With regard neither to modesty nor to lowly estate, yesterday's Eating Owt column suggested that what the Echo needs is a good obituaries column and that, upon eventual retirement, I might be just the chap to polish the memorial.

It was wholly coincidental that, a couple of days earlier, the Stokesley Stockbroker had forwarded the obit from The Guardian of Bob Smithies - photographer, television presenter and, as Bunthorne, compiler of cunningly cryptic crosswords in that newspaper.

Though a subsequent Guardian correspondent suggested that Mr Smithies may best be remembered for his images of northern cooling towers - do any remain this side of Ferrybridge? - he was particularly proud of his favourite crossword clue.

"Amundsen's forwarding address? (4)" it read. The solution when today's column reaches the opposite pole.

Thomas Eltringham's death notice - what we call his classified obit - appeared in last Thursday's Echo. He was 66, lived in Bearpark, near Durham, and during a short illness, it said, had never lost his sense of humour.

In the affectionate manner which these things essay, the death notice also recorded that Mr Eltringham was known - like so many more North-East lads with the forename Thomas - as Tucker.

Just last weekend, indeed, there'd been much excitement in Crook football circles at the expected appearance - in a benefit match for the admirable Kevin Cooper - of Tucker Bailes.

"Mind," they added, "you should see the size of him these days." Mr Bailes may reasonably argue that some folk have no room whatever to talk.

Why Tom should have become "Tucker" is something which the column and its learned lieutenants have been wholly unable to discover.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "tucker" as everything from a piece of lace - as in best bib and tucker - to a verb meaning to tire or weary, as in tuckered out.

As Mr Rolf Harris would probably have known, it was also used to describe a gold digger's daily rations, and eventually to mean food in general.

Though there is no etymological evidence, the nickname "Tucker" may simply come from the familiar nursery rhyme about Tommy Tucker's nocturnal activity:

Little Tommy Tucker sings for his supper,

What shall we give him but brown bread and butter?

How shall he cut it without a knife?

How shall he marry without a wife?

"Tucker" was a colloquial term used to describe an orphan, often reduced to begging or "singing for their supper". The reference to marrying (it's said) reflects the problem of finding a wife because of the orphan's exceptionally low standing within the community.

None of it is convincing. Can anyone - particularly someone with that teasing sobriquet - provide the Tucker punch?

A discordant note, if not a death knell, last week's column sounded off once again about karaoke.

Usually the eructations emerge from the Nags Head in Darlington, outside which the homeward bus departs; last week it was from the Coach and Horses at Leadgate, near Consett. It's the Japanese to blame.

Karaoke, it's reckoned, was born - like instant noodles and automatic ticket barriers - in the west of that far Eastern country. It began at a snack bar in Kobe City where, when the resident guitarist couldn't make it, the owner prepared backing tapes so that occasional singers might still have some accompaniment.

"Kara" comes from "karappo", meaning empty; "oke" is an abbreviation of "okestura", the Japanese for orchestra.

"A form of entertainment in which amateur singers sing popular songs accompanied by pre-recorded music," says the Bloomsbury English Dictionary. As any who've awaited the No 28 bus might aver, the only quibble is with the word "entertainment".

But a cock-stride from Leadgate sits the hamlet of Iveston, adopted in the late 1960s - as last week's column revealed - by a minesweeper of the same name.

Then, in 1970, five members of the ship's company were arrested on mutiny allegations - the last Royal Navy crew to face the charge. The ship changed its name soon afterwards, we said - though the Iveston may no longer rule the waves, John Briggs in Darlington disagrees.

"It's still used as a sea cadet training ship and moored at Tilbury," he says.

Reference to St Ives church in Leadgate prompted John Sanderson in Peterlee to recall that a late 19th century curate there became Bishop of Tasmania.

John, whose son is also a priest in Australia, reckons that the Durham coalfield attracted all manner of high calibre clergy. "It was the usual thing: where there's muck, there's money."

Last week's column also touched upon punning names for shops: in Leadgate there's a hairdresser's called Eclipse, in Micklegate, York, a florist's called Heaven Scent.

Dave Dye in Wolsingham - who, happily, travels with a camera - reports that in Aberdeen he saw an 8am-10pm shop run by Knight and Dey and (though it is hardly a pun) that the window of a Whitley Bay pharmacy held a box of throwaway panties with the instruction "Remove for display".

Near Morpeth, Dave also discovered that somewhere called Make Me Rich - a farm, he believes - was but two and a half miles away.

While on holiday in China, Peter Sotheran in Redcar saw sports shop called Athlete's Foot. It should stand as a warning, he says, to anyone who translates a phrase using a dictionary, without any knowledge of the language.

Since we were also talking of tanning parlours - Tanz-in-Ere has been discovered in Newton Aycliffe - Tim Stahl in Darlington offers a little ditty:

There once was a lady from Sunniside

Who'd been blessed with the name Tanya Hyde,

She longed for a business, but didn't know which -

Tanning parlour or dominatrix.

Asked to explain what he meant - Sunniside, near Tow Law, or the village of the same name near Whickham - Mr Stahl has been strangely silent. A three line whip next time.

All very pyrotechnical, a late wire from the Stockbroker reports that he's off to the 10th British Fireworks Championships in Plymouth - where some bod from the local university will attempt the world record for letting off most rockets at one go.

It's a prompt, of course, to recall Amundsen's forwarding address. Mush.