WE all thought they had gone - the great comedy double acts: Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Morecambe and Wise. But the latest duo on the comedy scene had us rolling in the aisles (or between the tables, should I say) in the Beggars' Arms last week.

Meet Blair and Brown, the men who have revived the music hall 40 years after everyone thought it was dead. They may be leading the nation to ruin but they are giving us plenty of belly laughs on the way.

Now there may be people who think that the petrol crisis that brought the nation nearly to its knees is no laughing matter.

And, indeed, for emergency services and hospital patients and many, many more, it was a very serious matter and to them I apologise for my levity.

But for us Beggarsdalians, who tend to keep our supplies pretty well stocked in case we ever have another winter, it was the biggest laugh since Angela Rippon did her high-kick routine for Eric and Ernie.

Unless there is a Six Nations rugby match or a close-run cricket series, the telly rarely gets turned on in the Beggars' - we have better ways to pass the time. But starting 10 days ago, everyone gathered round to watch the latest news bulletin. It was so funny, you see.

There was Tony Blair, supposed to eat a Chinese in Hull with Two Jags Prescott, when he suddenly found there was a national crisis under way.

Not in London, of course (you can get a tube or a bus there) but in the North, in Scotland, in Wales and the South West - all the bits which London politicians have forgotten exist.

So Tone got into his Jaguar and, sweeping back to town, donned his Winston Churchill outfit and came out to tell the TV cameras that "We will fight them on the beaches etc etc."

The reaction to that started with a small giggle in the bar, followed by some very rude expletives from Owd Tom, and finished with a howl of laughter. For who is the ex-Saint going to fight? Small businessmen, like farmers, truckers, and taxi drivers - not quite Hitler's Panzers.

And, of course, most people in Beggarsdale are small businessmen (with the notable exception of Teachers Tim and Tess, who took days off school anyway because they had no petrol). What's more, the campaign was started by small Northern businessmen - and we understand just how difficult it is to survive up here in face of total Whitehall indifference.

It got better when straight-man Brown came on a day or so later to explain that the petrol price had nothing to do with the Government, despite that fact that almost three quarters of it is tax (a bit like a pint of Ram's Blood, really).

But the one that brought the house down was when the boss of the Transport and General Workers' Union went on telly to condemn the demonstrators at petrol depots of "holding the country to ransom." That one had us all in hysterics.

The T&G, for heaven's sake, was that bunch of unionised bullies who, back in the 70s, even stopped people burying their dead - and, incidentally, had Labour thrown out of power for 18 years. Lewis Carroll himself could not have written it better!

* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.