I'VE visited many friendly village pubs from shore to moor.

Classic examples come to mind, thanks mainly to the 40 years I enjoyed on the South Devon League soccer circuit, from the mid-1950s to the mid-1990s, and back in the early days a lot of Torbay's working class neighbourhoods were urban villages.

Beyond the football addiction, though, I'll never forget the Friday and Saturday nights when I was a kid immediately after Hitler's War.

One Friday evening in 1948 I was going over to the family local, the Torbay Inn, with Dad to bring a bottle of stout for Mam who wouldn't be joining him for an hour or so.

Up the top of the terrace, outside the newsagents, we met old Frank Tottle.

The scrumpy-loving octogenarian crept about on two walking sticks.

"Ere, Perce," the old boy said. "What day is it?"

"What day did you set off?" Dad grinned.

He had a wicked sense of humour but was basically a kind, stand-up comedian, with a deeper side to his nature. The impromptu comedy act he provided was typical of the public bar entertainment available at that time. And Dad definitely had the 'gift of the gab'.

At the pub door in the evening I would peep in and watch part of his show. He would stand with his back to the bar, elbows resting on the counter, addressing a small audience of beer drinkers.

His material ranged from corn barrel hokum and plain corn to flashes of real wit.

"Uncle Ern passed away, then," he said, after a long pull on his sleever of Best Bitter.

"That's sad," said Bill Cadworth, who drove a horse-drawn coal cart.

"Ern was scared of death from his early days," Dad went on. "But it seems bleddy daft to object to it when you'm over 90."

"What happened?" somebody asked.

"Doctor was sent for," Dad said. "And Uncle Ern asked him if he was really poorly. And the doc told un he was. So uncle asked how long he'd got. About five minutes, the doc replied. Oh Lord, uncle sighed — idn there ort 'ee kin do fer me? And the doctor said: I could boil you an egg, or how about I read you a short story."

From the chorus of guffaws and thigh-slapping of the regulars on their bar stools someone snorted: "Bliddy fool, Perce."

With the applause lapping around him, Dad would tilt his slouch hat back on his brow and light a Senior Service.

A few moments later he had drifted into the saloon bar, to wag his tongue and misquote chunks of Shakespeare to confused bank clerks, business champs and their girlfriends.

In Devon dialect an odd bloke was as 'queer as Dick's hatband', Golden Syrup and clotted cream on bread was 'thunder and lightning', and 'baint zackly' was somebody not exactly right in the head.

Dad lapsed into the dialect in the summer, for the benefit and amusement of tourists. In the old days a sea mist produced spell of warm, damp weather was 'tetty fat weather' — the kind that makes potatoes plump.

When me and the boys appeared at the pub door he would growl: "Will you black-aids stop pussyvantin round." (Will you tadpoles stop making nuisances of yourselves).

But his dialect panto continued at home after chucking out time, until Mam told him to get to bed or drop dead.