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THE other reason that today's column has been running a bit late is that on Monday morning, the specs broke yet again. Only on Friday I'd been to see Geoff Foster, the world's best optician, assured that while things were very far from 20-20 they hadn't actually deteriorated. It was on the way out of the consulting room that I walked side-on into the display, frames flying all over the floor. \"Ah, \" said Geoff cheerfully, \"peripheral vision gone as well.\" LAST week's column also mentioned \"obituary poems\" in classified ads, prompting a call from Tom Dobbin in Durham who'd waited years for the chance to quote a little cutting he'd kept. He suspects it was Alan Bennett, called Lane of Memories. . . . . . and finally, last Friday's paper carried a letter from Durham City councillor Terry Moderate, whose Framwellgate Moor barber's shop featured in the 2001 best seller A1 - Portrait of a Road. Terry's an Independent, and not only Moderate at all, but somehow it still seems a pity. He should have been a Radical, his slogan indelible. \"Vote for change, vote Moderate.\"

John Course, who has died aged 86, was a mainstay of the Guardian during the most difficult years of its transition from Manchester to London. His editing skills and talent for nurturing colleagues ensured that the retreat was seldom dispiriting and occasionally glorious. He practised rather than preached the paper's values. His greatest contributions lay in working with Brian Redhead, notherrn editor at the time, and the designer Phil Tucker on the transformation of the feature pages in the 1960s, and later, after the dribble south became a torrent in 1976, preserving the Guardian's northern soul on the Grassroots pages. He ran the best regional arts coverage of any national newspaper for 30 years and was a pioneer in appointing and promoting female subeditors. In a freelance capacity, he also worked as an interviewer for BBC radio.

The lane beyond Calrofold circles down around Cliff Hill to come by Higher Hurdsfield, at the very upper-eastern limit of Macclesfield, before coming through the great trees that wrap about Swanscoe Hall. By taking narrow Kerridge Road we slant northwards up the western flank of delightful Kerridge Hill, that spine of gritstone once the scene of busy activity to quarry this useful rock. Down at the north-west corner of the ridge stands Kerridge village, its unusual name derived from the Old English Gaeg Hrycg - key ridge.

The privately run railway, which hopes eventually to restore the link between the East Coast Main Line at Northallerton and the Settle-Carlisle Railway at Garsdale Junction, was playing host to the 1940s.Operation Dalesman saw the railway using the Standard class steam locomotive 80105 to haul trains from Leeming Bar, near the A1, to Bedale, Leyburn and its present eastern terminus at Redmire.Leeming Bar station had a military fair and field kitchen while the newly...

Sir, - Those of us fortunate enough to recall the late and great Brian Redhead, who created the interviewing format now representative of all that is best within serious radio, will remember his persistent championing of Macclesfield, the town to which he returned after five hectic days at Broadcasting House, in London. When the bulldozers threatened his terraces, he promoted the idea of demolishing rows only, an idea adopted by neighbours Stockport.

With series which have been on the screen for more than a decade, viewers usually know what to expect. But this month's edition of the long-running Crimewatch UK (Tuesday, 10.20pm, BBC1) will be unusually tense. For the first time since Jill Dando's murder, Nick Ross will have a new co-host, Fiona Bruce.

OLD WELSH GITTERY has always been a pleasure to read, ever since Kingsley Amis knocked out Lucky Jim. To this rich oeuvre comes John Humphrys, the brilliantly snarling Welsh dragon of the Today programme. He breathes fire at the victim culture, the rise and rise of advertising and the end of shame. Humphrys on the admass: `The difference is that advertisers seldom sell things any longer; they sell lifestyle images. There was a time when adverts were used to highlight the quality of a product now if you buy the spade you are promised, by association, a whole new lifestyle.' Humphrys on the end of remorse: `Derek Draper, you will recall, was a young Labour lobbyist who was at the centre of an expose by The Observer in 1998 it was a classic case of shaming, in that he exposed himself as an arrogant, boastful, big-mouthed, cynical and shameless individual on the make, whose main interest, as he put it, was in `stuffing pounds 250 an hour into my bank account\". It was the sort of exposure which, in a society that still had a sense of shame, would make you want to crawl under the nearest stone but shameful notoriety did not mean oblivion. It meant an opportunity for celebrity.'

The BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson, has confirmed he will be joining Radio 4's Today to replace Jim Naughtie, who announced his departure this week.

That was because there was always something vaguely unsettling about [Brian Redhead] which wouldn't let you sleep. Listening to him, in my slumbers, I would semi-consciously feel that if I got any sleepier, he would let loose that tricky question which I would not know how to answer. That's probably why the politicians in the radio car fared no better than they did. I always imagined the BBC radio car to contain a rather comfortable bed with soft pillows, and that when [Cecil Parkinson] arived for his early-morning interview, yawning suavely, he was gently changed into silk pyjamas and tucked up in bed, softening him up for Redhead's questions. Next time you hear someone say, \"And now over to the radio car, where I believe Malcolm Rifkind is nearly ready for us\", just try to imagine the little Scot with the strangled accent being helped into bed by his publicity chap, and I assure you the interview will seem that much more colourful.

[Brian Redhead]'s death denies his enormous following the pleasure of what would, I feel sure, have been many volumes of splendid autobiography, writes Ion Trewin. If, of course, he had found the time even with retirement from Radio 4's Today programme. Brian was also planning at least two radio series: on Religion and Science and on the 20th Century, both of which would have allowed his natural curiosity full scope. Both, he felt sure, would yield books.