A load of old tripe

BARELY nine months after savouring the dubious delights of tripe, we return to that distinctly acquired taste – and to a tripe supper held last Saturday in Middlesbrough.

Innard looking, the column of February 13 noted that tripe – basically made from three of the average cow’s four stomachs, goodness knows what’s wrong with the fourth – had been voted Britain’s most despised food.

The view wasn’t shared by Dave Beck, a butcher on Darlington’s indoor market, who sells six or seven stones of the stuff each week. “Older people swear by it, especially poached in milk. A lot of people insist it’s for the dog, but we’re pretty sure the dog doesn’t see a lot of it.”

Last Saturday, at any rate, the everinnovative Middlesbrough FC fanzine Fly Me to the Moon marked its 20th birthday. Since the club is widely believed to have been formed over a tripe supper in 1876, FMTTM thought it a good idea for history to repeat – perhaps even to regurgitate – itself.

The do was at the Longlands Hotel, said to be a Boro shrine – they’ve even got a turnstile from the old ground, and a bit of the goalpost, too.

Among those present was 84-yearold Rolando Ugolini, an Italian whose parents moved to Scotland when he was three, who made 320 appearances in Boro’s green jumper and who became known, like many of that custodial calling, as The Cat.

There, too, was former defender Frank Spraggon – three goals in 277 appearances – and Alan Peacock, Brian Clough’s striking partner, who played for England in the 1962 World Cup in Chile.

Mr Peacock, clearly a man of cosmopolitan taste, advised eating the tripe cold with pepper, salt and vinegar.

He and The Cat, it’s reported, went through great platefuls of the stuff.

FMTTM editor Rob Nichols, the man whose idea it was, may have been bitten off more than he can chew. “It’s fair to say that tripe is well named, not particularly pleasant,” he reports.

“It’s not the sort of cuisine which is going to make a comeback any time soon.”

We have even worse news, however, for the man who found tripe so hard to swallow.

The football.co.uk website describes stories that Middlesbrough FC was formed over a tripe supper as “certainly interesting”. Unfortunately, it adds, they’re nonsense.

FROM cooked meat to the admirable Mr John Raw, who runs neighbourhood watch schemes in the Bishop Auckland area.

“The other day I was in the beat office at Bishop Auckland police station and was confronted by eight or ten police community support officers,”

John reports.

“We fell to discussing what a collective noun for PCSOs might be and after a good deal of banter and discussion came up with a posse. Do your readers know any better?”

Probably they do – but polite versions only, please.

TODAY’S column is interrupted by a call from one of the preposterousness – that collective noun is wholly appropriate – of public relations pests who buzz around people such as me like hornets round a hyperbole. “Are you in charge of the fashion department?” she asks. “Ah,”

I reply, “probably not.”

AMID the awful events in India last week, the Echo was presented with what journalists call a local angle. In geometrical terms, local angles tend to be distinctly acute.

Chris Liveras, brother of a victim of the Mumbai atrocity, had in the 1980s and 1990s owned factories in Hartlepool and Stockton, where he became known as the Cake King.

The tip-off came on Friday from Chris Church, a reporter 25 years ago in the Echo’s Hartlepool office at the time when I was news editor.

“Tell Mike Amos,” his email added, “that I still have his memo saying that my report was the best in the 900-year history of the Sedgefield Ball Game.”

What goes around comes around, as possibly they say in Sedgefield, the moral is clearly to be nice to folk more often.

THAT self-improvement firmly in mind, I’d attended the same evening a function at Eastbourne Methodist Church in Darlington.

There, too, was John Williams, long-time Labour leader of Darlington council and former bete noire of the Gadfly column.

There is no matching English alternative.

Though bete noire is literally a black beast, “bugbear” may be a more gentle translation.

Coun Williams was entirely affable, talking about his recent MBE, about his pleasure that the Queen herself presented it, about how he’d mellowed since the days when he’d have considered turning it down.

In the next day’s paper, the town’s Conservatives – to whom he is at the very least a bete rouge – were accusing Coun Williams of “arrogance”

over a pretty cocky remark in the council chamber.

The leader declined to comment. It is probably better that the column follows his example.

…and finally, a retired (and genteel) clergyman of the column’s acquaintance sends an email headed “2008’s first Christmas joke”. It concerns three blokes who die on Christmas Eve and are met at the pearly gates by St Peter.

“In honour of the holy season,”

says St Peter, “in order to get into heaven you must show me something that symbolises Christmas.”

The first fumbles in his pocket, pulls out a lighter and flicks it on. “It represents a candle,” he says, and is waved through.

The second shakes a bunch of keys.

“It represents bells,” he says, and is admitted.

The third goes desperately through his pockets and finally pulls out a pair of panties. St Peter raises an eyebrow.

“What’s that to do with anything?”

he asks.

“Well,” says the newly deceased, “they’re Carol’s.”

The reverend gentleman (who had best remain nameless) considers the story far too unseemly for his personal use. “For you,” he adds, “it’s probably perfect.”