another of these columns has told the serendipitous story of what happened next.

In short, however, a long day was saved by a first-class Virgin train manager who recognised - and took pity on - a fellow non-league football fan.

It was an American Express moment, akin to the 1970s television commercials in which a piece of plastic, similarly omnipotent, evoked the response: "That'll do nicely, sir."

Cassell's Dictionary of Catchphrases - from the ubiquitous Nigel Rees - supposes the phrase to smack of "obsequious acquiescence".

The Oxford Dictionary of Catchphrases deems it "servile and potentially sexually charged".

The commercial launched the career, adds the Oxford, of "Bond girl" Cassandra Harris, best remembered in For Your Eyes Only. It says much for this column's wholesale lack of sexual charging that I don't remember her at all. Only Alan Whicker.

IT'S pure coincidence that the best "That'll do nicely" story of all also involves non-league football.

The magnificent Brian Hunt, long-time scorer and statistician for Durham County Cricket Club, also spent seven years in the meticulous compilation of the Northern Football League's centenary history, published in 1989.

As inadequate reward, both for his industry and for her forbearance, the League paid for a West Indies holiday for Brian and his wife. It embraced two test matches.

Arriving one morning at the Kingston Oval, Brian discovered that he'd left his match tickets and credentials on the hotel table, 30 miles away. All that he had in his wallet was his Northern League "all grounds" pass. He flashed it: hurriedly, hopefully. The rest may be imagined. "Ah,"

said the Kingston gateman, "that'll do nicely."

CATCH as catch can, readers are thus invited to identify the following ten catchphrases. Answers at the foot of the column.

1. His reverence won't like it.

2. Naughty but nice.

3. Well, me old pal, me old beauty.

4. Can you hear me, mother?

5. Oooh, you are awful, but I like you.

6. Time for bed.

7. Look that up in your Funk and Wagnall's.

8. Hello playmates.

9. She knows, you know.

10. That's all, folks.

ANONYMOUS but still wholly unmistakable, a voicemail message seeks further to enrage 78-year-old Peter Freitag, a LibDem member of Darlington council.

Councillor Freitag, who has a disabled driver's badge, is refusing in protest at the town's inadequate disabled parking facilities to pay a £30 fine for an alleged eightinch overlap of a disabled bay. The fine has already doubled.

"I bet he hasn't told you that he was the first driver in County Durham to be fined for not wearing a seat belt," says the caller, adding - a little opaquely - that he must have been driving a Vauxhall Cavalier.

It is former Tory councillor Peter Jones, a mischievous mainstay in the column's more delinquent youth but long since governed by what appeared a near-Trappist vow of silence.

Like Jonesey, Peter Freitag recalls the incident - though his recollection that it was about ten years ago is mistaken. It was in 1983. "I'd only just left the house, but it was a fair cop," he says.

"It made about half a page of the paper, just because it was me. I was fined £10 and gained about £2,000 worth of free publicity.

I'm grateful to Peter Jones for offering me some more."

STILL with travellers' tales, Phil Chinery in Darlington notes that the newly issued X1 and X41 Arriva timetables between Middlesbrough and Newcastle are said to be valid from October 8, 2008. He may have a long time to wait, an' all.

AN elderly but clearly well-preserved diner in a Newcastle restaurant was described in The Guardian as "a Geordie Jessica Tandy". It was intended as a compliment.

Ms Tandy, an actress who died in 1994, aged 84, was 80 - and looking very good on it - when she won an Oscar.

Film buff John Foster in Langley Park, near Durham, suggests that last week's column was unfair, however, to describe her career until then as "relatively Bmovie".

She'd made films since 1932, played Ophelia to John Gielgud's Hamlet - Jack Hawkins, her first husband, was also in the cast - and also starred in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

"Although she appeared on stage with actors like Alec Guinness and Sir Lawrence Olivier, she had many disappointments,"

concedes John. "Her failure to impress the film moguls means today she is not a household name."

The Oscar may have changed all that.

Clearly it was a case of saving the best till last.

ANTICIPATING Consett FC's trip to Poole last weekend, we'd also talked of the Sandbanks development in Poole where houses can sell for up to £10m.

The Guardian featured one of them that morning - three reception rooms, six bedrooms, eight bathrooms, sevencar garage and private jetty. It also offered gym, games room, bar, wet room, breakfast room and cellar.

Though perhaps a bit pricier than the average semi in Delves Lane, that one was a snip at £7.95m.

The only problem, said The Guardian, was that the approach road can get congested in the summer. Wendy Acres in Darlington has identified another.

"It's basically just on a big sand dune. If global warming continues, the whole thing will be washed away by the sea. Consett will go on for ever."

WERE ever it needed, further proof that the Gadfly column perches on journalism's cutting edge arrives in an e-mail yesterday morning. "Put old Macdonald (he who had the farm) into Google and half the Government's education websites say it's Macdonald and half say it's MacDonald, with a capital D." Don't ask, it adds, how they know.

and finally, the catch-all answers to the little quiz above:

1. Mr Yeatman, the verger in Dad's Army.
2. 1980s commercial for dairy cream cakes.
3. Walter Gabriel in The Archers.
4. Sandy Powell in the 1930s radio programme.
5. Dick Emery.
6. Zebedee, soporifically, in The Magic Roundabout.
7. Much used in the Rowan and Martin Laugh-In, 1960s television show.