I OVERHEARD an elderly lady walking with her pre-school grandson in Leyburn town centre this week.

"Just because the man thinks you are funny, it doesn't mean you are," the lady said. What a fantastic epitaph.

On the subject of things that people say, the youngest boy asked if Robin Hood was a girl this morning.

He then corrected himself, saying: "No wait that was Little Red Riding Hood."

It's an easy mistake to make. Both wore hoods and pinched stuff in the woods.

The same boy's class had a school trip to Tesco at Catterick Garrison last week.

Stop me if you know where this is going. The teacher asked the children what do you think you will see at the supermarket?

"A rat," replied the boy in all innocence.

He was of course referring to the sighting of a rodent in the store a couple of weeks ago which prompted the shop to close for a short while.

Since the event a large number of people have claimed to have seen the rat, much in the same way everyone in Dallas was sat on the grassy knoll licking an ice cream when Kennedy got shot. That's JF, not Nigel. Nigel is still alive and playing Southport Theatre on Saturday night if you're interested.

If the stories are accurate, the rat ran around fruit and veg, the bakery and the fresh meat areas, before skipping down breakfast cereals, doing a little jig next to tinned fruit and telling amusing anecdotes about his time in the navy to shoppers looking for the cider with the best alcohol to price ratio in the drinks department.

Apparently news of the rat spread up and down the aisles like a fire on a pre-safety foam sofa.

"There's a rat."

"A rat, where's a rat?"

"There's a rat in the kitchenware department. What are we going to do?"

"I'm going to beat that rat, that's what I'm going to do."

You get picture. There was even a limited amount of screaming. People were saying afterwards that rats were coming from the site of the new cinema, restaurants and shops being built opposite.

Before sucking in trade from surrounding historic Georgian town centres the site is giving away its rats, it seems.

Clearly what the historic Georgian market towns need to combat the potential loss of trade and rats resulting from the new retail complex and is less free parking and an over-jealous parking enforcement regime.