You half expected the gentle strains of Ilkla Moor Baht 'At to be interrupted by the cry, "Who ate all the pies?"

Certainly that most pithy of Nineties refrains would never have been more appropriate than at yesterday's inaugural Priestley Night.

More than 60 literati from all points of the compass were at the Pennington Midland Hotel in Bradford for the first staging of an event which organisers hope will become the Yorkshire equivalent of Burns Night.

Instead of downing haggis and whisky, last night's JB Priestley disciples chomped their way through a mountain of meat and potato pies in celebration of the life and work of the famous Bradford-born writer.

After a solemn reading by JB Priestley's son Tom of the great man's renowned radio broadcast, about a humble Bradford pie shop which came to personify Britain's defiance of Nazi Germany, the first symbolic pie was ceremonially led in by its creator, the hotel's sous-chef Steve Hartshorne.

Lone trumpeter Trevor Vincent played On Ilkla Moor Baht 'At, Yorkshire's unofficial 'national anthem', before guests tucked into half a dozen gargantuan pies - not before they had queued up, mind.

Organiser Glyn Watkins said: "The idea of the night is for it to be grand but not la-di-dah. There's no waitress service."

Crustier than your average roads protester and oozing with gravy, the pies were a richly nostalgic throwback to the famous Roberts pie shop which inspired Priestley's broadcast of September 29, 1940.

Priestley was impressed with the "giant, almost superhuman" pie which was always on display in the shop window - and the fact that it survived the worst that the Luftwaffe could throw at it.

"Out of that pie came at any and every hour when the shop was doing business a fine, rich appetising steam to make the mouth water even as the very window itself was watering," he wrote.

"It was as much an essential part of my native city as the Town Hall and its chimes."

Priestley fans from as far afield as Devon and Sussex travelled to the writer's home city for last night's inaugural event, which was declared a resounding success.

And Mr Watkins hopes it will become a regular fixture in the literary calendar, with similar Priestley Nights being held simultaneously around the country.

"Someone, somewhere must have sat down and thought up the idea of Burns Night so why not the same with the Priestley Night?" he said.

After dinner there were other readings and, to complete the nostalgic theme, music was provided by veteran jazz drummer Gordon Tetley, who celebrates his 72nd birthday today. He played one of his first professional engagements at the Midland Hotel in 1940, the very year of Priestley's original broadcast.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.